Fêtes and Triumphs, elaborate festivals organized by or for royalty, incorporated many forms of entertainment, including dance. The triumphs, named for the triumphal arches erected for the occasion by townspeople, welcomed the monarch to their city as the royal entourage traveled the realm to assert the monarch’s authority; the festivities were organized at court to demonstrate royal power, some were directed at impressing both rebellious lords and foreign rivals.

Court festivals comprised many entertainments for several days: tournaments, banquets—often enlivened by masquerades, some of which presented the challenge for the joust; plays, with or without interludes; and the social dancing with which each evening ended—often introduced by a masquerade (or morisco, disguising, maskers—all terms for essentially the same type of entertainment). Many of the entertainments had common characteristics: the joust and the masquerade shared a processional element, a romantic framework, and a contest with knights battling in dance or with weapons for their ladies’ favors or to overcome the vile wretches who held their ladies prisoners. Participants in both were brought into the playing area, often on stages, disguised as mountains, elephants, castles, or globes, or on triumphal carts. Developments in one form, therefore, might spread quickly to another and from country to country, since princes were feted in foreign, often conquered, territories (e.g., Spaniards in the Low Countries and Italy, the French in Italy, Henry VIII of England in France).

Some types of festivity were more popular in one place than another; France developed a dance genre, ballet (though it was not the only entertainment favored), while Italy developed a fascination for singing and spectacular stage effects, which when combined resulted in the rise of opera. The evolution of these forms was gradual and related as ballet became a feature of opera for many years. In England, masking faded away around 1530 only to reappear in the reign of Elizabeth I, when it was referred to as masque. Spectacle replaced military prowess in tourneys, transforming them into horse ballets in Italy and France, where water spectacles were also popular. The steadiest development was in the visual arts.

As the easily constructed wood-and-canvas Roman triumphal arches replaced Gothic architecture for royal entries, medieval allegories gave way to classical figures in the entertainments. Festival halls and temporary theaters (stages on wheeled platforms) were transformed into Roman interiors, castles, and mountains that brought maskers into the hall, and these became the triumphal carts of Venus and other deities, suitably costumed. In Italy, these characters were made to descend from the skies amid swirling clouds onto temporary stages graced with mechanically movable scenery—a sight to astonish spectators. These multimedia events developed along with the other arts, as princes called upon architects, poets, musicians, singers, and choreographers to collaborate in making their festivals truly magnificent.

For these events, and in contrast to other forms of art and literature, no rules yet existed; there was extreme flexibility; the entertainment might be performed indoors or out and in any order. The presence of a river might suggest marine gods or naval warfare, as in Rouen in 1550. That city’s trade with the New World also inspired the construction of a Brazilian village complete with fifty South American Indians who went about their daily lives and even conducted a tribal war while Henri II of France watched. In Italy, dramatic interludes (literally, “between the games” or “the play”) rarely had any connection with one another or with the play and could even be performed with several different plays, as was the set performed in Florence in 1589. They could be, and usually were, however, related to the occasion being celebrated.

Most festivals celebrated coronations, weddings, or the visits of other rulers, and the flexibility of the entertainments made them ideal for the expression of political views: praises were sung for the ruler or the bridal pair, while their illustrious ancestors were compared with the glorious heroes or divinities of antiquity. One ruler who used eulogy for specific political aims was Catherine de Médicis. She encouraged the warring Catholic and Protestant nobility to dance out their differences in the presence of a king—as depicted in the famous Balet Comique de la Royne—who was determined to drive discord from his realm. She used the 1565 festival at Bayonne for her daughter, the queen of Spain, to express similar goals. As guests journeyed to a banquet on an island in the river they were entertained by Triton, Neptune in his chariot, Arion on his dolphin, and three Sirens, all of whose songs were of peace and of praise for the two royal families. Charles IX of France headed the champions of Virtue as they fought those of Love in one tournament. In another, he was the courageous knight, as fortunate in peace as in war, who would fulfill Merlin’s prophecy by overcoming innumerable enemies and storming the castle of Bellona, thus rescuing the prisoner, Peace, and restoring the Golden Age. As it happened, the king’s brother was the first to conquer the final defender of the castle, a giant, but the organizers were prepared—a huge cloud descended and deftly whisked him away. The growing elaboration of such entertainments and their evolution into new forms (ballet de cour, opera, masque), coupled with the political aspect, would also be characteristic of baroque fêtes.

Little outdoor dancing occurred at these festivals. In one of the tableaux vivants for the entry of Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire into Bruges in 1515, Pan may have danced a few measures of a branle with his nymphs and satyrs, but this is not certain. During the outdoor banquet at Bayonne, however, the dance of the peasants from various provinces and the ballet that followed it were performed outside.

Most of the dancing at fêtes and triumphs occurred indoors and was based on social dancing. Unfortunately, although there are plot descriptions for the dances, there is no mention of steps or figures. We know that social dances of the time were of two types: (1) the basic dances (including the branle, canarie, courante, galliard, pavan, and volta) and (2) those invented by dancing masters for one or several couples, consisting of some ten figures with several changes of step and rhythm for variety. These masquerades probably consisted of a mixture of dance forms and figures, with unity provided by the plot. For a solemn entrance of ladies or downcast lovers, the processional pavane could be used; for the more lively characters, various branles or even galliards might be used. The semidramatic element usually comprised a love theme and a battle, with knights wooing their ladies and being scorned, fighting their rivals for the ladies’ favors, or rescuing their ladies from giants. The love theme was present in embryo in the various dances for one woman and two men (and vice versa), expressed by the continual turning away from the one toward the other. Thoinot Arbeau mentioned a courante for three couples in which the men cajole their partners. This basic material could be expanded and developed for a masquerade. Fighting could be represented by a battle moresca (a dance originally symbolizing battling Moors and Christians, not the masquerade-like entertainment), by a Morris, or by sword dances such as buffins. In Fabritio Caroso’s “Battaglia,” the dancers’ steps and postures symbolize attacks with various weapons.

“Battaglia” introduces the genre of mime dancing. The moves in the battle dances are highly stylized and strictly choreographed; even the Maltese branle, which according to Arbeau was invented for a masquerade, had stylized mime gestures, as did a 1576 French ballet. Yet to judge by later ballet de cour entries, the theme would be conveyed more by the costumes and the livret than by the way of dancing. It may be that mime played a part in some sections of an entertainment but not in most. It would be absent from the final dances of rejoicing, which would be figured, sometimes including geometric forms. These might lead to spelling out the prince’s name as a fitting conclusion to the festivities.

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