Tag Archives: Claude Ballon

The ‘Jetté-pas simple’ in Stage Duets for a Man and a Woman

I recently encountered afresh a familiar step which is one of the many pas composés within the vocabulary of baroque dance which has no name of its own. It has attracted some fanciful names, but I know it as the ‘jetté-step’ or ‘jetté-pas simple’. I have always thought of it as a proto-cabriole and wondered for a long time about its relationship to the demie cabriole which is seen as a stage step solely for men. I thought about writing a post about it and then discovered that I had already looked at this step in some detail way back in 2019-2020 – I list the relevant posts at the end of this one. There is one area within the surviving repertoire of notated dances for the stage that I didn’t really explore then – the duets for a man and a woman within the three published collections – sources are listed at the end. These raise further questions in the debate over the differences between male and female stage dance step vocabularies.

In my blog ‘Stage Dances for Women and the Demie Cabriole’ I began as follows. This is how it [the jetté-pas simple] is notated in the ‘Entrée pour une femme Dancée par Mlle Victoire au Ballet du Carnaval de Venise’, a forlane included in the 1704 collection of Pecour’s ‘Entrées de Ballet’:

Pecour, Recueil de dances (Paris, 1704), p. 7

The first element of the step is the same as Feuillet’s jetté ‘en avant et le second emböetté derriere’.

Feuillet, Choregraphie (Paris, 1701), pl. 72 (detail)

This particular jetté is the basis for Feuillet’s ‘demie cabriole en avant’, which he also calls a ‘jetté battu’.

Feuillet, Choregraphie (Paris, 1701), pl. 84 (detail)

In the women’s dances, it is notated as a jetté, without the third line that denotes the cabriole movement, the beating together of the legs in the air.

The ‘jetté-pas simple’ itself does not appear in Feuillet’s tables, so we do not know how he might have named or described it.

There is no sign of the ‘jetté-pas simple’ in the duets within Feuillet’s collection of his own dances, published alongside Choregraphie in 1700, but it does appear in four of the fifteen duets for a man and a woman in Feuillet’s 1704 collection of Pecour’s stage dances. The first is the ‘2^e Entrée de Persée’ danced by Ballon and Mlle Subligny in Lully’s tragédie en musique Persée, perhaps in the 1703 revival (detailed references to the individual notations are given at the end of the post). This dance is a bourrée with the time signature 2 and the step appears only once, within the final B section near the end of the choreography.

As you can see, the dancers are travelling away from each other – Ballon is moving upstage, while Mlle Subligny travels downstage. They are probably closer together (across the stage) than appears in the notation. The sequence is preceded by a coupé soutenue and followed by a coupé battu.

The ‘jetté- pas simple’ also turns up in the next dance within the 1704 collection, the ‘Entrée à deux’ from Campra’s Hésione danced by Dumirail and Mlle Victoire probably in 1700. This is a ‘gigue lente’, a loure, in 6/4 which has two pas composés to each bar. The ‘jetté-pas simple’ sequence falls within the second A section of the dance, preceded by a coupé battu (with two beats, which ends the previous bar) and followed by another coupé battu (which completes the bar).

The dancers are travelling away from each other on curved tracts before coming to face each other across the dancing space.

The third example is again performed by Ballon and Mlle Subligny in the ‘Entrée à deux’ from Campra’s Arethuse of 1701. This duet is a rondeau in 2 and the ‘jetté-pas simple’ comes in the final A section, just a few steps before the end of the dance. It is preceded by a pas de bourrée emboîté and the two dancers travel on a diametric line towards each other before meeting with a coupé battu which has a quarter turn so both face downstage.

The burst of energy in the ‘jetté-pas simple’ combination is followed by the more measured dynamic of a contretemps backwards and a final pas assemblé.

The last male-female duet in the 1704 collection to include this step is the ‘2^e Entrée’ danced by Dumoulin and Mlle Danjeville in Rebel’s Ulisse of 1703. This is another bourrée in 2 and the ‘jetté-pas simple’ combination occurs twice. The first time comes in the second A section, where it is preceded by a saut avec ouverture de jambe with a half-turn and followed by a coupé soutenu. The dancers travel towards one another across the space.

The second appearance of the step is in the first B’ section (the musical structure of this dance is AABB’BB’, A=8 B=10 B’=4). It begins the musical section, preceded at the end of the first B section by a pas de bourrée emboîté and followed – as in so many of the examples I have looked at – by a coupé battu. Dumoulin and Mlle Danjeville once more travel towards one another across the stage.

It is difficult to draw any conclusions about Pecour’s use of the ‘jetté-pas simple’ from these examples, except that the regular use of a following coupé battu points to a motif favoured by him, although he is not tied to a particular floor pattern for the sequence of steps. In all of these notations there is no sign for a cabriole on the man’s side.

Gaudrau’s Nouveau recüeil de dance de bal et celle de ballet, published around 1713, has twelve of Pecour’s duets for a man and a woman among the stage dances that form the second part of this collection. Only one of them includes the ‘jetté-pas simple’, the ‘Gigue à deux’ danced by David Dumoulin and Mlle Guyot in La Coste’s Philomèle of 1705, perhaps when the opera was revived in 1709. It occurs twice in the choreography, beginning the dance with the two dancers travelling downstage side-by-side and followed by a step which seems to conflate the ‘jetté-pas simple’ with a jetté-chassé.

The second sequence is within the second B section, preceded by a pas assemblé and followed by a coupé battu, with the dancers again travelling downstage side-by-side.

This dance is a lively gigue in 6/4, which perhaps encouraged Pecour to make repeated use of the step. The characters are Bergers, as they are in the ‘2^e Entrée’ from Ulisse, although there is little indication in other dances that the ‘jetté-pas simple’ was associated with particular characters.

In all these duets the ‘jetté-pas simple’ is the same for both the man and the woman. There is no sign of the demie cabriole for the man. So, should we assume that in such dances both steered clear of cabriole beats? Another question occurs to me – was this step was intended to travel or did it focus on the upward motion of the jetté, or, more likely, did that depend on the choreographic context within which it was used?

I will save Anthony L’Abbé’s use of the step within his duets for a man and a woman in A New Collection of Dances of a few years later for a separate post, as his approach to the ‘jetté-pas simple’ is rather different. Kellom Tomlinson also used it in his choreographies for the stage, recorded in manuscript in his Work Book and again, I will save these for another post.

