Thoinot Arbeau is the anagrammatic pen name of Jehan Tabourot (17th March 1520-23rd July 1595), a Catholic priest, a canon of Langres, and a theoretician and historian of the dance. A dance manuscript written by Tabourot was published in 1588, and reprinted in 1589 and 1596. This manual, Orchésographie (Orchesography), contains detailed instructions for numerous styles of dance (branle, galliard, pavane, tourdion), as well as short sections about military music, drumming, and marching, and a fe...
Thoinot Arbeau is the anagrammatic pen name of Jehan Tabourot (17th March 1520-23rd July 1595), a Catholic priest, a canon of Langres, and a theoretician and historian of the dance.
A dance manuscript written by Tabourot was published in 1588, and reprinted in 1589 and 1596. This manual, Orchésographie (Orchesography), contains detailed instructions for numerous styles of dance (branle, galliard, pavane, tourdion), as well as short sections about military music, drumming, and marching, and a few details about dance forms such as the Morisco (whence, according to some accounts, the English Morris dance), the Canary (reputed to be from the Canary Islands), the Allemande, Courante, and Basse danse.
Orchésographie is a major source of information about Renaissance dance. It is available online in facsimile and in plain text, and there is an English translation by Mary Stewart Evans, edited by Julia Sutton, in print from Dover Publications. It contains numerous woodcuts of dancing and musicians, and also includes many dance tabulations in which extensive instructions for the steps are lined up next to the musical notes (though this is misrepresented in some modern editions), a significant innovation in dance notation at that time.
As with other collections and manuals of the period, the dances are often attributed to Arbeau as if he were their composer rather than their collector and publisher. As most of the pieces are by unknown hands, this has become the most convenient way to catalogue them. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.
