Ball (dance event)

The ballo was an Italian Renaissance word for a type of elaborate court dance, and developed into one for the event at which it was performed.

The word also covered performed pieces like Il ballo delle ingrate by Claudio Monteverdi (1608).

Many dances originated in popular forms but were given elegant formalizations for the elite ball.

It declined in the later 17th century, whereupon the formal ball took over as a grand and large evening social event.

It was at The Yew Tree Ball at Versailles in 1745 (a public ball celebrating the royal wedding of Madame de Pompadour's son), that Pompadour was able to meet the disguised King Louis XV, dressed as a hedge.

[5] The Duchess of Richmond's ball in Brussels in 1815, dramatically interrupted by news of Napoleon's advance, and most males having to leave to rejoin their units for the Battle of Waterloo the next day, has been described as "the most famous ball in history".