Sources:

Recüeil de dances contenant un tres grand nombres des meillieures entrées de ballet de Monsieur Pecour (Paris: Feuillet, 1704)

2^e Entrée de Persée Dancée par les mêmes [Ballon and Mlle Subligny], pp. 97-108 (p. 107)
Entrée à deux dancée par mr. Dumirail et Mlle Victoire à l’opera d’Hésionne, pp. 109-116 (p. 110)
Entrée à deux dancée par mr Balon et Mlle Subligny à l’Opera d’Aretuse, pp. 122-126 (p. 126)
‘2^e Entrée’ dancée par les mêmes [un berger et une bergère, Dumoulin and Mlle Danjeville, Ulisse], pp. 144-147 (pp. 145, 146)

Nouveau recüeil de dance de bal et celle de ballet contenant un tres grand nombres des meillieures entrées de ballet de la composition de Mr. Pecour (Paris: Gaudrau, [1713])

Gigue à deux dancée par Mr. D. Dumoulin and Mlle Guiot a Philomelle, pp. 15-16 (pp. 15, 16)

Earlier Blog Posts;

Stage dances for Women and the Demie Cabriole

Demie Cabrioles in Male Solos and Duets

Pas Battus in L’Abbé’s Stage Duets for a Man and a Woman

The ‘Passagalia of Venüs & Adonis’ and Professional Female Dancing

BAROQUE DANCE IN PERFORMANCE

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One of the many challenges facing dance historians who (like me) specialise in ‘baroque dance’, and in particular stage dancing, is the rarity of opportunities to see performances of the notated choreographies. The most difficult of the surviving stage dances are rarely, if ever taught at historical dance workshops or courses here in the UK. I confess that I have been unable to find videos of performances of most of them online.

I have long been interested in Anthony L’Abbé’s A New Collection of Dances, thirteen choreographies created by him for professional dancers on the London stage notated and published around 1725 by F. Le Roussau. I have in my time performed four of them – the ‘Passacaille of Armide’, ‘Mrs Santlow’s Minuet’, the ‘Passagalia of Venüs & Adonis’ and the ‘Türkish Dance’ – and worked on another three – the ‘Chacone of Galathee’, the ‘Saraband of Issee’ and the following ‘Jigg’. However, until recently I had only seen four of them performed. When the chance arose to see three of the duets being taught in Paris as part of the Pecour Academy summer course 2025, I jumped at it. I am extremely grateful to Guillaume Jablonka and his fellow teachers Hubert Hazebroucq and Irène Feste for making an exception and allowing me to attend part of the course simply to watch and to learn. I have to say that it was a marvellous and truly rewarding experience.

The three choreographies were the ‘Loure or Faune’ danced by L’Abbé himself with his great compatriot Claude Ballon, the ‘Canaries’ performed by Charles Delagarde and Louis Dupré (the ‘London’ Dupré I wrote about a little while ago) and the ‘Passacaille of Armide’ danced by Mrs Elford and the very young Mrs Santlow.

Hubert Hazebroucq taught the ‘Loure or Faune’, Guillaume Jablonka the ‘Canaries’ and Irène Feste the ‘Passacaille of Armide’. The ‘Passacaille of Armide’ was one of the first baroque stage dances I worked on and inspired me to pursue the research which culminated in my book The Incomparable Hester Santlow. All three duets, particularly those for the men, are technically challenging and require teachers and dancers with an advanced level of training. The Pecour Academy was attended by dancers who were well up to the task.

The three teachers, all professional dancers, differ in their dancing styles and approaches to teaching, but all recognisably belong to a shared French tradition of historical dance research and reconstruction based on the concept of ‘la belle dance’. Their individuality as well as their shared heritage was apparent in their warm-up sessions and their teaching of the notated dances. I was able to observe their work during the last three days of the course and the focus and energy in all three classes was inspiring. The teaching and dancing I watched has raised many questions about my own knowledge and understanding of baroque dance, at one end of the spectrum in relation to the performance of individual steps and at the other about the interpretation of the dances in L’Abbé’s New Collection.

An abiding issue for all who study the dancing of the decades around 1700 (when Feuillet first published Choregraphie and the associated collections of notated dances) is what the notations leave out when it comes to technique as well as style. Some questions are answered (although not definitively) by the descriptions of steps in Pierre Rameau’s Le Maître a danser of 1725. For others there are no answers, at least in print. I was aware that French interpretations of Rameau differ from those in the UK and this course reminded me of details I had forgotten. It also revealed new thinking about steps that I was unaware of. I hope to be able to pursue some of these in individual posts for Dance in History.

Two other issues came up that require me to undertake far more research and do a great deal more thinking. One is about the way in which L’Abbé’s dances use space, which relates to the stages for which he created these choreographies in London (not in Paris, with the possible exception of the ‘Loure or Faune’ even though this was undoubtedly performed at London’s Kensington Palace). This issue is difficult to address in any course which has several couples of dancers learning dances in the same space, who necessarily have nothing like the area for which L’Abbé created each choreography and who are also engaging with the most difficult steps in the baroque vocabulary. There are also the relationships, expressive as well as spatial, between the two dancers and between them and their audience (which these students were certainly very aware of). The placing of that audience in relation to the dancers is also a factor to be investigated – I suspect that this differed in Paris and London. I hope to be able to explore all of these aspects more fully in due course. The second issue that arose is the characters personified by the dancers, which may or may not derive from the music used by L’Abbé. The three teachers understandably thought of these choreographies in the context of the works given at the Paris Opéra from which L’Abbé took his music. I (equally understandably, I hope) have tended to think of them in performance on the London stage, where they would have been removed from their original operatic context (which may well have been unknown to their London audiences). I think these two views, which can surely be reconciled despite their differences, provide a rich environment for the development of a range of interpretations.

I have focussed here on L’Abbé’s three choreographies, but each day included workshops on other dances and aspects of baroque dance. Notable among these was Christine Bayle’s masterclass on Pecour’s La Nouvelle Forlane, in which she shared her great skill, experience and knowledge with a group of of dancers who were eager and extremely well prepared to benefit from it. That was a special moment, too. The whole course concluded with a public presentation of the dances that had been taught over the week. It was described as showing ‘Work in Progress’, but what marvellous Work – and fantastic Progress – it shared. I salute the teachers and their students for a wonderful achievement.

The 2025 Pecour Academy was a while ago now, but I am still thinking about it as I pursue my research into L’Abbé’s stage dances. I repeat my grateful thanks to Guillaume, Hubert and Irène for sharing their work with me.

