Would the world be a finer place if everyone moved with elegance and poise? If we all possessed charm, correctitude and charisma.

Dance did not suddenly become a part of elite behaviour in the 1430s. After all it had been part of aristocratic life and civilized behaviour in previous centuries. At the commencement of the fourteenth century Siena already had a flourishing dance tradition among the elite.

For it was the elite level of society that constituted the social world of the dance masters and the humanists in fifteenth-century Italy.

The reason for the insistence of cultivating elegant movements was the belief, common to both the humanists and the dance masters, that movements of the body were an outward manifestation of one's soul.

Those who moved in an ungraceful and inelegant manner in public exposed their inner nature for all to see. There was more at stake than momentary ridicule for one's clumsiness. Vulgar movements that were not eloquent would be a clear sign to those watching that a person's soul was not virtuous and was therefore out of harmony with the world. Just as an ungraceful dancer would often be out of step with the music. So too would her soul be out of step with the movement of the cosmos that fused heaven and earth.

An important part of humanist culture's effect on the dance practice of fifteenth-century Italy, was the dance masters' realization that language was absolutely vital to the status of dance as an art. They were acutely aware that for dance to be included as a liberal art, with a claim to true knowledge and wisdom, then it had to be more than just a body of physical skills; it was now essential to be able to talk about dance in addition to being a good practitioner.

In realizing this, the dance masters were responding to one of the central concerns of the humanists. Ever since the late fourteenth century the Italian humanists had been passionately concerned with words. They adored eloquence in the spoken and written text, and with rhetoric. They were diligent orators and perfected the art of effective and persuasive public speaking and writing. The humanists believed that language was the most powerful tool to move the passions of mankind. It resonated throughout the educated elite, influencing not only the dance, along with the other arts, but also other artistic practices, such as architecture and painting.

In order to produce a dance treatise that was more than just a compilation of choreographers, the dance masters needed to develop a technical vocabulary in which to discuss their subject. The meaning of 'technical vocabulary' is when one refers to the language used to describe the quality of the dance movements. This is within the theoretical sections of the treatises, rather than the vocabulary used in the choreographic descriptions to refer to the actual steps. In their development of such a vocabulary they used everyday terms, but in new and specialized ways. They also borrowed and adapted terms from the arts such as painting and rhetoric. Words such as misura, maniera, and aiere had common meanings in the fifteenth century, but the dance masters greatly extended and developed their significance.

According to the earliest Italian-English dictionary by John Florio, the word misura meant 'a measure, a rule, a direction, a method, a proportion', while maniera was a 'a manner, fashion, use, custome, or woont', and aiere meant a 'countenance, a looke, a cheere, an aspect, a presence or appearance of a man or woman' as well as having a musical meaning and referring to the air one breathes.

Misura embodied the idea of proportion. A proportioning of the space encompassing a dancer's body through her movements. A proportioning of the ground on which the floor patterns were traced out, and a proportioning of the music. It is this concept of proportion that linked the art of dance to the Pythagorean and Platonic idea of the nature of the cosmos.

In all their literary activities the humanists were concerned to imitate the classical literary styles; especially the elegance they believed was a characteristic of classical texts. Part of their enthusiasm for the writings of Plato, for example, derived from their perception of him as one of the 'most elegant writers of antiquity'. The opinion of Lorenzo Valla, one of the humanists whose writings had an enormous impact on the development of the neo-classical Latin literary style, is typical in this respect: he comments on 'the elegance of the Latin language, from which there is nevertheless just a short step to eloquence itself'. The humanists professional activity was the use of words, and so the production of elegant prose or poetry was one of their chief aims.

The professional métier of the dance masters was movement of the human body; this was their poetry and prose, and this was where they strove to inculcate elegance.

And so it came to pass that dance comes not from human skill but from heavenly wit and divine knowledge.