Scenically Conceived ‘Intermedi’: Laboratories for Staging Dance in Early Modern Courts

In this paper, the intermedi of the sixteenth and early 17th centuries will be presented as formative laboratories of early modern dance culture. Situated between the acts of spoken drama, intermedi provided a distinctive performance space in which choreographic design, musical affect, and emblematic staging were carefully integrated. Drawing on case studies from Florence, Ferrara, Rome, and Bologna, the study demonstrates how dance functioned both as a dramaturgical device and as a medium of political representation. Pastoral duets, mimetic moresche, hierarchically ordered processionals, and choral finales embodied ideals of harmony, virtue, and dynastic authority, while their placement within the dramatic framework guided audience perception and shaped the affective trajectory of the spectacle. Particular attention is given to the interplay of soloistic and choral movement, the coordination of dance with stage machinery and acoustic effects, and the embodied portrayal of allegorical figures such as nymphs, virtues, and mythological deities. Drawing on musical sources, libretti, stage descriptions, and theoretical writings, the paper points out that the intermedi developed a sophisticated kinetic vocabulary which informed the emerging ballet de cour and masques and contributed decisively to the choreographic aesthetics of early opera.

Uta Dorothea Sauer studied musicology, history, sociology, and psychology at the Technische Universität Dresden, completing  research stays in London, Paris, and Strasbourg. She has been active as a conference speaker and author on the sociology of the arts since 2006. Between 2008 and 2017, she worked as a researcher at TU Dresden, completing her doctorate on court dance. From 2018 onwards, she held positions as a cultural historian at the Institute of Saxon History and Cultural Anthropology, at the Department of International History at Trier University in association with the German Historical Institute in Washington, and at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. She also worked as a transcriber of early modern scripts for the KERN Company. Since 2022, she has taught history at the Preparatory College of TU Dresden. Furthermore, she is currently developing a postdoctoral project on the emergence of innovative movement cultures in early modern Europe.