The observation was approved; and a Spanish couple was introduced, who to the sound of instruments displayed all the graces of the fandango. The severity of the judges was not proof against this trial; the austerity in their faces soon began to disappear; they got up, their knees and arms recovered their juvenile suppleness; the hall of the consistory is transformed into a dancing-room, and the fandango is acquitted.* [...]
The fandango is danced only by two people, who never touch one another, not even with their hands; but to see them provoke one another, by turns retreating to a distance, and advancing closely again; to see how the woman, at the moment when her languor indicates a near defeat, revives all at once to escape her pursuer; how she is pursued, and in her turn pursues him; how the different emotions which they feel are expressed by their looks, their gestures, and their attitudes, you cannot help observing, with a blush, that these scenes are to the engagements of Cytherea, what our military evolutions are in time of peace to the true display of the art of war.*
abridged
From Modern State of Spain, Volume 2 (1797, 1807) by Jean-François de Bourgoing (1748-1811), translated anonymously in 1808.
* A correspondent in the Musical Standard (December 28th, 1889) recalled that when Sir Frederick Ouseley, baronet, Anglican clergyman and composer, was told that in Abyssinia (Ethiopia) they still ‘danced before the Lord’, “‘Oh!’ said Ouseley, with a smile, ‘I have seen that much nearer home. In 1851 I went to Spain for a tour, and on a special high day I saw a solemn fandango danced in front of the high altar at Seville.’” We are told that Ouseley then sat down at the piano and played back from memory the music he had heard that day, thirty-six year earlier.
* Cytherea is a name of a goddess in Greek mythology, whose parallel in Roman mythology is Venus. Bourgoing is saying that the fandango is to intimate love-making what military manoeuvres are to hot war.