dance attendance on, to

To obey someone’s slightest whim or wish, to act as someone’s obsequious flunky. The term comes from the ancient cus- tom of having the bride dance with every wedding guest, whether she wanted to or not. It has been used since the early sixteenth century, first in the sense of waiting for someone to grant an audience, as by John Skelton (Why Come Ye Not to Court? 1522), “And syr ye must daunce attendance . . . for my Lord’s Grace hath now no time nor space to speke with you as yet.” By Shakespeare’s time it had been extended to being at someone’s beck and call (“To dance attendance on their lordships’ pleasures,” Henry VIII, 5.2). It was a cliché by about 1700.