Worshipful Companions: Dancing-Masters and the City of London Musicians Company

The City of London has long been home to, and the institutional regulator of, some distinguished livery companies, including the Musicians Company which for some decades prior to the 1720s was dominated by dancing-masters until their attempt to acquire a new royal charter giving them stronger authority over musicians in London and Westminster was firmly quashed by the Court of Aldermen. Some of the dancing-masters and many of the musicians in the Company were also employed at the royal court and thereby provided a link between the neighbouring cities of Westminster and London, and between the royal court and municipal government. Other dancing-masters were freelance teachers and musicians in either city, who frequently clashed with their privileged colleagues. This paper looks at some of the dancing-masters concerned, the regulations and privileges accorded them by the Worshipful Company of Musicians, and their interaction with some of their colleagues elsewhere in the dance world. 

Jennifer Thorp has a particular interest in court and theatre dance of the late-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, their contexts and sources. Recent research has included papers on teaching dance in England during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (given as part of the Enseigner la danse project at the University of Lille), Kellom Tomlinson and the engravings in his Art of Dancing (given as part of the eighteenth-century Graver la danse project at the Institut national d’histoire de l’art in Paris). Her book, The Gentleman Dancing-Master: Mr Isaac and the English Royal Court from Charles II to Queen Anne, is due for publication by Clemson University Press in 2024.