Category Archives: Steps & Figures

Reconstructing Ballroom Dances: La Mariée

Leave a reply

I am currently reconstructing La Mariée, one of the most famous ballroom dances of the early 18th century. I have performed many notated ballroom dances over the years, but this is my first encounter with Pecour’s much-loved duet. So far, it has been a bit of a struggle! In my own defence, one hour a week with no dancing partner is not the easiest way to learn such a long and complex choreography.

When I began on La Mariée, I had been working on a couple of English solos ‘for a Girl’. Turning to Pecour’s dance I felt like I was grappling with a completely different language – which, of course, I was. The only recording of the music I could find initially was too fast to use while I was learning the steps. I subsequently found another much slower version, but it only had the music once through instead of twice as required by the choreography. Such problems, of tempo and repeat structure, are all too common with commercial recordings of baroque dance music. Still, at least I have the music. There are far too many dances for which there is no recorded music at all.

After several weeks, I am finally getting to grips with this dance. I’ve pretty well committed to memory the steps and figures and my body is beginning to learn these too. Now, I’m ready to make decisions about how I want to perform the steps and sequences. Since I began to take baroque dance seriously, I have worked with many different teachers – all of whom have their own approaches to dance style and technique. I have drawn something from each of them. The various ways in which steps might be performed provide a wide range of interpretations for individual choreographies. Even in a single dance, I might perform particular step differently when it occurs within new context, although I do try to find a unified style.

My version of La Mariée will be shaped by the fast recording. At my last session working on the dance, I found myself considering how I should perform the pas de sissonne that punctuate the choreography. Should I follow the teacher who took the first assemblée to a small fourth position with the working leg on the following saut in a low attitude? Or should I go back to my earlier lessons (and, apparently, the notation) with an assemblée into fifth position and the raised foot on the saut close to the supporting ankle? I obviously need to go back to Rameau’s Le Maître a danser to see what he says. At the moment, I’m inclining to the more compact approach with an emphasis on the upward motion of the springs.

Whatever I decide to do with the individual steps, I want to create a lively and dynamically varied performing version of a teasing and witty choreography.

 

 

 

 

 

 

L’Ecossoise

Leave a reply

L’Ecossoise is the eighth of the nine dances in Dezais’s Premier livre de contredances of 1725. It is particularly unusual among country dances for its line-up of four men and two women. In his Avertissement at the beginning of the book, Dezais says that the contredance can also be performed by four women and two men.

The music is a gavotte. Dezais notates a few of the steps, mainly pas de rigaudon but also (for the men only) half-turn sprung pirouettes.  Apart from its unorthodox line-up, L’Ecossoise is also interesting for its successive formations. At the opening of the dance, the performers face one another across the dance space in two lines with the women between the men. Although they continue to face one another for much of the choreography, there are three places where they all turn to face their audience. On two occasions they are in perpendicular or ‘right’ lines one behind the other, the first time with the women at the back and the second time with them at the front. On the third occasion, they form one ‘diametrical’ line across the space. (The terminology comes from Feuillet’s Choregraphie, via Weaver’s translation). The first ‘right’ line is immediately followed by the ‘diametrical’ line. At the end of L’Ecossoise, the dancers are in a rectangular formation, with the women top and bottom and the men to either side. The contredance has conventional country dance figures, including left-hand and right-hand stars, right and left hand turns and circles, but some of the formations suggest that it might have originated as a display dance.

The title, L’Ecossoise (Scottish lady), may come from the music, but could the dance and its music have originated on the French stage? I wondered whether it might have come from a piece given at the Paris fair theatres or the Théâtre Italien, but I can’t find anything obvious among the titles of their respective repertoires. Voltaire wrote a play L’Écossaise, but that did not reach the stage until 1760.

Was there a London connection? ‘Scotch’ dances had been popular in London’s theatres from at least 1700, but there is little to link these with dancing on French stages. One danced entertainment, The Dutch and Scotch Contention; or, Love and Jealousy, which features a Highland couple, was performed in Paris as well as London, but it dates to 1729.

