Essay towards an history of dancing, in which the whole art and its various excellencies are in some measure explain'd : containing the several sorts of dancing

Weaver, John (1673-1760) London: Printed for Jacob Tonson at Shakespeare's-Head over-against Catherine-street in the Strand, 1712 First edition This is the earliest history of dancing in English, written by the son of a dancing master of the same name. Young John Weaver studied Latin and Greek and would pepper his later works with classical quotations in their original languages. Indeed, one of Weaver's ambitions was to revive the style of acting and dancing of the ancient Greeks and Romans. In 1700 he staged his first production, describing it as "the first Entertainement that appeared on the English Stage, where the Representation and Story was carried by Dancing, Action and Motion only." During this same time, a new system of dance notation had been published in Paris: R.A. Feuillet's Chorégraphie. Weaver translated Feuillet into English and published the translation in 1706. That same year he also published A Collection of Ball-Dances Performed at Court, in which, by using Feuillet's notation, he documented the dances created by Queen Anne's Royal Dancing Master, Mr. Isaacs. A dancer himself, Weaver taught dance until he died at the age of eighty-seven