Acone, Ludmila. "Between Mars and Venus: the gender of dance in fifteenth-century Italy."

Acone, Ludmila. "Between Mars and Venus: the gender of dance in fifteenth-century Italy." Clio. Women, Gender, History 46 (2017): 131-144.

URL (Open Access): https://www.cairn-int.info/journal-clio-women-gender-history-2017-2.htm
URL article in spanish (Open Access): https://www.cairn-mundo.info/revista-clio-femmes-genre-histoire-2017-2.htm
URL article in french (Open Access): https://www.cairn.info/revue-clio-femmes-genre-histoire-2017-2.htm


Abstract:
In Italian courts of the fifteenth century, dance and combat, essential aspects of education for the nobility, helped define behavioural codes for both women and men. Quattrocento dance masters constructed and defined the theory and practice of an elite dance culture by producing a discourse compliant with political, social and gendered norms. Guglielmo Ebreo’s writing, for example, defines precise roles for dancing women and men. Antonio Cornazzano, a military man, poet and humanist, expresses his vision of propriety via a general concept of gender complementarity. Through the intervention of these dancing masters, the “virile” values attributed to masculinity took center stage in the evolution of court life. Techniques of the body represented both a reality and a form of political discourse in which the masculine and the feminine were embodied according to the models of Mars and of Venus, two elements of the Concordia discors, in which women were trained to dance and men trained to fight.