There are, of course, ‘Scotch’ and ‘Highland’ dances in the many editions of Playford’s The Dancing Master as well as elsewhere. I won’t pursue these here. However, one dance did catch my eye as I was looking through various sources. Confess was published in 1651 in The English Dancing Master. It isn’t a ‘Scotch’ dance but its line-up is two men and four women. The dancing master Confess had links with the English court in the early 17th century, so perhaps this dance was intended to have an element of display. There is also a figured minuet for six ladies by Mr Shirley in Pemberton’s 1711 An Essay for the Further Improvement of Dancing, but that takes me a little too far from my original topic.

Research into possible connections and influences between the dances of the 18th century is endlessly fascinating, but there is nothing like performing these choreographies to provide real insights. Here is one version of L’Ecossoise in performance.

A New Dance for a Girl

Leave a reply

Among the dance notations published in London in the early years of the 18th century there are several intended for performance by a girl. The majority of these choreographies are minuets. I have written about the minuets elsewhere, but I will return to them in a later post.

I am currently reconstructing La Cybelline, a dance I haven’t worked on before.  This gavotte, described on its title page as ‘A New Dance for a Girl’, was published in 1719. Although the composer of the music is named as the dancing master Charles Fairbank, the dance itself is anonymous. It is the only dance published in notation in London with no choreographer named. The only other dance with music by Fairbank is also a ‘New Dance for a Girl’, Mr Caverley’s Slow Minuet.  Both were published by Edmund Pemberton, who provided them with a specially designed title page as if he envisaged a series of ‘Fairbank’ dances.  Like Caverley’s Slow Minuet, La Cybelline has the hallmarks of a piece designed to teach the refinements of belle danse style and technique for the ballroom. Who could have created the choreography?

La Cybelline (1719). Title page.

La Cybelline (1719). Title page.

On the page, La Cybelline looks deceptively easy. More than half of its steps are versions of the ubiquitous pas de bourée. In fact, I’ve been finding it quite difficult to learn and I wondered why.  An obvious source of problems is the delayed transfer of weight (known colloquially as a ‘foot fiddle’). There are five pas composés ending in a ‘point’, so that the final step is not completed. This allows the following step to begin on the ‘wrong’ foot, affecting steps and step sequences later in the choreography. It has taken several tries to break the ingrained habit of completing these pas composés in the conventional way.

My difficulties went beyond the foot fiddles, so I did some more detailed analysis of La Cybelline. The music has the structure ABAB (A has 25 bars and B has 15). I don’t read music, so I couldn’t do a proper analysis, but repeated listening to the recording I am using suggested a phrase structure for each section. I then tried to divide the choreography into dance phrases – a process which is rather subjective and not easy. It appears to me that the dance phrases do not coincide with the music phrases, in fact the former cross the latter in a number of places. This is probably another reason why this dance is a struggle to learn. I also tried to divide La Cybelline into its successive figures. Comparison with the dance and music phrases suggests that the figures occasionally cross both the others, compounding the confusion. I won’t explain any further.

One other source of problems is the near-repeat of individual dance phrases at different points within the choreography. This happens a lot in baroque dances, which make much use of ornamentation and variation. Some of the repeated phrases in La Cybelline use pas de sissonne, as follows:

Pas de sissonne, pas de sissonne, coupé emboîté (bars 23-25, end of first A)

Pas de sissonne, pas de sissonne, pas de bourée, pas de bourée (bars 30-33, within first B)

Pas de sissonne, pas de sissonne, coupé avec ouverture de jambe (bars 38-40, end of first B)

Pas de sissonne, pas de bourée, pas de bourée, pas de sissonne (bars 41-44, beginning of second A)

So, the end of the first B is very similar to the end of the first A. The sequence which puts pas de sissonne with pas de bourée changes the order of the steps when it is repeated. I found the transition between the end of the first B and the beginning of the second A the hardest to remember – although this may also have been because they come on consecutive plates, and I was learning the dance plate by plate.

La Cybelline. Plate 3, with the last of the pas de sissonne sequences.

La Cybelline. Plate 3, with the last of the pas de sissonne sequences.

All these small challenges seem to have been included in La Cybelline deliberately, as a way of developing the young dancer’s technical control, particularly her aplomb, and her musicality. I’ll see what happens with the dance as the steps become more secure and begin to flow.

