Tag Archives: Michel Gaudrau

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

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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 ‘2e 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 ‘2e 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 ‘2e 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)

  • 2e 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)
  • ‘2e 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

Subscription Lists and London’s Dancing Masters: Anthony L’Abbé

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Around 1725, Le Roussau published A New Collection of Dances – thirteen choreographies ‘That have been performed both in Druy-Lane [sic] and Lincoln’s Inn Fields, by the best Dancers’ created by Anthony L’Abbé and notated by Le Roussau himself. The dancers were named on the title page as Ballon, L’Abbé, Delagarde, Dupré and Desnoyer with Mrs Elford, Mrs Santlow, Mrs Bullock and Mrs Younger. All were leading dancers in London’s theatres. The collection provides a series of snapshots of stage dancing in London between 1698 and 1722. It also gives us an insight into the world of professional dancers and dancing masters, through the ‘List of the Masters, Subscribers’ which precedes the notated dances. They are the individuals who made publication possible by paying in advance for the printed copies.

The list of subscribers is on two preliminary pages and has 68 names.

All five of the male dancers represented among the notated choreographies subscribed, but not one of the women – there are no female subscribers to this collection. Given the popularity with audiences of the professional female dancers named on the title page, that absence is worth further investigation. Was it to do with their status within the dance worlds of Britain, France and Europe? Was it that they didn’t teach (or weren’t known as teachers, even if they did)? Were they excluded from learning and using Beauchamp-Feuillet notation? I can’t readily answer any of those questions, but this subscription list reveals the need for a great deal more research and much discussion about the 18th-century dance world.

Of the 68 male subscribers, 48 were British and apparently based in London, six were from English provincial towns and cities, seven were French and five were based elsewhere in Europe. L’Abbé himself subscribed for four copies, while Dezais (Feuillet’s successor as the publisher of notated dances in Paris) took two – the same as Edward Lally (who may have been the seasoned dancing master Edmund Lally, rather than the young Edward Lally – probably his son – just beginning to make a name for himself on the London stage), and John Shaw who was one of London’s leading professional dancers. Shaw died young in December 1725, providing an end date for the publication of L’Abbé’s Collection. It is interesting that, although he had been trained by the French dancer René Cherrier and assuredly had a mastery of French dance style and technique, Shaw was not one of the Collection’s male dancers. They were all French, by ancestry if not nationality. Even more interesting is the fact that all the female dancers were British.

The list of subscribers includes ‘Mr. Edw. Pemberton’, probably Edmund Pemberton, the notator and publisher of L’Abbé’s ballroom dances many of which were created for the Hanoverian court to which L’Abbé was dancing master. L’Abbé’s list overlaps with that of Pemberton’s 1711 An Essay for the Further Improvement of Dancing (which includes a solo version of L’Abbé’s passacaille to music from Lully’s opera Armide). Pemberton’s dedicatee Thomas Caverley did not subscribe to L’Abbé’s theatrical choreographies, perhaps because – although he was a champion of dance notation – he was dedicated to the teaching of amateurs and ballroom dancing. Among the other English dancing masters who were L’Abbé’s subscribers were Couch, Essex, Fairbank, Groscourt, Gery, two members of the Holt family, Shirley and John Weaver. All supported both Pemberton’s and L’Abbé’s collections.

A handful of London’s other male professional dancers also subscribed – Boval, Newhouse, John Thurmond and John Topham, who were to be seen dancing varied repertoires at Drury Lane and Lincoln’s Inn Fields. We don’t know how much it cost to purchase L’Abbé’s A New Collection of Dances by subscription, but Le Roussau’s title page advertised copies at 25 shillings (around £145 today). Was this within the means of such dancers, some of who were definitely below the top ranks? Was their interest in the notations chiefly to aid teaching, or might they have drawn upon these when creating new choreographies for their own use?

John Weaver had been the first London dancing master to publish by subscription, with Orchesography (his translation of Feuillet’s Choregraphie) in 1706. Among the subscribers to L’Abbé’s Collection several had subscribed to one or more of the three works published in that way by Weaver (the others were A Collection of Ball-Dances by Mr Isaac, also in 1706, and Anatomical and Mechanical Lectures upon Dancing in 1721). A few – Essex, Walter Holt and Pemberton – subscribed to all five of the treatises published by subscription between 1706 and 1735. The last to appear was Kellom Tomlinson’s The Art of Dancing, which he must have been planning if not writing close to the time when L’Abbé’s Collection was published, to which he subscribed.

Apart from a few continental dancers working in London’s theatres, there were no European subscribers to any of the dance treatises published in London – except for L’Abbé’s Collection, which had seven subscribers from Paris and five from elsewhere in Europe. Among the Parisians, I have already mentioned Dezais. His name is the only one that would be unfamiliar to non-specialists with an interest in dancing during the 18th century. Claude Ballon and Michel Blondy were close contemporaries of L’Abbé, as well as being leading dancers at the Paris Opéra from the 1690s and distinguished teachers of dancing. Ballon’s ballroom dances were published by Dezais. Dumoulin may well be David Dumoulin, the most celebrated of the four brothers who all pursued dancing careers at the Paris Opéra. He was noted for his mastery of the serious style. Like François Marcel, he was from a younger generation of dancers. He made his Opéra debut in 1705 followed by Marcel in 1708. Marcel was also making a reputation as a teacher. It is very unlikely that ‘Mr. Dupre, junior, of Paris’ was Louis ‘le grand’ Dupré, in fact he may have been related to London’s Louis Dupré the dancer in four of L’Abbé’s choreographies in the Collection.

