Learning the Bassadanza from a Wolf Andrea Calmo and Dance Jennifer Nevile

Dedicado a Roberto Pettini.

RESUMEN: Important information about dancing and social valves is sometimmes found in unexpected places, such as the letters of Andrea Calmo, a sixteenth-century Venetian actor and playwright. These letters not only provide corroboration of information and attitudes to dance contained in the sixteenth-century Italian dance treatises, but also highlight how dances was regarded by a menber of the middle-classes in Venice. As well as having a a general appreciation of dance, which he saw as an anjoyable and moral activity, Calmo was knowledgeable about dance specifics and accurate in his use of dances terminology. In fact, Calmo´s knowledge of dance practise was extensive enough to enable him to use specific dances references as a tool in creating tha humour in his letters. His references to dances and dance steps also look back to the fifteenth-century Italian pactise, and these references provide further information on the unresolved question as to the length of time quattrocento continued to be popular in the succeeding century.