Author Archives: moiragoff

A Year of Dance: 1816

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1816 is sometimes cited as the year the waltz scandalised London society and thereby became fashionable. That actually happened a few years earlier, but this new couple dance was still attracting a lot of attention. There was other dancing in 1816, too, as advertisements and other contemporary sources reveal.

In France, Louis XVIII was on the throne. At the Paris Opéra, the ballet Le Carnaval de Venise choreographed by Louis-Jacques Milon received its first performance on 22 February 1816. It would stay in the repertory for over 20 years. Other ballets proved less popular. Louis Henry’s Hamlet, given at the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin on 28 February 1816, enjoyed 47 performances but did not outlast the year. Apart from the libretti for these and other ballets, there seem to have been no dance publications in France during 1816.

In Great Britain, the Prince Regent governed for his incapacitated father King George III. The most notable event of the year was the marriage of his daughter Princess Charlotte to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, on 2 May 1816. The principal theatres staged comedies and tragedies (many were longstanding staples of the repertoire) as well as the annual Christmas pantomimes – Drury Lane offered Harlequin Horner, or the Christmas Pie, while Covent Garden staged Harlequin and the Sylph of the Oak; or, The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green. Pantomimes were already starting to look very similar to their counterparts today. Covent Garden also offered a ballet divertissement entitled The Seraglio, with ‘the Spanish Dancers’ who were advertised in playbills as ‘La Senora Ramos, y el Senor Luengo, (Principal Dancers at the Court of Madrid) – who will introduce their National Dance’. A French ballet company, led by Armand Vestris (son of Auguste Vestris, who had dazzled audiences when he first danced in London in 1781), appeared at the King’s Theatre.

By contrast with Paris, several dance publications appeared in London during 1816. Apart from second editions of Payne’s second, third and fourth sets of quadrilles, there were a number of titles from the dancing master Thomas Wilson. A Companion to the Ball Room appeared for the first time. There was a second edition of The Treasures of Terpsichore, first published in 1809. This collection of country dances confusingly has the alternative title A Companion for the Ball-Room. Wilson also published his own The Quadrille Instructor, as well as a new edition of Le Sylphe. An Elegant Collection of Twenty Four Country Dances for the Year 1816. Le Sylphe appeared annually between 1813 and 1818. Of particular interest in the context of this post is Wilson’s A Description of the Correct Method of Waltzing which explained how to dance the French Slow Waltz, Sauteuse Waltz and Jetté or Quick Sauteuse Waltz as well as the German Waltz.  The publication of Wilson’s Description preceded the appearance of the new dance at the Prince Regent’s ball on 13 July 1816.

Wilson Waltzing Title Page

Thomas Wilson. A Description of the Correct Method of Waltzing (1816). Title page

 

‘Spanish’ dancing and the dance treatises

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Spanish dancing features very little in the early 18th-century dance treatises. Feuillet makes no reference to Spanish styles and techniques of dancing in Choregraphie, except for a section ‘De la batterie des Castagnettes’ towards the end of the manual. He provides notation for the arm movements as well as castanet beats to accompany steps danced to the Folie d’Espagne melody. His little 16-bar choreography does not correspond to any of the four Folie d’Espagne dances that survive in notation. In particular, it does not have the 8-bar repeat structure found in those but is through-composed. Feuillet says nothing about castanets being Spanish, but his choice of the Folie d’Espagne music for his example suggests the link. In his translation Orchesography, John Weaver omits Feuillet’s section on castanets altogether.

In his Neue und Curieuse Theatrialische Tantz-Schul of 1716, Lambranzi includes a plate showing a solo male dancer performing to the Folie d’Espagne tune. He says only:

‘In this dance pas de courante, pas graves, ballonnés, pas de sissonne and pas de chaconne must be employed, together with such other pas as the dancer may select.’

There is nothing inherently Spanish about the steps listed (except that the chaconne has a Spanish origin) and the dancer is not shown holding castanets. So is the dance ‘Spanish’ at all, apart from its music?

Lambranzi Folie 1-3

Lambranzi, Neue und Curieuse Theatrialische Tantz-Schul (1716), Part 1, plate 3

In his 1717 treatise Rechtschaffener Tantz-Meister, Taubert includes notation for five Folie d’Espagne variations for a solo woman. These were presumably taken directly from Feuillet’s choreography in his 1700 Recueil de dances. Taubert includes it as an example of ‘high theatrical’ dance. He says nothing about it being Spanish, but he probably assumed that the title of the music would speak for itself.

Pierre Rameau makes no mention of Spanish steps or dances in either of the treatises he published in 1725, Le Maître a danser and Abbrégé de la nouvelle méthode. This is possibly because his focus was solely on ballroom dancing. At that period, ‘Spanish’ dances were almost all intended for the stage.

