Dance and Health The Renaissance Physicians' View Alessandro Arcangeli

RESUMEN: In pre-modern European culture and society, dance was regarded as having a bearing on health in a number of ways. On one hand dance was believed to be one of the symptoms or one of the remedies of some illnesses - in some cases, both. On the other hand, dance was classified as a physical exercise. Consequently, its effect on the general well-being of its practitioners (or even, in a few cases, of its spectators) was an issue that found its place both in the literature of dance and of medicine. On the whole, dance was regarded as an exercise - in all its many forms and styles, and the varying levels of physical activity they involved. It was quite common to recommend it when a balanced development of the human body and an alternation of motion and rest was required. It is this latter aspect of dance, as related to human health rather than to specific forms of illness and therapy, that forms the subject of this study.