Dance and Drill: Polite Accomplishments and Military Masculinities in Georgian Britain

Scholars have long noted the analogies between social dancing and infantry drill. This article argues that, in eighteenth-century Britain, the connections between dance and drill went further than mere analogy. As well as playing important roles in the culture of polite masculinity and the ceremonial life of the military, dance was held in high esteem by military thinkers, trainers and soldiers alike as a means to foster the bodily health, graceful deportment and synchronicity of movement that were prided on the battlefield.