By contrast, in The Art of Dancing Kellom Tomlinson refers several times to ‘Spanish’ dances, all of them stage choreographies. In his explanation of ‘the Close beating before and falling behind in the third Position, upright Spring changing to the same before, and Coupee to a Measure’ he cites Pecour’s ‘Spanish Entree for two Men’ and ‘Entree Espagnole for a Man and a Woman’ as dances within which this pas composé was used. Was there anything particularly ‘Spanish’ about this combination, or were the two dances merely ones with which Tomlinson was familiar as sources for a step sequence he liked? I will come back to this sequence in a later post.

In his 1762 A Treatise on the Art of Dancing, Giovanni-Andrea Gallini comments:

‘In Spain, they have a dance, called, Les Folies d’Espagne, which is performed either by one or by two, with castanets. There is a dress peculiarly adapted to it, which has a very pleasing effect, as well as the dance itself.’

His remarks are picturesque but, apart from the linking of castanets with ‘Spanish’ dancing and the tantalising reference to the dress ‘peculiarly adapted to it’, they are not particularly informative.

Far more helpful is Gennaro Magri in his Trattato Teorico-Prattico di Ballo published in Naples in 1779. Magri discusses ‘Spanish’ positions alongside the long-established true and false positions (which feature in Feuillet’s Choregraphie). They correspond to the five true positions, except that the feet are in parallel and not turned out. Magri also points out that both false and Spanish positions occur in pas tortillés, which are recorded in early 18th-century treatises and notations. This suggest another possible line of enquiry.

So, there are some pointers to the style and technique of ‘Spanish’ dancing in the 18th century. I should make it clear that my interest here is in ‘Spanish’ dancing as it might have been performed on the London stage in the early 1700s, where it was most likely filtered through ‘French’ dancing.

 

Isaac’s Rigadoon: the choreography

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Isaac’s Rigadoon is one of 31 notated dances which either are or include a rigaudon (three more dances are labelled as rigaudons but are in fact gavottes). Among these 14 were published in London, of which 8 (Including Isaac’s Rigadoon) are rigaudons throughout. As I said in my previous post on this dance, it was first published in 1706 but may have been created some years earlier. Isaac choreographed a second rigaudon, The Rigadoon Royal, in 1711.

What made Isaac’s Rigadoon so admired and, apparently, so popular? Music theorists of the time characterised the rigaudon as ‘rustic’ and suggested that it was a fast dance. I have a delightful recording (made for rehearsal purposes some years ago) which is both and really brings the duet to life. The dance, in duple time, is quite long. The musical structure is the conventional AABB (A has 4 bars and B has 6) played through four times, so there are 80 bars of dancing. The choreography is lively. More than half of the steps incorporate small jumps, which are notated as such. There are no demi-jettés and only a few steps with a terminating demi-coupé to give a sense of suspension rather than a lilt. The step vocabulary is relatively limited, but Isaac’s use of variants on basic steps and his combinations of these demand swift reactions and rhythmic clarity. This can only be achieved through good underlying technique, particularly placement (or aplomb) and control over the mouvements that provide vertical articulation between and within the steps. The music needs some rustic heaviness (though not too much) but the steps need a feeling of upward spring. If the Rigadoon is as fast as I think it should be, it is not an easy dance and needs much practice to get it right. It must have been an agreeable challenge to able amateur dancers.

John Weaver identified four steps in Isaac’s Rigadoon that were rarely, if ever, found in other dances. All occur on the first plate of the notation, the first AABB section of the dance. Was Weaver (if not Mr Isaac himself) deliberately appealing not only to the contemporary love of novelty but also to a desire for ‘English Dancing’?

Weaver Step Suplement detail

Feuillet transl. Weaver. Orchesography (1706), ‘A Suplement of Steps’, detail.

Isaac Rigadoon 1 detail

Mr Isaac. The Rigadoon (1706), first plate, detail.

Weaver’s reference to ‘the so frequent use of them’ in the Rigadoon is a little puzzling. The ‘boree wth. a bound’ does appear throughout the dance. Feuillet gives notations for a large number of variants on the pas de bourée but none has either a final demi-jetté or jetté, even though Rameau refers to the former in Le Maître a danser. Weaver makes no reference to Isaac’s variant pas de bourée which has a pas glissé as the final step. The ‘contretem wth. a bound’ is used only four times by the man in the Rigadoon (the lady has three). There is nothing similar in Feuillet’s ‘Table des Contre-temps’. Although Rameau refers to a ‘contre-tems à deux mouvemens’ he actually means a contretemps balonné. My impression, from working through quite a number of notated choreographies over the years, is that the ‘contretem wth. a bound’ is quite widely used elsewhere, but I need to check this out. The ‘sissonne wth. a Contre temps’ occurs only at the very beginning of the Rigadoon. All the other sissonnes in the dance are the conventional version, as notated by Feuillet at the beginning of his ‘Table des Pas de Sissonne’ and described by Rameau. Isaac’s ‘contretems wth. a slide’ occurs only once, in the first B section near the beginning of the dance’. It is not recorded by either Feuillet or Rameau.

