Dance Not Like Herodias, but as David Did: Dance and Gendered Transgression in 16th- and 17th-Century English Sermons

Preachers in early modern England exhorted their congregations to dance not like Herodias (a reference to the dancer who brought about the death of John the Baptist) but like David, worshipping before the ark of the covenant. Sermons on the dance of Salome and on dance were not new- throughout the medieval period, English sermons used Salome’s dance to initiate discussions about the dangers of dance when performed by women. However, the appearance of comparisons between Salome’s dance and David’s dance as exemplars of sin and godliness originated in the sixteenth century and indicated a change in how preachers spoke about dance to the laity. The introduction of David as a counterpoint to Salome indicates the entrenchment of a gendered discourse about dance and dancers.

This paper surveys sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English sermons on David, Salome, and Miriam. It argues that the juxtaposition of Salome with David exposes the extent to which dance was treated as a gendered transgression in early modern England. Salome became the exemplar of Scriptural proof for why women who danced were transgressive and the literal model for why contemporary women who danced were sinful. Meanwhile, David became an exemplar of godly worship. Contrasting the figures of David and Salome, models of Christian joy and sexual, profane transgression, gave early modern preachers a way to negotiate the tension between dance as biblically justifiable and dance as dangerous. Furthermore, this pairing of a transgressive female dancer with an acceptable (if not imitable) male dancer highlighted the increased conflation of transgressive dance with transgressive women. Salome and David were presented as opposites meant to provide clearer guidelines for congregational behavior, and to illustrate the same lesson as other late medieval and early modern sermons: dancing, when performed by a woman, was dangerous, sinful, and associated with false religion.