Tag Archives: Baroque Dance

Fraternising with the Enemy?

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In Britain early dance has tended to keep itself to itself. There are some links with folk dancing, but relatively few with the wider dance world. Some forms of dancing have even occasionally been viewed with hostility. I have to admit that I’ve also been affected by these attitudes.

I’ve recently been working on baroque dance with dancers trained in different styles and it has been very rewarding. As a ballet and baroque dancer, who has spent many years focussing on just those two styles, I’ve also recently begun to branch out into other forms of dance. I really wish I’d done this much, much earlier!

I’ve wondered for quite a while how to attract ballet dancers into baroque dance. These two styles should be a marriage made in heaven, as baroque dance is really the earliest form of ballet and the foundation of its style and technique.  It isn’t as easy as that of course, not least because the relationship between early and modern ballet is complex.

I recently did a short course in Spanish classical dance (escuela bolera). I’ve wanted to try this for a long time, and I was really glad I’d seized the opportunity. For the uninitiated (of whom I am one) it seems like a cross between ballet and flamenco. As a ballet dancer, I found I could cope reasonably well and I enjoyed the challenge of unfamiliar steps and arm movements. Escuela bolera has lots to offer baroque dance, for Spanish dance forms (including the playing of castanets) were very influential in France in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.  As Spanish classical dance is also a historic style, some of the baroque steps would surely be of interest. I know that others have pursued this cross-over, but it has never filtered down widely into British early dance.

I’ve also been dipping my toes into modern ballroom and Latin American dance.  I’m finding these dances very difficult, as both the partnering and the steps are miles outside my dance experience and hence my comfort zone. I can’t readily see a connection between these and 18th-century dances (though there must surely be one between them and the couple dances of the 18th and early 19th century). However, good ballroom and Latin dancers can surely bring a sense of performance as well as technical skill to earlier dance forms. They can also challenge our perceptions and understanding and so help with the process of change and development. How can we attract them into early dance?

 

 

The Ballets de Cour of Louis XIV

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Among the most significant works for the creation of modern ballet were the ballets de cour of Louis XIV. Louis succeeded to the throne of France in 1643, before he had reached the age of five. Between 1648 and 1669, some 26 ballets de cour were performed. Louis XIV made his dancing debut at the age of twelve in 1651, in the Ballet de Cassandre. His last performance may have been in 1670, in the comédie-ballet Les Amants magnifiques, when he was 31 (his appearance in this work is uncertain). He danced in many ballets de cour, alongside his family and his courtiers. These high-ranking amateurs were trained and supported by skilled professional dancers, who must have created the choreographic content of these hybrid works.

Nicolas de Larmessin. Louis XIV. 1661. © Trustees of the British Museum

Nicolas de Larmessin. Louis XIV. 1661. © Trustees of the British Museum

The ballets de cour ultimately gave way to the comèdies-ballets created by the actor and dramatist Molière and the court composer and dancer Lully. These works, performed between 1661 and 1671 (the most important date to 1669 – 1671), had a largely professional cast. They were succeeded from 1672 by Lully’s operas, which included much dancing and were performed in Paris on the public stage by professionals. I will return to the dancers and dancing in these.

Louis XIV’s ballets de cour have been studied in some detail, although little attention has been paid to the development of the style and technique, and the conventions, of the dancing we now call ballet. Apart from the King himself, one of the most important dancers in the court ballets was a professional – Pierre Beauchamps, his dancing master, who performed several roles in nearly every ballet de cour. Louis XIV and Beauchamps, between them, established the danseur noble – the leading male dancer in ballets ever since.

Beauchamps was credited with technical innovations, including the codification of the five positions of the feet still used in ballet today (Pierre Rameau, Le Maître a danser. Paris, 1725, p. 9). This was only possible once turn-out of the legs and feet had become the norm. Beauchamps must surely have developed this and other ideas in the course of his work in the ballets de cour.

The ballets de cour also saw the emergence of the ballerina – the leading female dancer in ballets – and laid the foundation of a repertoire of stories and characters that have not entirely been relinquished by theatre dance even today. I will also return to these themes.