The contradiction between Weaver’s statement about ‘the so frequent use’ of these steps and the actual inclusion of them in his notation of Isaac’s Rigadoon raises questions. Could Weaver’s notation be inaccurate in some places? Did he perhaps use Feuillet’s standard notation instead of recording Isaac’s variant steps? Or was the dance as notated made more conventional to accommodate a greater range of amateur dance skills?

I meant this post to be a discussion of the difficulties, and the pleasures, to be encountered while learning Isaac’s Rigadoon, but I am still only about half-way through the choreography. A proper appraisal will have to wait for a little while longer.

 

The Perils of Terminology

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I usually write about ‘French Dancing’, the style and technique developed at the court of Louis XIV during the mid-17th century which was adopted at courts and on stages throughout Europe. The term ‘French Dancing’ was quite often used in London during the 18th century, both on stage and in society. Nowadays, the preferred term is ‘la belle danse’ (which dates to the mid-1600s), which has the merit of focussing on the dancing without explicit reference to its original national or social context.

I occasionally write about ‘Country Dancing’ over a period from the 1650s to the 1820s. This term seems straightforward to me. Country dances are social dances, performed in the ballroom by a number of couples together, usually ranged in a line to form what is called a longways set. There are other formations, and the number of couples may vary, but such choreographies are still recognisable as country dances. The form endures from John Playford’s The English Dancing Master of 1651 through to Thomas Wilson’s treatises of the early 19th century, and beyond. Country dances were also included in stage plays or, apparently, as entr’acte dances in London’s theatres. The term ‘contredanse’ refers to French country dances, most of which are in square formation. In both cases, ‘country dance’ or ‘contredanse’ refers to the dancing and the dances first and foremost.

My problems start when I turn to dancing that falls into neither of these categories. Among the most popular entr’acte dances on the London stage were Scotch and Irish Jigs, most of which were assuredly not French-style gigues. There were ‘Peasant’ dances, very few of which are likely to have resembled the belle danse notated ‘paysan’ choreographies. ‘Clown’ dances featured an unsophisticated rustic, who was unlikely to emulate even the easy-going refinement of English country dancing. Such dances are usually defined as ‘folk’ or ‘traditional’. Both terms are loaded with ideas about ‘national identity’, ‘social status’ and ‘community’ which derive from the preoccupations of researchers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I am reluctant to use them because they implicitly impose theories about dance history for which there is little or no evidence. They are more concerned with the social and even the political context than with the dancing they purport to define.

What the Jigs, Peasant, Clown and other such dances have in common is that they are part of a purely oral transmission process. Unlike belle danse choreographies and even country dances, they were never written down and their step vocabulary was not recorded or codified to be taught by dancing masters. They were simply learned by one dancer from another. It is possible to glimpse this process through the calendar of performances on the London stage between 1660 and 1800. There are a number of dances, usually solos, which are danced season after season by the same performer. When the performer changes the new dancer will frequently have close links with the old one. Such dances are also quite often associated with a particular country or region. Perhaps I should use the terms ‘speciality’ or ‘regional’ for such dances? Either would serve to differentiate them from the international style of la belle danse.

I guess that I’ll have to develop my terminological thinking along with my research.

 

The minuet versus the waltz

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An early dance friend recently suggested to me that the 19th-century waltz is more difficult than the 18th-century minuet and invited me to discuss the idea. So, here goes.

I have danced many minuets over the years and I am well acquainted with the challenges of the ballroom minuet, as described by Pierre Rameau in Le Maître a danser (1725) and Kellom Tomlinson in The Art of Dancing (1735). I am nowhere near as practised in the early waltz. My friend did not specify any particular version, so I will look at Thomas Wilson’s A Description of the Correct Method of Waltzing (1816).

The minuet was the duet that opened 18th-century formal balls. It was danced one couple at a time before the scrutiny of all the other guests. It was, in effect, an exhibition ballroom dance. This did not mean that it was slow and stately, 18th-century minuets were lively and quite fast dances. It had specific steps and figures (floor patterns) that had to be performed in a set order. It also allowed for some improvisation, mainly through the use of ‘grace steps’ in place of the conventional vocabulary. Controlled and elegant deportment was essential, not least to enable the partners to manage and display their elaborate attire, including the gentleman’s hat.

What was difficult about the minuet? Apart from the pressure of performance, both the steps and the figures were exacting. Minuet music is in  3 / 4 but the basic pas de menuet takes two bars of music, so four steps have to be fitted into six musical beats. There are two main timings, and both could be used within a ballroom minuet. The contretemps du menuet, the other basic step, had another different timing over six beats. All the steps of the minuet require a great deal of practice if they are to be performed with ease and elegance. There are five figures: the opening figure; the Z-figure; taking right hands; taking left hands; taking both hands, which is the closing figure of the dance. The Z-figure is the principal figure of the minuet. It can repeated at will and is often, but not always, reprised just before the final figure. Some idea of the steps and figures of the minuet is given by Kellom Tomlinson’s notation of the dance.