There is also the question of style, from the varying dynamics of the steps to arm movements and the use of épaulement. How would an 18th-century girl have performed a little showpiece like La Cybelline?

Dancing the cotillon: the allemande step

Leave a reply

In his A Second Book of Cotillons or French Dances (1768), Gherardi lists the steps and then adds ‘And the steps necessary for the Country Dance in Allemande’. He says nothing more. Similarly, he says nothing about the steps in his collection Twelve New Allemandes, probably published in 1769, despite claiming to include ‘Instructions and Advice respecting the Allemandes’. Instead, he tantalisingly refers to ‘Boiteuse’, ‘Troteuse’ and ‘Sauteuse’ allemandes. His omissions were probably deliberate. On the title page of his Twelve New Allemandes, Gherardi made clear that the collection was aimed at the scholars of his Academy, who would of course be taught the necessary steps for a fee.

I don’t really know my way around the dance collections and treatises of the later 18th century, so it took me a while to track down descriptions of the allemande steps even with the help of modern studies of this dance. I couldn’t find them in La Cuisse’s Le Repertoire des bals, although he explains the steps suitable for cotillons in volume one (1762) and in the ‘Avertisement’ to volume three (1765) he talks about the growing popularity of the allemande and the necessity of learning the steps that go with it.

Guillaume, in his Almanach dansant ou positions et attitudes de l’allemande, published in 1770 and dealing with the duet, describes two different steps for use in the dance and explains how he teaches the step.

‘Le vrai Pas pour l’Allemande ordinaire ou de deux quatre, se fait par une espece de Pas de bourée-jetté, & marque trois tems.

Je leur fais faire un petit jetté à la quatrieme position sur le pied droit, le gauche marque le deuxieme tems en se rapprochant du droit à la troisieme, & le droit se détache en avant entre la troisieme & quatrieme. Les genoux pliés pour recommencer le jetté sur la jambe gauche. Ce Pas se fait de la même maniere de côté & en arriere; & pour lui donner plus d’agrément, on peut faire une petite ouverture de jambes en faisant le jetté, la pointe bien en dehors & le cou du pied tendu.’

Guillaume continues:

‘L’autre Pas, … en trois huit, se fait en posant la pointe du pied droit & sautant dessus, ce qui forme deux tems, ensuite la même chose du pied gauche, soit en avant soit en arriere: ce qu’on appelle balancers dans les Danses Allemandes, n’est autre chose qu’un Pas en avant, & un autre en arriere sans quitter sa place, ou un de côté à droite, & un autre à gauche.’

The only other description of an allemande step I was able to locate comes from the 1776 Supplement to the famous French Encyclopédie, in the entry for ‘Contredanse’.

‘Cette danse [the allemande] n’admet qu’une seule espece de pas boiteuse, formé par un plié & deux pas marchés.’

Was this the step to which Gherardi was referring with his allemande ‘Boiteuse’?

Dancing the cotillon: Villeneuve’s steps

Leave a reply

Like Gherardi, Villeneuve simply provides a list of the steps to be used for the dances in his A Collection of Cotillons.

The Balance

The Pirouette

The Rigadoon Step

The Double Chasse forwards and backwards

Contretems forwards, backwards, and in turning

The Glissades to the Right and Left

The Sissoons forwards and backwards

Four of Villeneuve’s steps are among those described by Gallini: the balance; the pirouette; the rigaudon; and the contretems. Gherardi includes glissades within his step sequences. Villeneuve’s double chasse is presumably Gherardi’s chassé double included among the figures in his Second Book of Cotillons. By ‘Sissoons’, Villeneuve must mean pas de sissonne. These are not mentioned by either Gallini or Gherardi.

Between them, Gallini, Gherardi and Villeneuve suggest around a dozen steps to be used in cotillons. All are familiar from the early 18th-century treatises that set out the style, technique and step vocabulary of ‘French’ dancing or la belle danse. However, it was for the dancing masters (and perhaps the dancers as well) to decide how and when to use these steps in individual cotillons.