Money for Entrechats: Valuing the Virtuosic Male Dancer – L’Abbé and Ballon

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Anthony L’Abbé’s A New Collection of Dances Containing a Great Number of the Best Ball and Stage Dances, published around 1725, was dedicated to George I. It brought together in Beauchamp-Feuillet notation thirteen choreographies, almost all of which were described as having been performed by London’s leading professional dancers. At the time of publication, L’Abbé was dancing master to the King’s granddaughters. He had been a dancer as well as a choreographer, working both at the Paris Opéra (where he began his career) and in London’s theatres. The first dance in the New Collection was a ‘Loure or Faune performd’ before his Majesty King William ye 3d bÿ Mons^r Balon and M^r L’abbé’. The details in the head-title suggest that the dance had been performed in 1699, the year that Claude Ballon (a leading male dancer at the Paris Opéra) had come to London for the first and last time. Ballon had apparently been able to command a fabulously high fee for his London appearances. The writer and collector Narcissus Luttrell recorded that ‘Monsieur Ballon, the famous French dancing master, … having leave to come hither for 5 weeks, is allowed by the playhouse 400 guineas for that time, besides which the Lord Cholmley has sent him a present of 100 more’. Ballon was obviously exceptionally highly valued as a performer (500 guineas is the equivalent of around £60,000 now), but what was the playhouse management and the audience paying to see? The all-male duets and male solos in L’Abbé’s New Collection of Dances (six choreographies in all) provide evidence of the spectacular virtuosity of leading male dancers in the early eighteenth century, which was obviously part of their appeal. Here I will look at the skills and rewards of Ballon and L’Abbé. In a second post, I will look at Delagarde and Dupré who were dancing in London’s theatres a few years later and fared somewhat differently.

The ‘Loure or Faune’ was performed against a complex background of international and cultural politics, extending from Anglo-French diplomacy surrounding the succession to the Spanish crown to rivalries between London’s theatre companies. Anthony L’Abbé first came to dance in London in May 1698 at the invitation of Thomas Betterton, the leading actor of the recently formed company at Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre which was in fierce competition with the rival company at Drury Lane. Only one of L’Abbé’s London performances was recorded, in the Post Boy for 14-17 May 1698:

‘On Friday night last [13 May] there was fine Dancing at Kensington, where his Majesty was present, as also his Excellency the French Ambassador: The Frenchman, who is lately come over and Dances now at the Play-house, was sent for to dance there, and performed his part very dexterously.’

‘Kensington’ was, of course, Kensington Palace, where the performance took place before King William III and the Comte de Tallard, who had been sent to London by Louis XIV for negotiations to agree a successor to the Spanish King Carlos II whose death without issue was expected imminently. Both England and France were war-weary following the conclusion of the Nine Years War with the Treaty of Ryswick in September 1697. The visits of both L’Abbé and Ballon occurred during the few years of peace when French cultural leadership in Europe could be readily acknowledged and enjoyed, before hostilities between the two countries resumed in May 1702 with the War of the Spanish Succession.

Anthony L’Abbé was born in 1666 or 1667 and made his debut at the Paris Opéra in 1688. It is difficult to trace his repertoire there over the next ten years, in the absence of complete cast lists for many productions, but he is recorded as dancing in Lully’s Cadmus et Hérmione in 1690 and in Lully and Molière’s Le Bourgeois gentilhomme in 1691. He undoubtedly danced in several other productions as well during that period, and his appearance at Kensington Palace was in a divertissement entitled Le Palais des Plaisirs which was essentially a pastiche of scenes from Lully’s operas. According to an analysis of a rare surviving copy of the livret, the entertainment included scenes from Lully’s Le Carnaval Mascarade (1675), Armide (1686) and Roland (1685) with a cast of both English and French singers and dancers. L’Abbé pleased spectators in two dances from Le Carnaval Mascarade, first as a Spaniard in an Italian Night Scene alongside characters from the commedia dell’arte and then (in the final scene of the entertainment) as the leader of six Matassins. These roles suggest that L’Abbé’s technical virtuosity was to the fore. The dancing master John Essex (who may well have seen L’Abbé on the London stage at this time) later wrote that ‘His Talent chiefly lay in the grave Movement, and he excelled all that ever appeared on the English Stage in that Character’, again alluding to L’Abbé’s virtuosity. There is no way of knowing what L’Abbé danced at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1698, but according to the theatre’s prompter John Downes his first London engagement placed him among the ‘exorbitantly expensive’ foreign performers engaged by Betterton. L’Abbé continued to work in London as a dancer and a choreographer, and then a dancing master, for another forty years.

Claude Ballon arrived in London in April 1699. His date of birth has been variously given as 1671 and 1676 and he made his debut at the Paris Opéra in 1690 in Cadmus et Hérmione. Like L’Abbé, his early repertoire is difficult to trace. He also danced in Le Bourgeois gentilhomme in 1691, and in 1697 he appeared in Destouches’s opera Issé as a Faune and Campra’s extremely successful opéra-ballet L’Europe galante as a Spaniard and as a Moor. Ballon seems to have arrived around Easter and was advertised in the Post-Man of 4-6 April 1699 for a performance on 10 April:

‘On Easter Monday, at the New Theatre in Little Lincoln’s Inn Fields, will be an entertainment of Dancing, performed by Monsieur Balon newly arrived from Paris.’

Ballon’s monetary rewards come into sharper focus in relation to an advertisement in the Post Boy of 13-15 April 1699, which announced the forthcoming appearance at Drury Lane of ‘Signior Clementine’ a castrato of such ‘extraordinary Desert in Singing’ that he was to be given a yearly salary of £500.

Ballon’s success is attested by a later source, the anonymous A Comparison Between the Two Stages published in 1702:

‘… with Balon; the Town ran mad to see him, and the prizes were rais’d to an extravagant degree to bear the extravagant rate they allow’d him.’

Unfortunately, apart from the ‘Loure or Faune’ we have no idea what he danced. Nor have the date and occasion of his appearance with L’Abbé before William III been identified. The performance was presumably also at Kensington Palace and must have taken place either before or after the King’s visit to Newmarket for the racing from 11 to 19 April. Ballon was later described by the dancing master John Weaver, who may have seen him in London, as the best of the ‘French Dancers, who have been seen with so much Applause, and follow’d with so great an Infatuation’ although he offered ‘nothing more than a graceful Motion, with strong and nimble Risings, and the casting of his Body into several (perhaps) agreeable Postures’. Weaver found Ballon’s dancing technically impressive but lacking in expression and meaning. Ballon never returned to London after his 1699 visit. He pursued his career at the Paris Opéra and later became dancing master to the young Louis XV and, in turn, that monarch’s family.