Kellom Tomlinson. The Art of Dancing (1735), Plate U

Kellom Tomlinson. The Art of Dancing (1735), Plate U

At balls, the minuet was addressed to the two highest ranking members of the audience, referred to as ‘the presence’. The dancers had to begin and end facing them and the figures had to be oriented in relation to them. The accurate performance of the figures, as well as their placing and orientation within the dancing space, needs a great deal of practice.

Musically the minuet was challenging. The couple could begin their dance at any point in the music (taking care to start on an odd-numbered bar), so their dance figures would inevitably cross the musical structure and phrasing at several points. Tomlinson tries to suggest such musical challenges in his notation of the minuet. This, too, needs much practice to master.

What about the waltz? How difficult was it? The waltz was always danced with a number of couples on the floor at any one time. It was a social dance and not meant as a display piece. Wilson distinguished between the French waltz and the German waltz. The French waltz began with the ‘Slow Waltz’, changed to the ‘Sauteuse Waltz’ and ended with the ‘Jetté, or Quick Sauteuse Waltz’. As the titles suggest, the dance got progressively faster. Each of these little waltzes had its own steps. In the slow waltz, these were a half-turn pirouette and a pas de bourée, over two bars of 3 / 4 music. The rhythmic pattern is reminiscent of the simplest timing of the basic pas de menuet. I can’t help feeling there was a link between them. The sauteuse waltz replaces the pirouette with a jetté-step combination and makes the first step of the pas de bourée a jetté. The jetté or quick sauteuse waltz had just one step,  a jetté-hop combination, performed first on one foot and then on the other. Wilson’s explanations are not entirely clear and I am radically condensing them. It is obvious, though, that these steps need practice if they are to be well performed.

The German waltz was Wilson’s undoubted favourite.

‘The Construction of the Movements is truly elegant; and, when they are well performed, afford subject of much pleasing Amusement and Delight.’

This version of the waltz had two quite different, and slightly more complicated, steps than those in the French waltz. In all Wilson’s versions of the waltz, the dancers needed good deportment but – just as their dress was freer than in the 18th century – a degree of informality was acceptable.

There are no figures in the waltz, which simply follows a circular track around the dancing space with the partners turning as they go. The dance is not directed at those who may be watching. It simply tries to make best use of the available dancing space.

Thomas Wilson. A Description of the Correct Method of Waltzing (1816), plate

Thomas Wilson. A Description of the Correct Method of Waltzing (1816), plate

One of the most complicated aspects of the early 19th-century waltz is the varieties of what would today be called ‘hold’. Wilson’s pretty frontispiece shows several of these.

Thomas Wilson. A Description of the Correct Method of Waltzing (1816), frontispiece

Thomas Wilson. A Description of the Correct Method of Waltzing (1816), frontispiece

The partners had to change hold as they dance. I suggest that this would have taken quite a bit of practice, certainly rather more than the basic steps. This is one area where the waltz is definitely more difficult than the minuet, in which the partners merely take hands from time to time.

Musically the waltz does not pose challenges. The dancers could start anywhere (although, like the minuet, on an odd bar) and they didn’t need to worry about musical structure or phrasing since the waltz is repetitious. However, they did need to worry about being in time with each other and fitting their steps and turns around each other. Again, this would have taken practice, just as it does with the modern waltz. There was also the speed of the dance, at least with the sauteuse and jetté or quick sauteuse waltzes, which made neat footwork a challenge. Giddiness with all the turning was perhaps seen as a pleasure rather than a difficulty.

So, which dance do I think was the most difficult? It has to be the minuet, for its status as an exhibition dance, the complexity of its steps and figures and the challenges of its musicality. The waltz has its fair share of challenges, but a simple early 19th-century waltz can be learned and enjoyed quite quickly. There is no such thing as a simple ballroom minuet.

Isaac’s Rigadoon

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I am currently learning another of the most famous ballroom dances of the 18th century, Mr Isaac’s The Rigadoon. I first worked on this lively duet some years ago, but I never performed it and I’ve had to start on it afresh. The Rigadoon, like much of the rest of the ‘English’ baroque dance repertoire, rarely (if ever) features in workshops in the UK. Perhaps this is because these dances are choreographically idiosyncratic – and difficult. This is a pity, since they have much to offer in helping us to understand the dancing of the period and they are sheer pleasure to dance.

Mr Isaac. The Rigadoon (1706), first plate

Mr Isaac. The Rigadoon (1706), first plate

The duet is, of course, a rigaudon. The music has been attributed to James Paisible, the French recorder player who made his career in London, but this is by no means certain. Mr Isaac’s The Rigadoon has been dated as early as 1695. It was first published in 1706 in A Collection of Ball-Dances perform’d at Court, notations by John Weaver of six of Isaac’s choreographies. That same year, the dance also appeared in a different version notated by the dancing master Siris and published in his The Art of Dancing alongside Pecour’s ball dance La Bretagne. Siris’s The Art of Dancing was a rival to Weaver’s translation of Feuillet’s Choregraphie.