Stage Dancing

Leave a reply

An idea that has been often repeated in baroque dance circles over many years is that professional dancing on the stage was the same as the amateur dancing seen in ballrooms. Certainly the two genres share the same basic vocabulary of steps and figures and some of the surviving notated theatrical dances appear (on the page) to be simpler and easier than some of the more complex ballroom choreographies. There was undoubtedly some overlap in technique, if not in style, but I do not subscribe to the view that there was little difference between the two.

In the final chapter of his An Essay towards an History of Dancing of 1712, John Weaver made an apt distinction, with reference to one particular genre of stage dancing:

‘Serious Dancing, differs from the Common-Dancing usually taught in Schools, as History Painting differs from Limning. For as the Common-Dancing has a peculiar Softness, which would hardly be perceiveable on the Stage; so Stage-Dancing would have a rough and ridiculous Air in a Room, when on the Stage it would appear soft, tender and delightful.’

Weaver, as both a professional dancer and a teacher of amateurs, was familiar with the differences of scale and force between the two techniques. He concedes that ‘the Steps of both are generally the same’ but he adds ‘yet they differ in performance’ and goes on to list a number of steps ‘peculiarly adapted’ to stage dancing, specifying ‘almost all Steps from the Ground’ as meant for theatrical practitioners.

The difference between the two genres is underlined by the surviving notations, even though they cannot show the way in which steps were performed. Among the published dances, three collections are designated on their title pages as either ‘Entrées de Ballet’ or ‘Stage Dances’:

Guillaume-Louis Pecour. Recueil de dances (Paris, 1704)

Guillaume-Louis Pecour. Nouveau recueil de dance de bal et celle de ballet (Paris, [c1713])

Anthony L’Abbé. A New Collection of Dances [London, c1725]

Most of the dances in these collections have named performers – leading dancers either at the Paris Opéra or in the London theatres – and many of them make significant technical demands. Of particular interest are the male solos and duets, which demand a virtuoso level of technique. All of these choreographies carry within them the seeds of what will later become classical ballet. Yet, they are not merely the precursors of a later superior form of dance. They represent an already fully developed, refined and sophisticated art of dancing.

I will explore this repertoire, as well as other aspects of stage dancing in London and in Paris, in future posts.

Claude Ballon, one of the most famous danseurs nobles of the early 18th century.

Claude Ballon, one of the most famous danseurs nobles of the early 18th century.

Dancing the cotillon: Gherardi’s steps

Leave a reply

In all three of his cotillon collections, Gherardi provides the same list of steps needed for the dances.

‘The Names of the French Country Dance Steps

Balancé pas de Rigodon.

Deux chassés, assemblé, pas de Rigodon.

Deux glissades, assemblé, pas de Rigodon.

Contre-tems en avant, contre-tems en arrière, contre-tems en tournant.

Chassé en tournant.

Demi contre-tems d’un Pied et de l’autre.

Brizé, a trois pas d’un Pied et de l’autre.

Chassé a trois pas d’un Pied et de l’autre.

And the Steps necessary for the Country Dance in Allemande.’

It is obvious that Gherardi is setting down not individual steps but sequences of steps, enchainements, for use within the changes and the figures of his cotillons.

He does not explain how each particular step is to be performed. However, in his ‘Observations and Advice’ at the beginning of his first collection, Gherardi says:

‘Every Lady & Gentleman desirous of dancing the Cotillons with some degree of Excellence, … should have the assistance of a Master to perfect them in the following very few Steps; easy in the Execution, and without which, it is impossible to perform these fashionable & entertaining Dances with Precision.’

In his second collection, Gherardi proposes that gentlemen and ladies take out subscriptions for his Cotillon Academy, where they can learn the steps ‘from the Assistance of an experienced Master’. Was he assuming that they will know the basic belle danse steps, but will need help with his enchainements?

Most of the steps are recognisable from the dance manuals of the early 18th century, and several are those described by Gallini. However, the ‘Brizé, a trois pas’ and the ‘Chassé, a trois pas’ are not so familiar and will need a bit of investigation, as do ‘the Steps necessary for the Country Dance in Allemande’.

I can see I will need to devote some more posts to cotillon steps.

