Ballroom dance
Early modern period

The first authoritative knowledge of the earliest ballroom dances was recorded toward the end of the 16th century, when Jehan Tabourot, under the pen name " Thoinot-Arbeau ", published in 1588 his Orchésographie, a study of late 16th-century French renaissance social dance. Among the dances described were the solemn basse danse, the livelier branle, pavane, and the galliarde which Shakespeare called the "cinq pace" as it was made of five steps.

In 1650, the Minuet, originally a peasant dance of Poitou, was introduced into Paris and set to music by Jean-Baptiste Lully and danced by the King Louis XIV in public. The Minuet dominated the ballroom from that time until the close of the 18th century.

Toward the later half of the 17th century, Louis XIV founded his ' Académie Royale de Musique et de Danse ', where specific rules for the execution of every dance and the " five positions " of the feet were formulated for the first time by members of the Académie. Eventually, the first definite cleavage between ballet and ballroom came when professional dancers appeared in the ballets, and the ballets left the Court and went to the stage. Ballet technique such as the turned out positions of the feet, however, lingered for over two centuries and past the end of the Victoria era.
oulipo:avoid_letter[e]