Weaver evidently passed his notations (or rather, the plates on which they were engraved) to the music publisher John Walsh, who reissued The Rigadoon along with other dances by Isaac around 1708 and again about 1712. Walsh published a second edition of Weaver’s Orchesography around 1722. In a late response to Siris, Weaver added notations of The Rigadoon, The Louvre (Pecour’s ball dance Aimable Vainqueur) and The Bretagne. Orchesography was reissued, with its dances, around 1730. Within thirty years of its first appearance in print, Isaac’s The Rigadoon had gone through at least six editions.

Weaver drew particular attention to Isaac’s dance in Orchesography, by including four steps from it in a ‘Suplement of Steps’ at the end of his step tables.

Raoul Auger Feuillet transl. John Weaver, Orchesography (1706), ‘A Suplement of Steps’

Raoul Auger Feuillet transl. John Weaver, Orchesography (1706), ‘A Suplement of Steps’

The steps, and Weaver’s comment on how graceful and unusual they are, provide a glimpse of English choreographic taste as exemplified by The Rigadoon.

Isaac’s The Rigadoon seems to have been continued to be taught and given in the ballroom for many years. In his 1729 poem The Art of Dancing, Soame Jenyns (referring to the invention of dance notation) wrote:

‘Hence with her Sister-Arts shall Dancing claim

An equal Right to Universal Fame,

And Isaac’s Rigadoon shall last as long

As Raphael’s Painting, or as Virgil’s song.’

A few years later, in 1735, Kellom Tomlinson referred to The Rigadoon several times in his manual The Art of Dancing. In describing ‘the Slip’, i.e. the glissade, Tomlinson wrote:

‘ … twice slipping behind, is in the Rigadoon of the late Mr. Isaac, where, in the Beginning of the Tune, the second Time of playing over, it forms a perfect Square, which is no small Addition to the Beauty of the said Dance; …’

Tomlinson mentions a number of notated dances in The Art of Dancing. Are these the choreographies he taught to his own pupils, including Isaac’s The Rigadoon?

Twelve years later, in his Essay on the Advantage of a Polite Education published in 1747, Stephen Philpot also referred to Isaac’s The Rigadoon since he featured the dance in his own teaching practice. The ball dance may well have survived into the 1750s. On 19 March 1752 at the Covent Garden Theatre, Cooke and Miss Hilliard gave ‘A Ball Dance call’d the Rigadoon concluding with a Minuet’. The performance was a benefit for Cooke.  On 12 May 1753 at Drury Lane, Mr and Miss Shawcross danced ‘The Rigadoon and Minuet’ for his shared benefit. If these performances were indeed Isaac’s The Rigadoon, then the dance must have continued to be taught in dancing schools for more than fifty years.

I will take a closer look at the choreography of The Rigadoon in a later post.

 

 

 

 

Dancing ‘Spaniards’

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There were dancing ‘Spaniards’ on stage long before ‘Spanish’ dances were recorded in notation. They appeared in English masques as well as in the French ballets de cour. Charles II is unlikely to have remembered the ‘grave Spanish lover’ in the second antimasque to William Davenant’s Triumphs of the Prince d’Amour, given in 1635 when he was only five years old. During his exile, Charles spent several periods in France. The last of these ran from 1651 to 1654, and the King might well have seen the Ballet des Proverbes when it was performed at the Louvre on 17 February 1654. Its final entrée of ‘Espagnols’ and ‘Espagnolles’ included the young Louis XIV and Pierre Beauchamp among the dancers (the ‘Espagnolles’ were all danced by men).

Dancing Spaniard from designs for Le Ballet de la Nuit, 1653

Dancing Spaniard from designs for Le Ballet de la Nuit, 1653

It is a matter for conjecture as to how such performances might have influenced the entertainments offered by the London theatres. Charles II and his court were certainly committed patrons of the theatres, after they legally reopened with the patents granted to Davenant and Killigrew in 1660. I was interested to come across dancing Spaniards in Dryden’s The Indian Emperor, first given at the Bridges Street Theatre in 1665 and published in 1667. The dance comes in act 4 scene 3 of the play and the stage direction reads ‘two Spaniards arise and Dance a Saraband with Castanieta’s’. The dance follows a song, ‘Ah fading joy, how quickly thou art past?’ sung by ‘many Indian Women’ who are captives of the Spanish (the play deals with the Spanish conquistadors).  The use of castanets suggests a dynamic dance, so perhaps it was meant to contrast with the song. It calls to mind the final entrée in the 1659 Ballet de la Raillerie in which an ‘Espagnolle’ appears ‘dansant avec Castagnettes’. However, Dryden’s inspiration was probably closer to hand. Davenant’s The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru, performed and published in London in 1658, also includes a ‘Saraband’ danced by two Spaniards ‘with Castanietos’. The play was revived in 1661 and Dryden must surely have known it.

