Well, I studied this kind of old dancing very thoroughly and I know this book well. It was published 1717, in old German language. This old German is very different from modern German, even Germans can hardly understand it. Germany was still a developing country at that time and the language changed a lot. Secondly German books at that time have been printed in old German letters, called fractur (people call those letters sometimes gothic, but that's a wrong term).

The author Taubert was a dancing teacher of the early 18th century. He was morally very strict and expected his student to work hard. The most important dance in this book actually is the minuet, but this is not the only dance. But his standard is higher than just dancing for couples on a ball: Taubert goes further, he teaches how to dance the minuet even solo! That means, the basic minuet step isn't enough -- you have to add on other steps, maybe invent some on you own, to make it more interesting and artificial. Yet, this is not ballet, it was called gallant chamber dancing at that time.

In the first part of his book Taubert writes a lot about the public view on dancing at that time. Some people considered dancing sin, and Taubert tries to prove it wasn't. And because he explains a lot over hundreds of pages, you can learn a lot about common life during the baroque era. But frankly you have to study this old language to understand it. Modern German skills aren't enough.

To understand the second half of Taubert's huge book, is even tougher. I can read old German very well, it doesn't strain me at all. But I didn't get his explanations, how to dance his steps and movements technically though. I really had to frequent baroque dance classes for years. After a few years studying there, I decided to forget everything, and make Taubert my one and only teacher. His rules are really a very difficult philosophy/science -- you gotta be extremely obsessed in order to love that. LOL

I will probably write a lot about my experiences with dancing Taubert's stuff on my blog http://gallant-world.blogspot.com -- it is not commercial of course -- just one of those blogs in the 18th century blogspot scene, by bloggers who share their obsessions.

Why did I write this? Well, actually I was looking for a digitalized version of Taubert's book, I could link to from my blog. I have Taubert's book at home, but how can I show his pages to my readers? Then I read here comments of people who where quite a bit frustrated, because of lacking infos. Well, here there are. :)