The ‘Loure or Faune’ danced by Ballon and L’Abbé is a loure or gigue lente in 6/4 time. Its music is the ‘Entrée des cyclopes’ from act two scene six of Lully’s 1686 pastorale héroïque Acis et Galatée. Here is the first plate of the notation.

The dance has only 36 bars of music, lasting for little more than a minute, but there are two complex and demanding steps to each bar which make it a showpiece despite its brevity. The loure, taken at a slow tempo, was a favoured dance type for male duets and was often used for male solos. Music treatises of the period characterise the loure as slow or grave, and also as strong and noble, making it particularly suitable for choreographies danced by men.

Ballon and L’Abbé begin conventionally, side by side upstage facing the King (I will use the stage terms, although the two men probably danced in a space similar to a ballroom, with the King as the ‘presence’). Each dancer stands on his inside foot, with the outside foot free to begin the first step. This mirror symmetry is maintained throughout the dance. In the first bar they perform two balonnés, springing steps which bring them downstage towards William III. The choreography is highly ornamented throughout: around 75% of the bars have steps which incorporate turns; more than 50% of bars have steps with beats (which vary in nature and complexity); more than 33% have another form of decoration, for example an added slide or a rond de jambe. There are only six bars with steps which have no beats, turns or other embellishments to enrich the vocabulary.

There are several technically very difficult and spectacular steps in this duet. In bar 7, when the two dancers have completed their opening passage downstage (another convention in choreographies of the period) and are side by side in front of the King, they perform an entrechat-six with a simultaneous full turn in the air. In Bar 22, when the men are centre stage, they perform a contretemps followed by an assemblé battu en tournant. The latter begins with a powerful swing of the working leg which provides the impetus for a full turn in the air and initiates the beaten element of the step, another entrechat-six. The final section of the dance begins (in bar 32) with a triple pirouette over 2 bars of music, with the two men (who turn in mirror image directions away from one another) again downstage in front of the King. This adagio turn, which requires powerful control, would have been taken with the working leg open in a second position and is more demanding in performance than the modern pirouette (which has the working leg bent at the knee and the foot in front of the upper calf or knee of the supporting leg). The triple pirouette in the ‘Loure or Faune’ is extended by another quarter-turn and completed with a sliding and beaten jetté which adds yet another quarter turn. The duet ends with the conventional retreat upstage, but unconventionally the men end facing one another, each standing on his upstage leg with the other leg in front of him, perhaps in a low attitude. Equally unconventionally, they have changed sides.

Acis et Galatée had been revived at the Paris Opéra as recently as 1695 and it is possible that both Ballon and L’Abbé had danced in the production, although not necessarily together. It is unlikely that L’Abbé’s choreography was performed then, for the dances would have been created by the maître de ballet at the Opéra Guillaume-Louis Pecour. There are few depictions of dancers at this period, although Ballon is represented in a number of engravings – one of which is below – there seems to be no image of L’Abbé dancing.

If the surviving portraits of Ballon represent the style of costumes worn by him and L’Abbé for their ‘Loure or Faune’ the effect must have been stunning in performance, heightening the power and refinement of their steps, displaying the grandeur as well as the sophistication of the French ballet and evoking the glamour of the court of Louis XIV as well as the Paris Opéra.

This post was originally part of a conference paper, given several years ago but never published, which I have revised.

Reading List

Julie Andrijeski, ‘A Survey of the Loure through Definitions, Music, and Choreographies’ (Unpublished doctoral thesis, Case Western Reserve University, 2006).

A Comparison Between the Two Stages (London, 1702).

John Downes, Roscius Anglicanus, ed. Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume (London, 1987).

Kenneth H. D. Haley, ‘International Affairs’ in Robert P. Maccubbin and Martha Hamilton-Phillips (eds), The Age of William III and Mary II: Power, Politics, and Patronage 1688-1702 (Williamsburg, 1989).

Anthony L’Abbé, A New Collection of Dances. Originally published by F. Le Roussau London c.1725 (London, 1991).

Narcissus Luttrell, A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs from September, 1678 to April 1714. 6 vols. (Oxford, 1857), Vol. 4.

Claude and François Parfaict, Dictionnaire des théâtres de Paris. 7 vols. (Paris, 1767), Vols. 1, 2.

Pierre Rameau, trans. John Essex, The Dancing-Master (London, 1728).

Jennifer Thorp, ‘Monsieur L’Abbé and Le Palais des Plaisirs: a New Source for a London Spectacle’ in Society of Dance History Scholars [Conference July 9-11, 2010 held at the University of Surrey, Guildford] (SDHS, 2010).

John Weaver, An Essay Towards an History of Dancing (London, 1712).

Season of 1725-1726: Other Entr’acte Duets at Lincoln’s Inn Fields

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The other duets given at Lincoln’s Inn Fields this season were:

French Peasant

Passacaille

French Sailor and his Wife

Shepherd and Shepherdess

Spanish Entry

Le Marrie

Two Pierrots

Running Footman’s Dance

Fingalian Dance

Burgomaster and his Frow

Tollet’s Ground

Chacone

Venetian Dance

Swedish Dance

Spinning Wheel Dance

The last two duets were performed only during the summer season.

It is immediately apparent that Lincoln’s Inn Fields offered a wider range of entr’acte choreographies than Drury Lane in 1725-1726. This was related to the dancers employed there this season, as well as John Rich’s habitual use of dance as a weapon in his rivalry with the other patent theatre.

The French Peasant danced by Nivelon and Mrs Laguerre on 29 September 1725 was one of the perennially popular dances on the London stage. So far as I can tell, a French Peasant duet was first advertised at Drury Lane on 15 June 1704, when the dancers were Mr and Mrs Du Ruel. It would continue in the entr’acte repertoire until the early 1740s. Several Peasant or ‘Paysan’ dances were recorded in notation in the early 1700s, including this choreography by Guillaume-Louis Pecour published in the Nouveau recüeil de dance de bal et celle de ballet around 1713.

These dances may provide hints towards the French Peasant dances on the London stage.