Was the music for the dance in The Indian Emperor Spanish or French, or did it draw on a more local tune? A country dance called The Spaniard had appeared in The English Dancing-Master when it was published in 1651 and was still included in the third edition of 1665. The music for Davenant’s The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru was by Matthew Locke.

Undoubtedly more influential in later years, although we lack direct musical evidence, was Lully’s score for Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, which included the Ballet des Nations with its Spanish, Italian and French entrées as well as the celebrated ‘Turkish’ ceremony. The comédie-ballet was given before Louis XIV at Chambord on 14 October 1670 and repeated later the same year for the public at the theatre in the Palais Royal in central Paris. It was revived in 1689, 1691 and as late as 1716. At the first court performance, the English actor Jo Haines was much applauded when he danced between the acts. Le Bourgeois gentilhomme was translated and adapted for London audiences by Edward Ravenscroft as The Citizen Turn’d Gentleman, given at the Dorset Garden Theatre in July 1672. Although it included Jo Haines as the French tutor and singing master, Ravenscroft’s version omitted the Ballet des Nations. The lasting influence of Lully’s dance music in France is clearly shown by the eight notated dances that use it. Did it also affect dancing on the London stage?

Campra’s opéra-ballet L’Europe galante, first performed at the Paris Opéra on 24 October 1697, was even more influential. Its four entrées were set in France, Spain, Italy and Turkey – the same as the four nations featured in Le Bourgeois gentilhomme. L’Europe galante was revived in 1706, 1715, 1724, 1725, 1736 and 1747, providing clear evidence of its lasting popularity. There are nine notated dances to its music. The significance of L’Europe galante to French dance culture is obvious. Its importance to dancing in London is more difficult to determine, although Anthony L’Abbé later used music from the Turkish entrée for a popular stage duet.

There was also a ‘Ballet des Nations’ in Europe’s Revels for the Peace, performed at the English court on 4 November 1697 to celebrate both the Peace of Ryswick which had ended the Nine Years’ War and King William III’s birthday.  This work, with music by John Eccles, has dances by Spanish, Dutch, French and English men and women. The music for these dances was not included in the surviving manuscript score, but some of the tunes were published in Thomas Bray’s Country Dances in 1699. Unfortunately, the ‘Spanish’ dance was not among them. Europe’s Revels for the Peace was revived at the Queen’s theatre in 1706, so perhaps its music and dances did influence ‘national’ dances given on the London stage later in the 18th century.

So, there are some clues to the nature of performances by dancing ‘Spaniards’ during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Do the surviving dance treatises tell us anything about their dance style and technique?

 

A Year of Dance: 1716

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In both England and France relatively little of importance happened politically during 1716. The Jacobite uprising which had begun in 1715 suffered its final failure when James Edward Stuart, the Old Pretender, fled Scotland for France in February 1716. That same month, some of the Jacobite leaders were executed in London. In France, the duc d’Orléans continued to act as regent for his great-nephew Louis XV.

The Paris Opéra offered no significant new works this year, although there was a revival of Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, the first since 1691. However, the duc d’Orléans invited a troupe of commedia dell’arte players to Paris for the first time since the suppression of the Comédie-Italienne in 1697. There had been Italian comedies and comedians in the Paris fair theatres in the intervening years, but the Nouveau Théâtre Italien took up residence at the theatre in the Palais-Royal thereby showing royal approval. They gave their first performance there on 18 May (New Style) and played regularly for the rest of 1716.

Was it simply a coincidence that London audiences saw the beginnings of pantomime that same year? The new genre was introduced not at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where the manager John Rich was to become a noted Harlequin, but at Drury Lane where Sir Richard Steele engaged two forains (fair performers) to provide entr’acte entertainments. Sorin and Baxter gave an afterpiece The Whimsical Death of Harlequin at Drury Lane on 4 April 1716. They were described as ‘lately arriv’d from Paris, who have variety of Entertainments of that Kind, and make but a short Stay in England’. London’s playhouses had advertised any number of commedia dell’arte characters and scenes among their entr’acte entertainments over the years, but the billing of The Whimsical Death of Harlequin as an afterpiece was surely intended to signal something new.

Another coincidence was the publication in Nuremberg of Gregorio Lambranzi’s Neue und Curieuse Theatrialische Tantz-Schul, a collection of 101 engraved illustrations of dances. It provides virtually the only visual record we have of the dances that were performed on stages throughout Europe. This plate shows Harlequin and Scaramouch in what must have been an ‘Italian Night Scene’, popular as an entr’acte piece on the London stage from the early 1700s and one of the precursors of the pantomime.

