Giovanni Gallini

Giovanni Andrea Battista Gallini (born Florence, Italy, 7 January 1728, died London, 5 January 1805), later known as Sir John Andrew Gallini, was an Italian dancer, choreographer and impresario who was made a "Knight of the Golden Spur" by the Pope following a successful performance.

He was the grandson of Domenico Gallini, his father was Luca Gallini and his mother was Maria Umilta Agostini, the daughter of Giovanni Agostini. Gallini was trained in Paris by François Marcel and emigrated to England at an unknown date, though he had been performing at the Académie Royale de Musique. By 17 December 1757 he was dancing at Covent Garden Theatre. Between 1758 and 1766 he performed and served as director of dances at the King's Theatre now Her Majesty's Theatre, Haymarket (the opera house), except for an interval at Covent Garden in late 1763 and 1764. He ceased to perform in public at the end of the 1766 season.

In a campaign to raise the intellectual respectability of dance, on 3 March 1762 Gallini published A Treatise on the Art of Dancing, which was followed by Critical Observations on the Art of Dancing (1770). Dance historians agree that these elegantly printed volumes were largely derivative, citing Weaver, Cahusac, and other sources, but were important statements of philosophy that helped gain Gallini entrée into society.

While teaching dance, at which he was expert, he courted and married privately, on 23 February 1763 at St James's, Westminster, Lady Elizabeth Peregrine Bertie (d. 1804), the daughter of Willoughby Bertie, 3rd Earl of Abingdon. She gave birth to twin sons Francis Cecil Gallini and John Andrea Gallini on 13 October 1766 and later to two daughters, Joyce Ann Gallini and Louise Gallini. Notwithstanding outrage in parts of the fashionable world, her family accepted the match. However, the marriage eventually broke down, and in later years the couple lived apart. In 1766, Norreys Bertie left his estates to Elizabeth's brother Captain Peregrine, charging Hampstead Norreys with an annuity to Elizabeth.

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