The Passacaille was seldom advertised as a duet in London’s theatres and the two performances given at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 13 October and 9 November 1725 by Lally and Mrs Wall seem to be the last to be billed before the 1770s. The only notated passacaille duet for a man and a woman, choreographed by Guillaume-Louis Pecour for Ballon and Mlle Subligny, was published in 1704 and thus does not necessarily provide an exemplar for a dance of the mid-1720s. I wrote about both solo and duet passacailles in my post The Passacaille back in 2017.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, ‘Sailor’ dances on the London stage go back to the 17^th century and were a frequent feature in 18^th-century entr’acte entertainments. A French Sailor duet was performed at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in the mid-1710s, but the French Sailor and his Wife performed there on 25 October 1725 by Francis and Marie Sallé seems to mark a new chapter in the stage life of the dance. I can certainly devote a post to the sailor dances in London’s theatres, so I won’t pursue the topic further here. It is just worth mentioning that a Matelot duet was introduced to the entr’actes at Drury Lane in 1726-1727, raising a question about the difference between it and the French Sailor dances.

I discussed Shepherd and Shepherdess dances in an earlier post, Season of 1725-1726: Entr’acte Dances at Drury Lane and Lincoln’s Inn Fields, so I will move straight on to the Spanish Entry given as a duet by Lesac and Miss La Tour on 2 November 1725. I have written about ‘Spanish’ dances before – in posts entitled ‘Spanish’ Dances, Dancing ‘Spaniards’ and ‘Spanish’ Dancing and the Dance Treatises – but I haven’t taken an extended look at such dances on the London stage. I am not going to attempt that here, although it is certainly another topic worth exploring. There were Spanish Dances and Spanish Entries advertised in the entr’actes at London’s theatres from the first decade of the 18^th century, which probably drew on similar choreographies from the Restoration period. The Spanish Entry had been advertised as a duet at Lincoln’s Inn Fields and had stayed in the repertoire for a few seasons. It had then disappeared, only to reappear in the mid-1720s with the duet danced by Lesac and Miss La Tour. The use of the word ‘Entry’ for this dance suggests (to me at least) that it was less likely to have been a version of the Folies d’Espagne than one of the other dance types made popular in the French comédies-ballets and opéra-ballets given in Paris. Here is the first plate from Pecour’s well-known ‘Entrée Espagnolle’ for Ballon and Mlle Subligny, which provides one example that may have been influential (it was transcribed by Kellom Tomlinson in his ‘WorkBook’ compiled during the first two decades of the 18^th century).

‘Le Marrie’ danced by Francis and Marie Sallé at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 16 December 1725 must surely have been Pecour’s ball dance La Mariée, first published by Feuillet in his 1700 Recüeil de dances composées par Mr. Pecour. As I wrote in another post back in 2015, La Mariée on the London Stage, research by the American dance historian Rebecca Harris-Warrick has shown that this duet probably began as a stage dance in Paris and reached the London stage shortly after 1698. The Marie performed at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1717-1718 could have been La Mariée resurfacing in the entr’actes, although its performance by the Sallés seems to have given the duet a new lease of life with regular revivals at benefit performances. Here is the first plate from the 1700 collection.

Two Pierrots was also danced by the Sallés at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 16 December 1725. They seem to have introduced the male-female duet to London – previously there had been a few Pierrot solos and an all-male duet by Francis and Louis Nivelon in 1723-1724. The Sallés were answered at Drury Lane by Roger and Mrs Brett in La Pierette later that season. I should probably have counted Two Pierrots and La Pierette among the entr’acte dances shared between the two theatres, although the titles suggest that two might have been quite different thematically if not choreographically. Pierrot dances would last into the 1750s and beyond.

The Running Footman, danced by Nivelon and Mrs Laguerre on 10 March 1726, had been introduced to the London stage by them in 1723-1724. It was probably created by Nivelon and I looked at the duet in some detail in my post Dances on the London Stage: The Running Footman back in September.

The Fingalian Dance performed by Newhouse and Mrs Ogden on 11 April 1726 had first been danced by them in 1724-1725. They would continue to perform it regularly each season until 1733-1734. This entr’acte duet had apparently begun life as ‘A new Irish Dance in Fingalian Habits by Newhouse, Pelling, and Mrs Ogden’ at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1723-1724 but the trio format did not survive the season. Newhouse and Mrs Ogden were also billed more than a dozen times during 1724-1725 in an Irish Dance. I think that was probably the Fingalian Dance, which I am guessing was choreographed by Newhouse. There are a number of ‘Irish’ tunes in the various editions of Playford’s The Dancing Master, all considerably earlier than the duet by Newhouse and Mrs Ogden. They may hint at the music for the Fingalian Dance, although the dance itself seems to have been characterised by its costumes as much as the ‘Irishness’ of its music. Fingal is a county in Ireland in the Dublin region – the reference to ‘Fingalian Habits’ suggests costumes that are at least recognisably Irish. So far, I have not managed to find any clues as to what these ‘Habits’ may have been like. Fingalian Dances would survive in the London stage entr’acte repertoire until the 1770s.

The Burgomaster and his Frow, another entr’acte dance performed by Newhouse and Mrs Ogden on 20 April 1726, was one of the many ‘Dutch’ dances given in the entr’actes at London’s theatres. The duet seems to have been variously titled – as Dutch Boor in 1723-1724 and 1724-1725 and as Dutch Burgomaster and Wife in 1724-1725 – but it seems to have been distinct from the Dutch Skipper, which Newhouse was never billed as dancing. There is, of course, music for a ‘Dance for the Dutch man and his Wife’ in Thomas Bray’s 1699 collection Country Dances. This tune was used in Europe’s Revels for the Peace, the masque created to celebrate the peace of Ryswick that ended the Nine Years’ War in 1697.

Tollett’s Ground, danced by Newhouse and Mrs Laguerre on 30 April 1726 and revived during the Lincoln’s Inn Fields summer season by him and Mrs Ogden, took its title from its music. The piece is generally attributed to the Irish musician Thomas Tollett, who worked in London’s theatres during the 1690s and may have died in 1696. It appeared in several music collections around 1700 and was first billed at Drury Lane in 1701-1702, when it was performed by John Essex and Mrs Lucas. During the 1710s it was given several times by Margaret Bicknell and her sister Elizabeth Younger. The Tollett’s Ground duet survived into the early 1730s and was usually performed at benefits or during the summer season.

I mentioned the Chacone in my post The Most Popular Entr’acte Dances on the London Stage, 1700-1760 a couple of months ago. In 1725-1726, a Chacone duet was danced at Lincoln’s Inn Fields by Dupré and Mrs Wall on 30 April and then 23 May 1726, followed by Lally and Mrs Wall on 30 May. Some of the chaconnes given in London’s theatres were associated with Harlequin, but others (including this one) were evidently serious dances. We do have a local notated example of a chaconne for the stage which was published around this time and might shed light on some of those given in the entr’actes. Anthony L’Abbé choreographed the ‘Chacone of Galathee’ for Delagarde and Mrs Santlow (from 1719 Mrs Booth) perhaps around 1712, although it seems to have been notated some ten years later – around the time it was published by Le Roussau in A New Collection of Dances. As this plate reveals, it was a showpiece of virtuosity for these two dancers (I strongly suspect that Delagarde’s entre-chat à six should also have a tour-en-l’air, and I certainly think that Mrs Santlow was capable of adding an entre-chat à six to her tour).