Lambranzi, Neue und Curieuse Theatrialische Tantz-Schul (1716), Part 1, Plate 29

Lambranzi, Neue und Curieuse Theatrialische Tantz-Schul (1716), Part 1, Plate 29

The dances that appeared in notation during 1716 could not have been more different. In Paris, Dezais published a XIIIIe Recüeil de danses pour l’année 1716. This had two choreographies by Claude Ballon, La Gavotte du Roy a quatre and the duet La Bouree Nouvelle, together with Le Cotillon des Fêtes de Thalie by Dezais himself. In the Avertissement at the beginning of the collection Dezais declared that La Gavotte du Roy had been created for the six-year-old Louis XV. The brevity and simplicity of La Bouree Nouvelle suggests that it, too, might have been created for the child King. The cotillon is an early example of the contredanse for eight that would become a dance craze in the 1760s.

In London, Edmund Pemberton published Anthony L’Abbé’s The Princess Anna ‘a new Dance for his Majesty’s BirthDay 1716’, dedicated to the King’s eldest granddaughter the young Princess Royal. As in the previous year, the birthday dance was quickly pirated by the music publisher John Walsh, who also tried to undercut Pemberton. The dancing master was having none of it and attacked Walsh in the Evening Post for 14 June 1716.

‘Whereas the judicious Mr. Walsh has condescended to sell Mr. Isaac’s dances for 1s. 6d. each, the usual price being 5s. It is to be hop’d his tender conscience will cause him to refund the overplus of every 5s. he has receiv’d for 8 or 10 years past, but as it appears his design is equally level’d against me his friend, he having pirated upon me the last birth day dance, compos’d by Mr. Labee. The main reason he gives for it, is, he loves to be doing, and by the same rule, a highwayman may exclaim against the heinous sin of idleness, and plead that for following his vocation: as I have attain’d to a mastery in my art, ‘tis but reasonable I should reap some advantage by it; the masters are impos’d upon by his impression, it being faulty in several places, particularly in the footing. The original is sold against Mercer’s street, Long-Acre, by me the author, E. Pemberton.’

Pemberton had worked for Walsh as a notator of Isaac’s dances, and was clearly acquainted with his wiles.  Walsh gave up without a fight. Presumably Pemberton’s patrons (who extended ultimately to the King) were too powerful for him.

The publication of Kellom Tomlinson’s second ball dance The Shepherdess, a forlana, could have been little more than a sideshow to the publicly expressed rivalry over the printing of the birthday dances created by the royal dancing master. Similarly the appearance of the 16th edition of The Dancing-Master (printed by W. Pearson and sold by John Young) and even Nathaniel Kynaston’s Twenty Four New Country Dances for the year 1716 (printed for Walsh and his partner Hare) were simply part of the normal round of music and dance publishing.

Country Dancing Further Improved

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The publication history of For the Further Improvement of Dancing, John Essex’s translation of Feuillet’s 1706 Recueil de contredances, is not entirely straightforward and raises some interesting questions.

For the Further Improvement of Dancing is dated 1710 on its title page. The earliest advertisement I know is in the Tatler for 23-25 March 1710. A third edition was advertised in the Spectator (the successor publication to the Tatler) for 5 March 1712. I have not yet come across an advertisement for a second edition. Indeed, there is no explicit evidence for the successive editions in any of the surviving copies of this collection. The first edition was sold by the music publishers Walsh, Randall, Hare and Cullen, together with the author. According to the Spectator advertisement, the third edition was ‘to be had nowhere but at the Author’s House in Rood-lane, Fenchurch Street’. How should this be interpreted? Had Essex simply taken over the remaining copies printed in 1710 to sell himself as a ‘third’ edition? Or had he fallen out with the music publisher John Walsh, as others were to do later?

There is just one copy of For the Further Improvement of Dancing which is indisputably a new edition, or, to be more precise, a reissue of the original edition in a different format with additional dances. Essex’s translation had originally been printed in the small, duodecimo format. This reissue is a much larger folio. It uses the original plates (For the Further Improvement of Dancing is printed throughout from engraved copper or pewter plates), but these are placed four to a page.

John Essex, For the Further Improvement of Dancing [1715?], plates 1 - 4

John Essex, For the Further Improvement of Dancing [1715?], plates 1 – 4

The newly added dances are readily identified by their larger format. There is one ballroom duet, The Princess’s Passpied, which shows the new layout:

John Essex, The Princess's Passpied, [1715?], first plate

John Essex, The Princess’s Passpied, [1715?], first plate

There are five new country dances, also in the new layout:

Liberty & Property

The Lottery

Mr La Gard’s Royall Swede

The Careless Husband

The Little Whigg

I will return to the titles of these in a subsequent post.

The volume is dedicated to the ‘Princess of Wales’, dating it to after the Hanoverian accession on 1 August 1714. The Princess is Caroline, wife of George Augustus the son of King George I. Essex praises her ‘Patronage and Encouragement’ of the art of dancing and offers her the dances he has added to his original treatise. I suggest that The Princess’s Passpied was intended for performance by Caroline’s eldest daughter Anne, the Princess Royal aged around seven, who would be the dedicatee of several more notated ballroom dances. The sole surviving copy of this folio edition of For the Further Improvement of Dancing, now in the British Library, may well be a presentation copy made especially for Caroline, Princess of Wales.

