About five years ago, I began writing Dance in History as a blog. Dancing’s rich and varied past remains sadly neglected, despite the best efforts of dedicated, specialist researchers and practitioners. I hoped to bring some of its fascinating stories to wider attention.

Now, I am reorganizing my posts and adding new material to turn Dance in History into a website as well as a blog. Drawing on primary sources whenever possible, it will range from the mid-17^th to the early 19^th century as it explores dancing at court, in the ballroom and on stage.  It will look primarily at London but Paris will not be neglected and there will be occasional forays elsewhere. It will investigate steps, dance figures, dances, ballets and genres of dancing. It will celebrate dancers and choreographers from the too-famous to the unjustly unknown. It will place dancing within its social and, sometimes, its political context over the period of nearly two centuries that are my concern.