Dans Macabre: (French, 'morbid dance') A gruesome motif or trend that spread through late medieval Europe's visual art, architecture, sculpture, and poetry in the wake of the Black Plague (1347-1349 CE) and which remained common in woodcuts, gravemarkers, and cenotaphs through the Renaissance two hundred years later. Visually, it took the form of imagery involving bones, skeletons, graves, and similar death-imagery, most famously in images of living revelers intermixed with animated skeletons carousing, eating, drinking, and dancing. Functionally, the art was a memento mori, a reminder of death's inevitability in the face of each individual's mortality. In terms of literature, we find traces of the dans macabre motif appearing in tombstone epitaphs such as 'Such as I am, So Shalt Thou Be,' or poetic verse such as 'Golden lads and girls all must, / As chimney-sweeps, come to dust.'

 

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Dans Macabre: (French, 'morbid dance') A gruesome motif or trend that spread through late medieval Europe's visual art, architecture, sculpture, and poetry in the wake of the Black Plague (1347-1349 CE) a . . . View Full Definition

En Dedans: Movement within a circle so that the leg starts at the back or the side and moves towards the front. For the right leg, this is a counter-clockwise circle. For the left leg, this is a clockw . . . View Full Definition

Danseur: A male ballet dancer. The female version is ballerina (Italian) or danseuse (French).

Basse Danse: Graceful court dance of the early Renaissance: an older version of the pavane.