This in turn influenced what was published about dancing and its place in social and musical life, and even affected the repertoire created.

A major difference in the way that dance was regarded and practised in Paris and London during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries derives from the differing ways in which the subject was regulated. In France, Louis XIV’s creation of royal academies was part of an effective grand design intended to present an image of the king as the centre of a system of official organisations that developed and controlled nearly every aspect of the arts and sciences.

The Académie Royale de Danse had been founded in 1661, avowedly to improve the standard of teaching dance to the nobility who ..

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