volta

Volta comes from Italian voltare, to turn. The dance originated in Italy in the mid-sixteenth century and spread rapidly to France and England. Its defining move was the lift: the man placed his hand on the woman's torso, near the busk (the stiffening piece of the corset), and turned her in the air. During the lift, the woman's feet left the ground. In an era when ankles were erotic, this was explosive.

The volta was danced at the French court by Henri III and Catherine de' Medici's court. Henri was reportedly fond of it. When the dance reached England, Elizabeth I embraced it with characteristic confidence — a famous painting at Penzance shows her being lifted in a volta by the Earl of Leicester. The image is almost certainly political propaganda: the queen demonstrating that she could be touched without being diminished.

Moralists condemned the volta with a consistency that confirms its popularity. The French Huguenot Lambert Daneau wrote against it in 1564. Thoinot Arbeau, whose 1589 dance manual Orchésographie is the primary source for Renaissance dance, described the volta with visible ambivalence — he provided the steps but noted that 'proper young ladies' should avoid it. The dance was, by every account, genuinely thrilling. The moralizing made it more so.

The volta disappeared by the early 1600s, replaced by less physically demanding dances. It survived in a few pieces of music — Byrd's 'La Volta' is the best known — and in art history. The famous painting of Elizabeth I at the volta became one of the most reproduced images of the Renaissance English court. The dance lasted about fifty years. The image lasts forever.