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In dance tempo.
Printed above the staff as a heading; it lasts until the next tempo word. It is generic — “dance tempo” without naming the dance — so a reader takes the specific character from the metre and rhythm on the page.
A loose instruction: lively, rhythmic, dance-like, without committing to a particular dance or speed. That vagueness can suit pieces whose dance character is obvious from the writing, but a modern performer gets little guidance from it. Name a specific dance if one is meant (Tempo di valse, Tempo di menuetto), or add a metronome mark.
Tempo di ballo is one of 1755 terms in the Gradus musical dictionary: the words, abbreviations and instrument names that appear in printed scores, plus the vocabulary composers use to talk about them.
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