Medieval dance

Sources for an understanding of dance in Europe in the Middle Ages are limited and fragmentary, being composed of some interesting depictions in paintings and illuminations, a few musical examples of what may be dances, and scattered allusions in literary texts. The first detailed descriptions of dancing only date from 1451 in Italy, which is after the start of the Renaissance in Western Europe.

The most documented form of dance during the Middle Ages is the carol also called the "carole" or "carola" and known from the 12th and 13th centuries in Western Europe in rural and court settings. It consisted of a group of dancers holding hands usually in a circle, with the dancers singing in a leader and refrain style while dancing. No surviving lyrics or music for the carol have been identified. In northern France, other terms for this type of dance included "ronde" and its diminutives "rondet", "rondel", and "rondelet" from which the more modern music term "rondeau" derives. In the German-speaking areas, this same type of choral dance was known as "reigen".

Some of the earliest mentions of the carol occur in the works of the French poet Chretien de Troyes in his series of Arthurian romances. In the wedding scene in Erec and Enide (about 1170)

In The Knight of the Cart, (probably late 1170s) at a meadow where there are knights and ladies, various games are played while:

In what is probably Chretien's last work, Perceval, the Story of the Grail, probably written 1181-1191, we find:

and later at a court setting:

Dante (1265-1321) has a few minor references to dance in his works but a more substantive description of the round dance with song from Bologna comes from Giovanni del Virgilio (floruit 1319-1327).

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