The Chacone duets danced by Dupré and Lally with Mrs Wall in 1725-1726 may have been similar.

The Venetian Dance was given just once this season, on 9 May 1726 by Burny and Mrs Anderson ‘both Scholars to Essex’. At present, I can’t be sure whether ‘Essex’ is William Essex, who had made his debut at Drury Lane the previous season, or his father John, who had left the stage to pursue his career as a dancing master more than twenty years earlier. John Essex is perhaps the more likely candidate. It is tempting to assume that a Venetian Dance must be performed to a forlana, but a contemporary source suggests a quite different piece of music – the allemande used by Pecour for his duet of that title, published in Paris in 1702. I have puzzled over this musical choice, apparently made for a ‘Venetian Dance by Mr Shaw and Mrs Booth’ which was performed (but not mentioned in the bills) in 1724-1725. I can see that I should return to Venetian Dances in another post.

Dances associated with particular nations were decidedly popular at Lincoln’s Inn Fields this season. Another was the Swedish Dal Carl given by Pelling and Mrs Ogden on 17 June 1726 (the opening performance of the summer season). A ‘new Swedish Dance’ had entered the entr’acte repertoire at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1714-1715, when it was performed by Delagarde and Miss Russell (later Mrs Bullock and a leading dancer at that theatre). Thereafter the Swedish Dale Karl, as it was usually known, was performed most seasons into the 1730s. It may well have continued to use the music recorded in The Ladys Banquet 3d Book, a collection first published around 1720, although the earliest surviving edition has been dated around 1732. The ‘new Play House’ mentioned on the score is probably Lincoln’s Inn Fields, which opened in 1714. There are no solo Swedish Dances billed in London’s theatres, so is the ‘Sweedish Woman’s Dance’ actually part of the duet?

The last of the dances I listed at the beginning of this post was also performed only during the Lincoln’s Inn Fields summer season. Newhouse and Mrs Ogden performed the Spinning Wheel Dance on 21 June 1726. The duet had first been given in 1723-1724 at the same theatre and the bills indicate that it only ever received a handful of performances. I would characterise it as one of the novelty dances that turn up in the entr’actes from time to time, particularly during summer seasons.

My next post on the season of 1725-1726 will be concerned with the entr’acte solos given at Drury Lane and Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

Notated Dances for the Stage

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Among the many dances published in notation in the early 18^th century are four collections ostensibly for the stage.

Raoul Auger Feuillet. Recüeil de dances (Paris, 1700)
Guillaume-Louis Pecour. Recüeil de dances (Paris, 1704)
Guillaume-Louis Pecour. Nouveau recüeil de dances (Paris, c1713)
Anthony L’Abbé. A New Collection of Dances (London, c1725)

Feuillet’s 1700 collection has 15 of his own choreographies, the music for many being taken from French operas. The 1704 collection has 35 choreographies by Pecour and is described on the title page as ‘contenant un tres grand nombres, des meillieures Entrees de Ballet’. Many of these are linked, in the head titles on the first plate of individual notations, to specific performers in the operas from which the music is taken. The Nouveau Recüeil, dated to 1713 on internal evidence, is described on its title page as ‘Dance de Bal et celle de Ballet contenant un tres grand nombres des meillieures Entrees de Ballet’. It contains 9 ballroom dances and 30 choreographies for the stage. Many of the latter are also linked to specific performers in particular French operas. L’Abbé’s New Collection is dated, again on internal evidence, to around 1725. It contains only 13 choreographies, all but one of which are linked to dancers who appeared in London’s theatres and most of which use music from French operas.

These collections between them provide many insights into the dances performed onstage in both Paris and London during the first quarter of the 18^th century (and perhaps the decade before). However, with so small a corpus of material, representing only three dancing masters, and uncertainty about the purpose of these collections it is difficult to draw any firm conclusions about the dance repertoire in either of the two cities.

Here are some statistics relating to the contents of each collection:

Feuillet (1700): 2 duets for a man and a woman; 3 male duets; 7 male solos; 2 female solos; one dance for 9 men (the only example of a stage dance for a group of dancers among all the surviving notations). The first dance in the collection is Le Rigaudon de la Paix, a duet for a man and a woman.

Pecour (1704): 15 duets for a man and a woman; 5 male duets; 1 female duet; 8 male solos; 6 female solos. The first dance in the collection is Sarabande pour une femme, to music from the Entrée for L’Espagne in the ‘Ballet de Nations’ within Le Bourgeois gentilhomme. Prominent among the named performers are Ballon and Mlle Subligny.

Pecour (c1713), stage dances only: 12 duets for a man and a woman; 4 male duets; 5 female duets; 3 male solos; 6 female solos. The first stage dance in the collection is the Entrée pour un homme et une femme, danced by Ballon and Mlle Subligny in Lully’s Thesée, although this time the most prominent of the named performers are Mlle Guyot and David Dumoulin.

Entree Thesee 1 (2)

L’Abbé (c1725): 4 duets for a man and a woman; 2 male duets; 1 female duet; 4 male solos; 2 female solos. The first dance in the collection is the Loure or Faune performd, before his Majesty King William the 3d bÿ Monsr. Balon and Mr. L’Abbé. The leading dancers in this collection are Dupré and Mrs Santlow, who each feature in four dances.

Loure or Faune 1

So, we get a flavour of changing emphases between the dances included in each collection, for example the increasing proportion of female solos and female duets in the two Pecour recüeils. The bedrock of the repertoire throughout all four remains the duets for a man and a woman and the solos and duets by men, which may well reflect the distribution as well as the status of dances within the original stage context.

A Year of Dance: 1697

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The Treaty of Ryswick, signed on 20 September 1697, ended the Nine Years’ War in which Louis XIV had faced a ‘Grand Alliance’ of European powers including Great Britain. As part of the terms of the treaty, the French King finally recognised William III as King of England (although he continued to shelter William’s predecessor James II). Just a few months after the treaty, on 6 December 1697 (N.S.), Louis’s eldest grandson the duc de Bourgogne married the twelve-year-old Marie Adelaïde de Savoie, to ensure the French Catholic succession. In England, the protestant succession was undermined by the two miscarriages suffered by the heir to the throne Princess Anne in March and December 1697.