Gallini’s Additional Tunes

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At the end of the New Collection of Forty-Four Cotillons, Gallini includes ‘Music for Six select Dances, Two of which may be used as Cotillons’. The tunes are individually titled:

Allemande (a cotillon, numbered 45)

Le Prince de Galles (a cotillon, numbered 46)

Le Charmant Vainqueur

La Fourlane Venitienne ou La Barcariuole

Menuet du Dauphin

Le Passe-pied de la Reine

In his Treatise upon Dancing of 1762, Gallini had listed the dances ‘most in request’, although he did not include the allemande. This dance, which had a long history, was enjoying a revival in a new and fashionable form alongside the cotillon.  Gallini did list some titles which dated back to the early 1700s, alongside others which seem to be little more than generic dance types. Among the former are the Bretagne and La Mariée, while the latter include the Forlana and the Passepied. The Menuet du Dauphin is the title of a choreography by the famous French dancing master Marcel, published in notation in Paris in 1765, although Gallini supplies different music. In the late 1760s, other dancing masters advertised a similar repertoire. It is all but impossible to know what choreographies were actually danced. Were amateur dancers still expected to perform dances from the court of Louis XIV in London’s ballrooms? Were fashionable French ballroom duets performed in London as well as Paris?

I will return to dancing masters and their lessons. The survival of dances from an earlier era is a topic for exploration at a later date, as is the allemande.

Gallini’s cotillons

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The first, and best-known, of the manuals on the cotillon published in London seems to have been Gallini’s. His A New Collection of Forty-Four Cotillons, appended to his Critical Observations on the Art of Dancing, appeared around 1765. Most of the book is taken up with music and written instructions for the cotillons themselves, but Gallini begins with ‘General Rules’. These aren’t as helpful as they might be since he assumes that would-be dancers are already familiar with the square formation and the numbering of couples around the set. (I write here as a relative newcomer myself to this dance).

He begins by explaining that every cotillon begins with a Grand Rond and that any of another 8 changes may be danced after the figure. Gallini assumes that his readers know the basic structure of the cotillon. He then lists and explains a number of figures and steps – but ‘only those which are used in the following Cotillons’. These are the ones he includes.

Allemande; Assemblé; Balancé; Chaines; Chassé; Contretems;

Moulinet; Pirouette; Poussette; Course or Promenade; Quarrés;

Queue du Chat; Ronds; Rigaudon

It is not surprising that the terminology is entirely French. Indeed, the ‘Frenchness’ of this dance probably added to its appeal in London.

In his instructions for each cotillon (all of which have appealing French titles), Gallini specifies only the opening Grand Rond and then describes the Figure. He does explain the musical structure. In some cotillons, he specifies the use of minuet steps. Some knowledge and interpretation is needed to actually perform these dances.

Bad Dancing

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Dancing is hard. Even country dancing needs practice if it is to be enjoyed by dancers and onlookers. Baroque ballroom and stage dances require training, as well as a great deal of practice and rehearsal.

How can we recognise bad dancing?

Poor technique, unstylish and unmusical performances, dancers who ignore each other and are unmindful of their audience, dancers who simply don’t enjoy dancing – any one of these can make for bad dancing. More than one almost certainly does. Dancers of 18th and early 19th-century choreographies come from a variety of dance backgrounds. Some have no dance background at all. Just like dancers in other genres, they need to be aware of their level of skill and be prepared to work to improve it.

I am not going to draw attention to particular performances that I think are bad. I would much rather concentrate on those I think are good and try to analyse what makes them so. However, I do want to foster greater awareness of the different levels of skill and the constructive criticism that will raise standards among performers of these dances from history.

Dances from the 18th and early 19th centuries are worth the best performances we can give them. That is how we can share and enjoy them, among ourselves and with the wider world.

Good Dancing

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What is good dancing? How can we recognise it?

Everyone will have their own opinion as to what is good, and what is bad, dancing.

As a trained dancer, I look for sound technique, musicality and a pleasing style. Technique and musicality should be easy to judge, as long as we know what to look for, whereas style is more difficult to define. In duets and group dances I also want to see rapport between the dancers. Even in social dances I like to feel that the dancers are aware of, and respect, their audience.

Stage dances, of course, need a strong sense of performance. Even apparently abstract choreographies need characterisation. The dancers must know who their characters are and what story they are telling (clues very often lie in the libretti of the operas from which the dance music is taken), even if this is hidden from the audience.

With baroque dance, I also look for a sense of period – though I do not want to see slavishly ‘authentic’ dancing. How can we know how they danced in the 17th and 18th centuries? I want dancing that is engaging, whether it is sustained and elegant or swift and lively.

Here is a performance of a baroque ballroom dance which I like for its speed, clarity and evident pleasure in dancing.