The ’Mons. Pecour’ listed must have been Guillaume-Louis Pecour, ballet master at the Paris Opéra. His dancing career reached back to the early 1670s. L’Abbé’s A New Collection of Dances emulates the Nouveau Recüeil de Dance de Bal at Celle de Ballet notated and published by Gaudrau around 1713. Gaudrau’s collection of Pecour’s ballroom and stage choreographies has nine ballroom dances and thirty theatrical dances, to Le Roussau’s thirteen stage dances by L’Abbé. Gaudrau, ‘Mr. Gaudro, of Madrid in Spain’ is among L’Abbé’s subscribers. There is also ‘Mons’ Phi. Duruel, of Dusseldorp in Germany’ – John-Philippe Du Ruel had danced in London between 1703, when he was billed as ‘from the opera at Paris’ and described as a ‘Scholar’ of Pecour, and 1707, the year he danced at court for Queen Anne’s birthday celebrations. It seems likely that he was the dancing master based in Dusseldorf by the mid-1720s.

The subscription list to A New Collection of Dances surely represents L’Abbé’s own circle of dancers and dancing masters – those he knew and who knew him and his work. There were the men L’Abbé must have danced alongside at the Paris Opéra, as well as those he had worked with both onstage and off over the twenty years and more that he had been in London. What about the English provincial dancing masters and those in Europe? Did they know L’Abbé or did he know them, by reputation at least? Were they invited to subscribe and by whom? Did some of those who were more closely associated with L’Abbé act as intermediaries in this process? As you can see, I have rather more questions than answers about this particular list of subscribers.

Enjoying the Minuet ‘à Quatre’

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About three years ago, I wrote some posts about dances for four. With the earlier ones, I speculated that they were more enjoyable than the danses à deux because they were less technically demanding. This very obviously applied to the minuets ‘à quatre’ of which five survive in notation.

Le Menuet à Quatre. Anonymous, 1706.

Minuet & Jigg. Mr Holt, 1711

Menuet à Quatre. Pecour, c1713

Minuet aquatre figuret. Pecour, [1700-1725? Manuscript collection compiled 1751]

La Carignan, Menuet à Quatre. Dezais, 1725

I discussed Mr Holt’s Minuet & Jigg back in 2015, so this time round I will look just at the four French choreographies.

Unlike the English dance, the French ones are all simply minuets using the pas de menuet pretty well throughout. Before I analyse each of them in more detail, here are some facts and figures for comparison.

The anonymous Menuet à Quatre appears in Feuillet’s Vme Recueil de danses de bal pour l’année 1707 published in 1706. It is the last of the three dances in that collection, the other two being danses à deux. The source of the music has not been identified, although it does appear in a set of ‘Suites de danses … qui se joüent ordinairement à tous les bals chez le Roy’ dated to the first decade of the 18th century. In his Avertissement for the collection, Feuillet says that the minuet is ‘si en vogue qu’il ne se fait aucune assemblée où il ne soit dansé’, adding that he has ‘pris le 1er air qui m’a tombé sous la main car tous les menuets y sont également bons’. The choreography has the musical structure AABBAAB (A=B=4) and is short, with only 28 bars in 6/4.

Pecour’s Menuet à Quatre appears in the Nouveau recüeil de dance de bal et celle de ballet published by Gaudrau around 1713. This collection brings together 9 ballroom dances and 30 theatre choreographies, with the Menuet à Quatre as the last but one of the ballroom dances. The musical source has not been identified. The choreography has the musical structure ABACABACA (A=B=C=8) giving a rondeau form and 36 bars in 6/4 (the music is written in 3). Again, this dance is short. In his Preface to the collection, Gaudrau tells us that Pecour’s choreography was danced at the last ball at Marly (Louis XIV’s country retreat, where the King could relax away from the rigorous etiquette of Versailles).

Dezais includes La Carignan, Menuet à Quatre in his Premier livre de contredances published in 1725. Little or no research has been done on this collection (which does not feature either in the Little & March 1992 catalogue La Danse Noble or Lancelot’s La Belle Dance of 1996) so I cannot tell whether there is a concordance for the music. This choreography uses a musical structure 3 x AABB (A=B=4). At 48 bars of 6/4 music it is a little longer than its predecessors.

The Minuet aquatre figuret by Pecour is recorded in the manuscript compiled by the dancing master Felix Kinski in Oporto in 1751. It appears among other French ballroom choreographies, presumably brought together (and taught) by Kinski. This minuet for four is very different from the others. The choreography’s music, for which no source has been identified, has the structure 7 x AABB + AA (A=8 B=16) with 120 bars in 6/4 (the music is written in 3). The dance has a ‘Change’ and ‘Figure’ structure very much like a cotillon. As I mentioned in posts back in 2014, the form of the cotillon goes back at least as far as 1705 and Feuillet’s ballroom dance for four entitled Le Cotillon. Such dances seem to have been popular around 1715-1725, so perhaps Pecour’s choreography belongs to that period.

What do these facts and figures tell us? The evidence confirms a couple of things. One is that menuets à quatre were danced at French royal balls and were popular lower down the social scale. Another is that, like the menuet à deux, they could be danced to any minuet music (though, perhaps, the A, B and, sometimes, C strains needed to be the right length).

I will address other questions in later posts, for example how the menuets à quatre relate to the menuet à deux as recorded by Pierre Rameau in his 1725 treatise Le Maître a danser and how they relate to each other.

Anon Menuet a Quatre 1

Anonymous. Le Menuet à Quatre (Paris, 1706), First plate.