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Updated: May 6, 2025
the Couranto, with its "current traverses," "sliding passages," and solemn tune, wherein, according to Sir John Davies "that dancer greatest praise hath won Who with best order can all order shun;" the Lavolta, also delineated by the same knowing hand "Where arm in arm two dancers are entwined, And whirl themselves with strict embracements bound, their feet an anapest do sound."
"Dick would have her choose him, and that is why he interferes with me," he observed. "How say you, fair queen! Shall it be our hopeful cousin? I will answer for him that he danceth the coranto and lavolta indifferently well."
They filled their works with Italian things: from the whole plot of a play borrowed from an Italian novel, to the mere passing allusion to an Italian habit, or the mere quotation of an Italian word; from the full-length picture of the actions of Italian men and women, down to the mere sketch, in two or three words, of a bit of Italian garden or a group of Italian figures; nay, to the innumerable scraps of tiny detail, grotesque, graceful, or richly coloured, which they stuffed into all their works: allusions to the buffoons of the mask comedy, to the high-voiced singers, to the dress of the Venetian merchants, to the step of a dance; to the pomegranate in the garden or the cypress on the hillside; mere names of Italian things: the lavolta and corranto dances, the Traglietto ferry, the Rialto bridge; countless little touches, trifling to us, but which brought home to the audience at the Globe or at Blackfriars that wonderful Italy which every man of the day had travelled through at least in spirit, and had loved at least in imagination.
It is a good beast for carrying a burden or trampling down a foe, but a very indifferent one at a lavolta or a coranto. His swelling style is readily counterfeited. Our common advertisements have amply revenged themselves for his ridicule of their large promises in the Idler, by clothing those promises in language as magnificent as his own.
Is not this very much like a waltz? Yes, ladies, you have been dancing the lavolta of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries without being aware of it. But there was another waltz still older, called the Sauteuse, which I suspect answered to your favourite polka.
Gibbie was so satisfied with her appearance that, come of age as he was, and vagrant no more, he first danced round her several times with a candle in his hand, much to the danger but nowise to the detriment of her finery, then set it down, and executed his old lavolta of delight, which, as always, he finished by standing on one leg.
A student of Shakspere, I had learned something of every dance alluded to in his plays, and hence partially understood several of those I now saw the minuet, the pavin, the hey, the coranto, the lavolta. The dancers were attired in fashion as ancient as their dances.
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