It is interesting to note that this unique copy, which has been dated to 1715, has an imprint claiming that it was to be sold by Walsh, Hare and ‘the Author’.  By this time, John Essex was presumably well-known as a dancing master. He was certainly careful to ensure that the title page specified that he ‘taught all the Ball Dances of the English and French Court’, probably meaning those that had been published in Beauchamp-Feuillet notation. The inclusion of The Princess’s Passpied would have underlined his expertise. Was he trying to recommend himself as dancing master to the new royal family?

Country Dancing Improved

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A little while ago, I attended a ball where one of the country dances was The Busie Body. When I was told that it was by John Essex, I thought I ought to explore further.

In 1710, Essex translated Feuillet’s 1706 Recueil de contredances as For the Further Improvement of Dancing. What he translated was Feuillet’s introductory treatise on the simplified notation system used to record country dances. Instead of merely reproducing Feuillet’s collection of 32 country dances, Essex selected 10 from various sources. Three come from Feuillet’s 1706 Recueil: Pantomime; Gasconne; and The Female Saylor (La Matelotte in Feuillet). Two more dances are also French: Micareme and The Diligent, both from Feuillet’s VIme. Recüeil de danses et de contredanses pour l’Année 1708. The other five dances were, as Essex tells us in his Preface, ‘my own composing’. These are the dances titled Trip to the Jubilee, The Great Turk, The Busie Body, The Tatler and The Tost.

If the French were acknowledged as the masters of ballroom and stage dancing, la belle danse, the English claimed primacy in country dancing. Essex was happy to wave the flag in his Preface to For the Further Improvement of Dancing.

John Essex, Preface, For the Further Improvement of Dancing (1710), first page

John Essex, Preface, For the Further Improvement of Dancing (1710), first page

In this post, my interest lies in the titles of Essex’s own country dances and their links with stage and society in London.

Trip to the Jubilee must refer to Farquhar’s play The Constant Couple; or, The Trip to the Jubilee, first performed (so far as we know) at the Drury Lane Theatre on 28 November 1699. Farquhar’s play was one of the most popular of the early 18th century and was performed regularly until the 1790s. The ‘Jubilee’ was the Pope’s Jubilee year to be celebrated in Rome in 1700 – a trip to this event was a running joke throughout The Constant Couple. The dance and its music were first published in 1701 in the 11th edition of The Dancing-Master, described ‘as ‘tis Danced at the Play-House’. So it seems that Essex actually created this country dance for Farquhar’s play. He is certainly recorded as a professional dancer at Drury Lane in the first years of the 18th century.

The Great Turk uses music from the Turkish Entrée in Campra’s 1697 opéra-ballet L’Europe galante. Anthony L’Abbé made use of the same piece for his Türkish Dance in the early 1720s. Essex’s use of the music suggests that it was already familiar in London some years earlier. It is worth noting the danced entr’acte ‘Entertainment after the Turkish Manner’ given at Drury Lane on 2 February 1710. Did this perhaps also use Campra’s music?

The title of The Busie Body is taken from Mrs Centlivre’s play of the same name, first given at Drury Lane on 12 May 1709. This was another successful comedy played regularly in London’s theatres until the end of the century.  The published play has ‘A Dance’ towards the end, in accordance with the convention of a country dance performed by a play’s characters as the plot concludes. Could Essex’s dance have been performed in the original production of The Busie Body, even though he makes no mention of this?

The Tatler, obviously, refers to the famous periodical launched by Sir Richard Steele in 1709 and published three times a week until 1711. It dealt in news, gossip and the manners of the day and was frequently reprinted in collected editions throughout the 1700s.

The title The Tost was corrected to The Toast when Essex reissued For the Further Improvement of Dancing around 1715. (I will talk about this reissue in a later post). Essex may well have had in mind the ‘Toast’ as explained by Steele in the Tatler for 4 June 1709. She is:

‘… the Lady we mention in our Liquors, … call’d a Toast. … The Manner of her Inauguration is much like that of the Choice of a Doge in Venice: it is perform’d by Balloting; and when she is so chosen, she reigns indisputably for that Year; but must be elected anew to prolong her Empire a Moment beyond it.’

Was this dance implicitly dedicated to a well-known ‘Toast’ of the Kit-Cat Club (of which Steele was a member and to which he was referring)? Or was it meant as a compliment to the Duchess of Bolton, to whom Essex dedicated his collection? She was Henrietta née Crofts (c1682-1730), the illegitimate daughter of James, Duke of Monmouth. She married the second Duke of Bolton in 1697.

With his dances in For the Further Improvement of Dancing Essex is surely trying to appeal to a fashionable, London-based élite – the beau monde – members of which he hoped to attract as pupils.