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Season of 1725-1726: Solo Entr’acte Dances at Lincoln’s Inn Fields

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The following solo entr’acte dances were given at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1725-1726:

Scotch Dance

Wooden Shoe Dance

Passacaille

Les Caractères de la Dance

French Sailor

French Clown

Chacone

Louvre

Flag Dance

Dutch Boor

Saraband

Spanish Dance

Dame Gigogne

As I mentioned in my last post about the entr’acte solos at Drury Lane, this season the Passacaille and the Spanish Dance were also performed there.

I recently wrote a post about Scotch Dances on the London stage and I began by mentioning those performed during the 1725-1726 season. Mrs Bullock performed a solo Scots Dance at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 4 October 1725 and repeated it at least ten times that season. Thanks to her and Newhouse (who performed a Scottish Dance with Mrs Ogden at least five times this season), Scotch Dances had become a regular feature in the entr’actes by the mid-1720s. Although we still don’t know much about them and where they might have come from.

On 13 October 1725, Nivelon performed a Wooden Shoe Dance and repeated what was surely the same dance ‘in the Character of a Clown’ (meaning a rustic or peasant) on 25 October. The solo was billed simply as a Wooden Shoe Dance for the rest of the season and he performed it at least eleven times. There had been occasional Wooden Shoe Dances as early as 1709-1710, but it was Nivelon who established them in the entr’acte repertoire. He sometimes danced a Wooden Shoe duet with Mrs Laguerre (although not in 1725-1726), but his solo was far more popular.

Only one of the many solos and other dances given in the entr’actes at London’s theatres over the course of the 18th century is widely known among those with an interest in dance history. At Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 27 November 1725, Marie Sallé performed ‘Les Caractères de la Dance, in which are express’d all the different Movements in Dancing’. The description refers to Rebel’s score, which runs through the courante, minuet, bourée, chaconne, saraband, gigue, rigaudon, passepied, gavotte, loure and musette in some eight minutes or so. This dance (which was also occasionally performed as a duet) has been much discussed and often recreated. Its history on the London stage is worth a post of its own, so I won’t say much here. Mlle Sallé gave it three times during the 1725-1726 season. It was revived by her once in 1726-1727 and then several times as Les Caractères de l’Amour (which I assume was essentially the same) in 1733-1734, her penultimate season on the London stage. The solo obviously proved popular, because it was performed by several of London’s leading female dancers into the early 1750s.

A solo French Sailor was apparently danced at Lincoln’s Inn Fields by Francis Sallé on 3 January 1726. I have been wondering whether this really was a solo, since every other performance of the French Sailor this season was a duet by both Sallés. There is no other reference to Francis giving a solo Sailor’s Dance, with the exception of his appearance in a Sailor’s Hornpipe in 1729-1730. The advertisement refers to ‘Mons Salle’s French Sailor’, which may simply be meant to draw attention to the fact that he had created the duet that he danced with his sister. Of course, he may simply have adapted that duet into a solo to be performed alongside the solo French Peasant by Nivelon and Mrs Bullock’s solo Scotch Dance on the same bill.

On 31 March 1726, Nivelon danced a solo French Clown. Although he was occasionally so billed, he was more often advertised in a Clown solo (he appeared at least once as a Dutch Clown). Nivelon’s repertoire, in particular his appearance in pantomime afterpieces, needs careful analysis, but it is possible that the main difference between these three solos was their costumes rather than their choreographies. The term ‘Clown’ can have rustic connotations, but perhaps Nivelon’s solo was related to the ‘Buffoon’ depicted by Lambranzi, who describes his performance thus (the translation is from New and Curious School of Theatrical Dancing translated by Derra de Moroda, edited by Cyril Beaumont and first published in 1928, p. 25):

‘This buffoon does various foolish but curious pas, with distorted but comic jumps, which he varies as much as possible and endeavours to make still more humorous, until the air has been played three times.’

Lambranzi shows the Buffoon performing a suitably distorted pas.

In 1725-1726, four different female dancers performed a solo Chacone in the entr’actes at Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The first was Mrs Bullock on 31 March 1726, followed on 9 May by Mrs Anderson, on 11 May by Miss Latour and on 14 May by Mrs Wall. All were benefit performances (Miss Latour was dancing at her own benefit). Mrs Anderson went on to perform her solo Chacone another eight times during the theatre’s summer season. Without their music, it is difficult to know what these solos might have been like. Were they related to Pecour’s ‘Chacone pour une femme’ danced to music from Lully’s Phaëton and published in notation in 1704? Mrs Bullock’s Chacone was part of her repertoire from 1714-1715 to 1734-1735 and undoubtedly changed over the years. What little evidence we have of her technical abilities (in the form of L’Abbé’s ‘Saraband of Issee’ and ‘Jigg’ created for her and Dupré) suggests that she could be a virtuoso dancer. Was her solo Chacone popular because it was a tour de force?