Dancing the cotillon: Gallini’s steps

Leave a reply

I have looked at the changes and discussed the figures of the cotillon. I now turn to the steps of this contredanse française. Among the dancing masters in London who published cotillons when the craze for these dances began, only Gallini, Gherardi and Villeneuve say anything about steps. The figures and the steps are so closely intertwined that both Gallini and Gherardi describe them together.

Gallini’s steps are all recognisably from the long-established vocabulary of la belle danse, the ‘French Dancing’ that developed at the court of Louis XIV in the late 17th century and subsequently spread throughout Europe. They were at once over-familiar and unfamiliar. Gallini introduces them by saying:

‘A description of all the Steps and Figures in Dancing, might, by the Reader, be thought tedious, therefore it is intended here to explain only those which are used in the following cotillons’’

He begins with the Assemblé, which is used ‘at the end of several Steps’.

‘the Assemblé Forward is performed by Sinking and Advancing the hinder foot in a circular manner, Springing and Falling on both feet in any Position that shall be proper for the following Step.’

The use of a circular motion hints at the decorations that could be added within the cotillon.

Le Balancé:

‘is done by Sinking, then Rising as you Step forward or sideways with one foot, the other must follow Straight to the first Position, and in the same manner Step back again, beginning with the contrary foot.’

Le Chassé ‘is performed in various ways’:

‘To do this Sideways you must place yourself in the Second Position; if you go to the Right, it is performed by Sinking, then in Rising Spring on both feet and place the Left foot behind where the Right was, at the same time the Right foot Advancing to the Second Position.’

Gallini explains ‘if you Chassé cross, add one Step in the fifth Position and an Assemblé’ and the same is done for the chassé forward. This step was moving towards the 19th-century basic quadrille step.

Le Contretemps:

‘To perform this Forward you must advance your Right foot, sink on both feet, but spring and fall on the Right, then walk two Steps Straight.’

He goes on ‘to this you may add an assemblè’, taking it towards a pas de gavotte.

He describes only half-turn pirouettes:

‘[La Pirouette] is performed to the Right, by bringing your Right foot in the fifth Position behind, then  Rising on your Toes, and turning half Round to the same Position, do the same again to bring you Round; this may be done to the Left, by Reversing the Feet.’

Finally, Gallini gets to Le Rigaudon, one of the characteristic steps of the cotillon.

‘To perform this in the first Position, you must Sink, then Spring, and Fall on the Right foot, bring your left to the first Position, move your Right and return it to the same Position, the knees being straight, Sink, then Spring on both feet and Fall on your Toes in the first Position.’

He adds ‘This may be done by Reversing the Feet’. He also, helpfully, explains how to do the rigaudon from the third position, allowing the dancer to move forwards or backwards.

‘When the Rigaudon is performed in the third Position, with the Right foot foremost, you must Sink, then Spring, and Fall on the Right foot; advance your Left to the same Position, then advance the Right to the third Position, the Knees being straight, Sink, then Spring on both feet and Fall on your Toes with the Left foot foremost in the same Position.’

The one step Gallini completely ignores is the demi-contretemps, the basic step of the cotillon already being used as early as Le Cotillon, the dance for four published in 1705.

His step descriptions seem to be his own, which he presumably developed in the course of his teaching rather than simply copying them from earlier dance manuals. They don’t seem to provide quite enough detail to perform all these steps properly – assuming that the steps were indeed the same as those notated and described in the early 1700s. Do Gallini’s instructions provide hints on the changing style and technique of ballroom dancing in the mid-18th century?

Dances for four: Le Cotillon (1705)

Leave a reply

The first dance for four to be published in the new system of dance notation was Le Cotillon, which appeared in Feuillet’s IIIIe Recueil de dances de bal pour l’année 1706. In his first such collection, for 1703, Feuillet promised that they would appear towards the beginning of November each year to allow time to learn the dances before the winter season of balls began. This little collection had just three dances, two danses à deux and a danse à quatre:

La Bavière, a menuet and forlane, choreography by Guillaume-Louis Pecour.

La Fanatique, a sort of rigaudon to a ‘marche des Fanatiques’ by Lully, choreography by Feuillet.

Le Cotillon, a branle (in fact a gavotte) by an unknown choreographer.

