The educational impact of the dancing master is examined within social and cultural contexts including patronage and artistic style. The nature of the dancing master's peripatetic role and lesson content in domestic and private locations is analysed with reference to notational scores, dance treatises and archival sources. The impact on performance standards in ballrooms and assemblies is assessed and explanations are given as to how the value systems of the aristocracy and gentry were transferred into schools through the direct influence of Erasmus Darwin's "A Plan for the Conduct of Female Education" (1797) and Robert Owen (1741-1858), who employed professional dancing masters at his experimental school in New Lanark. (Contains 2 figures and 48 footnotes.)