In London, both the treaty and William III’s birthday were celebrated at court on 4 November 1697 by a performance of Europe’s Revels for the Peace, a musical work with a libretto by Peter Motteux and a score by John Eccles. The fierce rivalry between the Lincoln’s Inn Fields company led by Thomas Betterton and the Drury Lane company managed by Christopher Rich continued. Betterton’s company included the French fair dancer Joseph Sorin, who was billed in a short-lived piece called The Novelty, given at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in June 1697. Sorin presumably made other appearances, but records of performances are too few to confirm this.

There were a number of successful operas in Paris. Desmarets’s Vénus et Adonis was given on 28 July 1697 (N.S.). Campra’s L’Europe galante, which would enjoy widespread success, was given on 24 October 1697 (N.S.) with Blondy, Balon and Mlles Subligny and Dufort among the dancers. Balon and Mlle Subligny were also prominent among the dancers in Destouches’s pastoral opera Issé given at court on 17 December 1697 (N.S.). Dance music from all of these operas would make its way onto the London stage in later years.

More newsworthy, perhaps, than anything happening at the Paris Opéra was the suppression of the Comédie-Italienne on 14 May 1697. There had been an Italian commedia dell’arte troupe in Paris since the 1640s and they had enjoyed conspicuous royal favour for much of that time. The conventional explanation for the turn-about, apart from Louis XIV’s increasing piety, was the performance of a new play that satirised the King’s morganatic wife Mme de Maintenon. Modern commentators have suggested other reasons, including the machinations of their rivals at the Comédie-Française and even the King’s indebtedness to the Italian troupe. Whatever the cause, there would be no Comédie-Italienne in Paris for nearly 20 years. The out-of-work players were forced to find entertainment elsewhere.

Louis Jacob after Antoine Watteau, Depart des Comédiens Italiens en 1697, 18th century

Dancers on the London Stage

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Back in 2015, I wrote a short piece about dancing on the London stage from 1660 to 1760, a topic that still receives scant attention from dance historians. In the course of writing a recent post about one particular set of dances performed in London’s theatres, it crossed my mind that I should also pursue the dancers who worked there. Many of them have never featured in dance histories, which generally confine themselves to the same few famous names.

London’s best-known dancers, in their own time as well as ours, were quite often from Europe. They came from France in particular, but also from Italy as well as what is now Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. There were also many native-born dancers in London’s theatres, although they seem (more often than not) to have taken supporting roles to the visiting European stars. Claude Ballon and Marie-Thérèse de Subligny were acclaimed when they came to London in the years around 1700. Hester Santlow and John Shaw were two English dancers who always took leading roles – they were quite definitely not members of the corps de ballet.

Claude Ballon, visited London April – May 1699

Marie-Thérèse de Subligny, visited London Winter 1701 – 1702

Hester Santlow, English dancer 1706 – 1733

John Shaw, English dancer 1708 – 1725

We can only really trace the dancers in London’s theatre companies from the early 18^th century, when newspaper advertising takes off. Even so, although this gives us records of their performances and, if we are lucky, the repertoire of individual dancers, there is still very little other evidence about their lives and careers. We know of very few portraits, even of the most famous dancers.

By the early 1700s, the playhouses and the opera house seem to have had small dance companies alongside the acting companies. There was also a dancing master, who may or may not be identifiable as such, who was a dancer, choreographer and (probably) the teacher of the actors and actresses of the main company. He would (probably) have been responsible for teaching new repertoire to the other dancers and even rehearsing them, in the group numbers at least. (The leading dancers would probably have taken care of their own solos and duets). I will take a look at some of these men in future posts. There is very little direct evidence of the dancing master’s status and duties – these have to be inferred from occasional references to him or his work. If there were any female dancers who fulfilled this role (and we know that some professional female dancers taught dancing), their status was never mentioned.

The dancers themselves had a range of skills and experience. In the early 18^th century many of the female dancers were also actresses, even those who had a level of dance virtuosity equal to that of the visiting French ballerinas. At the same period, most of the leading male dancers (English as well as French) were solely dancers. Several English male dancers were, by repute, able to match the skills of their French counterparts. Lower down the rankings, male as well as female dancers had to deploy a range of performing skills. So far as we can tell, many of the native-born dancers on the London stage had some training in French belle danse, but probably as many did not.

The leading dancers in each company performed regularly in the entr’actes and, from the late 1710s, would take the principal dancing roles in pantomime afterpieces. Ballets, as we understand the term, only came into their own in the later 1700s (although the first example of the genre, John Weaver’s The Loves of Mars and Venus, dates to 1717). Pantomimes also needed a number of players who included dancing among a range of other skills. These supporting performers rarely, if ever, gave dances in the entr’actes unless they had a popular dance speciality. Actors and actresses were called upon to take part in country dances within plays – they rarely danced otherwise.

So, there is quite a range of lives and careers among the dancers on the London stage from 1660 to 1760, and beyond, ripe for investigation. As and when I write about them, I will use their repertoire to try and appraise their dancing skills as well as their status within the dance companies.

A Year of Dance: 1717

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1717 was a busy year on the London stage, at least so far as dancing was concerned. With hindsight, the most significant event was the performance at the Drury Lane Theatre on 2 March 1717 of John Weaver’s ‘New Dramatick Entertainment of Dancing after the Manner of the Antient Pantomimes’ The Loves of Mars and Venus – now widely recognised as the first modern ballet. Weaver followed it up on 2 April with a ‘New Dramatick Entertainment of Dancing in Grotesque Characters’, The Shipwreck; or, Perseus and Andromeda. Together, the two afterpieces were surely intended to show the full range of the expressive dancing that Weaver was eager to promote. On 5 December 1717, Weaver’s Harlequin Turn’d Judge was given at Drury Lane. It was later advertised as an ‘Entertainment of Dancing in Grotesque Characters’ but was, to all intents and purposes, a pantomime (a genre new to London’s theatres). Both The Loves of Mars and Venus and Harlequin Turn’d Judge were successful enough to survive into the 1720s.

