Dance encyclopedia

Piva

Italian dance of the Renaissance, performed in the 15th-16th centuries both during folk festivals and at the courts of nobles.

dance

About Piva

Piva is an Italian Renaissance dance that may have originated from a peasant dance to the accompaniment of bagpipes. In 15th-century sources it is described as the fastest version of the basse danse. Antonio Cornazzano, for example, in his Libro del'arte del danzare (ca. 1455), explains that the music for the piva was also called cacciata, was in quadruple time beginning on the downbeat and was twice as fast as music for the basse danse.

From the Wikipedia article “Piva (dance)”, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.