It always appears that grand parties in European courts were typified by large numbers of the higher classes dancing together, but who invented these dances and how did people from all around the various nations come to learn the same steps?
(I'd also be interested to hear about earlier periods, if anyone knows)
Dances were important social occasions, and people studied to dance well, if they wanted to make an impression. There were dancing masters ( you can see a caricature of one, up on his toes with his typical kit fiddle in one of Hogarth's series The Rake's Progress). There were also plenty of dance manuals- there's a good collection of them at the Library of Congress, available online. The link is to one by Louis-Julien Clarchies, who led a very popular dance orchestra in France circa 1800, perhaps notable for also being black, born in Curacao.
You can find dancing masters and manuals going back into the 16th century, and manuals can be good sources for tunes. Thoinot Arbeau's Orchesographie was the source for Peter Warlock's Capriole Suite ( and supplied the melody for the carol Ding Dong Merrily On High, found there as Bransle de l'Official) , and many of the dances and tunes in the Playford Dance books (printed 1650 into the 1700's) are still in use.