The popularity of Weaver’s danced afterpieces attracted several responses from John Rich at Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Rich began with The Cheats; or, The Tavern Bilkers on 22 April 1717. The alternative title apparently refers to a much earlier piece by Weaver, which the dancing master claimed was performed at Drury Lane in 1702. Although, as Weaver’s The Tavern Bilkers was never revived, how did Rich know about it? A few months later, Rich turned his attention to Weaver’s new ballet with Mars and Venus; or, The Mouse Trap, given at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 22 November 1717. He then produced Colombine; or, Harlequin Turn’d Judge on 11 December. Neither of Rich’s ripostes were anything like as successful as the originals. However, The Jealous Doctor; or, The Intriguing Dame, a pantomime given at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 29 April 1717 continued to be popular until the mid-1720s.

All these afterpieces had casts of dancers, and Rich did not neglect entr’acte dancing. His star dancers in 1717 were the ‘two Children, Scholars of M Ballon, lately arriv’d from the Opera at Paris’. Francis and Marie Sallé had made their London debut at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 18 October 1716. Rich billed them frequently, in a varied repertoire of serious and comic dances, between then and their last performance on 20 June 1717. Was their ‘New Comic Scene’ entitled The Loves of Harlequin and Colombine, given on 23 April 1717, intended as another hit at The Loves of Mars and Venus? They also performed ‘The Submission, a new Dance, compos’d by Kellom’ on 21 February 1717 demonstrating their versatility.

Kellom Tomlinson’s The Submission was one of the only two notated dances to be published in London this year. The other was L’Abbé’s The Royal George, according to newspaper advertisements published ‘for the Princess’s Birth Day’ in March 1717 although the title page says only a ‘A New Dance … for the Year 1717’. The title must thus honour the Prince of Wales her husband. Fortunately, the dance appeared several months before the serious quarrel between the King and his son the following November, which would divide the royal family for the next few years. The other noteworthy cultural event of 1717 was the first performance on 17 July of Handel’s Water Music for George I as he travelled by barge along the River Thames.

In Paris, the annual dance publication was the XV Recüeil de danses pour l’année 1717 published by Dezais. It contained three short ballroom duets, La Clermont and La de Bergue by Claude Ballon and La Ribeyra by Dezais himself. The last of them was dedicated ‘A Madame l’Ambassatrice de Portugal’, providing an insight into the naming of such choreographies. At the Paris Opéra, besides the usual revivals of works by Lully, André Campra was represented not only by revivals of his Fragments de M. Lully and Tancrède but also by a new opera Camille, Reine des Volsques given on 9 November 1717 (N.S.).

The most important dance publication of the year, at least for many 21^st-century dance historians, was Gottfried Taubert’s monumental treatise Rechtschaffener Tantzmeister which appeared in Leipzig and provided a German view of French dancing. It shows not only how influential la belle danse was around Europe but also how this French style and technique could be moulded to suit other national tastes and ideas.

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

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 16^th 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.

‘Jouissons les plaisirs’

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My work in baroque dance has always had a strong practical element. I find it easier to understand and write about the dances I have reconstructed. Much of my earlier work was based around dances I actually performed. Performance opportunities are few and far between nowadays, for a variety of reasons, but I try to continue reconstructing notated choreographies as part of my research.

I’ve recently been working on a loure, a duet to the air ‘Jouissons les plaisirs’. The music is identified on the notated ‘Entrée pour un homme et une femme Dancée par Mr Balon et Mlle Subligny au Ballet des Fragments de Mr de Lully’ in the Recüeil de dances contenant un tres grand nombres, des meillieures Entrees de Ballet de Mr. Pecour published in Paris in 1704. The work of reconstruction has had its difficulties – I have a recording of the music which is beguiling but otherwise not great and I have nobody to partner me, which all too easily leads to misinterpretation of the notation. Yet, I have found this little dance to be utterly charming. It is so prettily evocative of the early 18^th century that it has been a delight to learn. I would love to see it in a good performance.

I like to know about the original contexts for the notated dances I reconstruct. In this case the air seems to have been written for the 1670 comédie-ballet Les Amants Magnifiques – the ballet in which Louis XIV apparently did not after all make his final performances as a dancer. The notated choreography, and its music, are instead associated with the Ballet des Fragmens de M. Lully first given at the Paris Opéra in 1702. This ballet brought together pieces of Lully’s music from the ballets de cour and comédies-ballets of the late 17^th century into several entrées arranged by Campra. Its popularity was such that it was revived in 1708, 1711, 1717 and 1722. In Les Amants Magnifiques ‘Jouissons les plaisirs’ was a vocal duet by shepherdesses, in the Ballet des Fragmens it was entitled ‘[Air] des Jeux Pithiens’ and formed part of the first entrée, a ‘Fête marine’, as a vocal duet by female sailors accompanied by the dance. I can’t quite relate either the song or the dance to the later context, but I’m probably missing something.

I have been looking at ‘Spanish’ loures, but this dance surely falls into the ‘pastoral’ category. It is short, with only 54 bars, and the music is a rondeau (ABACA, A has 9 bars, B has 12 and C has 16 bars). The music has the time signature 3, in common with the famous ballroom duet Aimable vainqueur. It is quite unlike the ‘Spanish’ loures in 6/4. Although it is a stage dance, there are no difficult steps in this little entrée. Many of the pas composées incorporate quarter, half or (occasionally) full turns and nearly half include small jumps, so the sequences are flowing and lively. There are coupés avec ouverture de jambe which provide a pleasing suspension of movement and several other steps with a similar feel of extension. I like to draw on ballet’s ronds de jambes, even demi grand ronds de jambe, to give a greater sense of amplitude. The little jumps woven throughout add energy and make the pas de bourée and other ‘walking’ steps feel light and playful rather than languid. I haven’t yet mastered the musicality of this choreography, but I’m sure that if and when I do it will add to the pleasure of dancing it.

Perhaps the most important aspect of the dance is its figures, not so much the movement of the dancers within their stage space as the continually changing spatial relationships between them. They turn towards and then away from each other, face or turn their backs on one another, approach and retreat as they dance. On the page, the floor patterns look completely conventional, even banal, but they are transformed by the way the dancers turn on their own axis and move around each other. Without a partner it is difficult to be sure, but my guess is that the figures are quite tight and the couple stay close to one another much of the time, particularly when they circle and cross. There are many opportunities for interaction, through glances, turns of the head and épaulement as they move through their shared space. Even without a partner, the choreography conjures up the graceful flirtation of a fête galante. It brings to mind the paintings of Watteau, Lancret and Pater. It would be so easy to perform as a tiny drama of pastoral love and pleasure.

Lancret’s painting of Mlle Camargo and her partner is some thirty years later than the dance to ‘Jouissons les plaisirs’, but it gives a good idea of the style and affect of such a duet.

Nicolas Lancret, La Camargo Dancing (c1730)