In his Avertissement to his latest annual collection, Feuillet wrote:

‘Le Cotillon, quoi que Danse ancienne, est aujourdhui si a la mode a la Cour, que j’ay cru ne pouvoir me dispenser de la joindre à ce petit Recüeil, c’est une maniere de branle a quatre que toutes sortes de personnes peuvent danser sans même avoir jamais appris.’

[The Cotillon, although an old dance, is so fashionable at court, that I thought I had to include it in this little collection, it is a sort of branle for four that anyone can dance without having learnt it beforehand]

He reminded his readers that he would continue to publish his collections of ball dances each November for the forthcoming year. He also announced the publication of his Recueil de contredances at the beginning of 1706 – ‘les Contredanses d’Angleterre … aussi fort à la mode’.

Le Cotillon is an earlier form of the contredanses françaises – cotillons – that would become a dance craze in the 1760s in both France and England. The musical structure for the dance is AABABA x 6 (A = B = 4). There are a series of Changes, to each AA, between which the same Figure is danced, to the BABA music. The terminology ‘Change’ and ‘Figure’ is that used when the cotillon, a dance for four couples facing inwards around a square, reached London in the mid-1760s.

The 8-bar changes in Le Cotillon are as follows:

Forward and back (in couples)

Siding (in couples)

Taking right hands and left hands (in couples)

Taking both hands (in couples)

Right hand star (all four dancers)

Left hand star (all four dancers)

Circle left and right (all four dancers)

These are recognisably related to English country dance conventions.

The 16-bar figure is much simpler than those to be found in the later cotillons. One man and his opposite lady perform a sequence of steps taking right hands and then their partners do the same.

Feuillet notates all the steps in Le Cotillon. These, too, anticipate the vocabulary of the later cotillons. Dancers use pas de gavotte (contretemps to first position, jump and step) when moving forwards and backwards and demi-contretemps when moving in a circle. Sequences usually end with an assemblé. The figure uses a sequence beginning with a jump on two feet with a quarter-turn and then back, pas de rigaudon and a jump on two feet, a step and then a series of demi-contretemps ending with an assemblé.

The steps are easy and the sequences are straightforward and predictable. As Feuillet promised, dancers could perform Le Cotillon with no prior practice.

Le Cotillon (1705). First plate. Opening Change.

Le Cotillon (1705). First plate. Opening Change.

Le Cotillon (1705). Second plate. First half of Figure.

Le Cotillon (1705). Second plate. First half of Figure.

 

Mr Holt’s Minuet and Jigg in Performance

Leave a reply

There are at least three versions of Mr Holt’s Minuet and Jigg on YouTube. In my opinion, this is the best of them.

The dancers are well costumed and they dance nicely. However, we have two men and two ladies, rather than the four ladies specified by the original notation. One of the videos I was able to find has four ladies, but this version has much better dancing.

The figures are accurately performed and the steps are neat, although the performance is perhaps rather too contained and even a bit stiff. Is that how they thought it should be danced? It is very difficult to find a happy medium between our conflicting ideas of 18th-century politeness and extravagance. Although there is some interaction within each couple, each pair less often acknowledges the other – which underplays the social dimension of this choreography. The second figure of the Minuet looks to me, on paper at least, to refer to the S-reversed of the ballroom minuet, a possibility that these dancers do not acknowledge. Other figures are danced prettily, particularly the circle in the second part of the Minuet where the dancers use to good effect the shoulder shading called for in the pas de menuet to the left.

The steps used in the Jigg don’t always quite work. Mr Holt calls for only a few steps in specific figures, leaving the others to the dancers’ choice. Those chosen, or rather the sequences of steps, don’t always seem choreographically quite right to me. I’m not sure why. I do like the concluding figure and the way the dancers open out into a half-circle to face their audience. This must have been charming at the time, when the dance was performed by four young ladies.

I wonder if this performance does represent the style and technique of 18th-century social dancing. There is simply no way we can tell. It is nicely danced, and those wishing to perform Mr Holt’s Minuet and Jigg can learn much from it, but I would prefer a little more freedom and liveliness – within the bounds of politeness, of course.