Leach Glover made his first appearance of the season on 14 April 1726, a benefit for Mrs Laguerre and her husband, when he danced a solo Louvre. Most advertisements for the Louvre referred to the duet Aimable Vainqueur, a favourite for benefit performances, but solo billings point to quite different dances. They are never billed explicitly as such, but at least some of them may have been ‘Spanish’ dances using loures either from Lully’s Le Bourgeois gentilhomme or Campra’s L’Europe galante. There was a recent precedent for such a solo in L’Abbé’s ‘Spanish Entrée’ created for the young George Desnoyer in 1721 or 1722 and published in notation around 1725.

This solo was to Lully’s music and provides a glimpse of the male dance virtuosity to be seen in London’s theatres at this period. This first plate includes cabrioles and a pirouette with pas battus (in modern terminology petits battements). Later in the solo there are several entre-chats à six, some of which are incorporated into tours en l’air.

At his benefit on 15 April 1726, Nivelon included his solo Flag Dance – a piece that he seems to have had a near monopoly on. He apparently introduced it to the London stage at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1723-1724 and was last billed performing it in 1730-1731. This is another piece which might have a link to Lambranzi, who has a dance by a ‘Switzer’ with a ‘standard’.

Nivelon’s dance may also have been related to the ‘Flourishing of the Colours’ performed by Signora Violante at the King’s Theatre in 1719-1720.

Nivelon was very busy in the entr’actes during 1725-1726, for on 15 April he also added a Dutch Boor to his repertoire. As I have mentioned in earlier posts, ‘Dutch’ dances were very popular on the London stage, although – apart from the Dutch Skipper – solo dances were far less often performed than duets. By London audiences, a ‘Dutch Boor’ was probably seen as a Dutch peasant or country bumpkin. Nivelon was rarely seen in ‘Dutch’ dances and this seems to be the only time he performed such a solo on its own.

Mrs Wall danced a solo ‘new Saraband compos’d by Dupre’ at the benefit she shared with Newhouse on 30 April 1726. It is possible that she had been taught by Dupré, although this was not mentioned in the bills. I wrote about the Saraband on the London Stage back in 2015, so I won’t say more here – except to suggest that this solo was a ‘French’ rather than a ‘Spanish’ Saraband.

There was a solo Spanish Dance at Lincoln’s Inn Fields this season, given by Lesac on 11 May 1726 – his benefit shared with Miss Latour, both of them billed earlier in the season as scholars of Dupré. Could this also have been a loure?

The last of the solos danced at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1725-1726 was a ‘new Comic Dance called Dame Gigogne’ performed by Mrs Anderson on 5 July 1726. This seems to be the only mention of this character in the entr’actes at London’s theatres. Dame Ragonde, however, turns up several times, notably in the mid-1710s, usually alongside various commedia dell’arte characters and sometimes with her ‘Family’. Dame Gigogne and Dame Ragonde are all but interchangeable and can be traced back in dance and music contexts to the late 17th century, notably to the cast of Le Mariage de la Grosse Cathos given at Louis XIV’s court in 1688. For a short discussion of both characters and their history see Musical Theatre at the Court of Louis XIV by Rebecca Harris-Warrick and Carol G. Marsh (1994), particularly pages 41-43. This image of Dame Ragonde may hint at Mrs Anderson’s appearance in her solo.

She is shown as a lady of uncertain age in a distinctly old-fashioned dress.

I will turn my attention to dancing in the pantomime afterpieces at both playhouses next, although one or two other topics may intervene over the next few weeks.

Season of 1725-1726: Shared Entr’acte Duets at Drury Lane and Lincoln’s Inn Fields

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In the entr’actes, duets were far more popular than group or solo dances during 1725-1726. At Drury Lane 13 were given, while at Lincoln’s Inn Fields there were 22. The following duet titles were advertised at both theatres:

Polonese

Dutch Skipper

Pastoral

Saraband

Minuet

Peasants

I will begin with these shared dance titles and go on to the other duets at each of the theatres in later posts.

The Polonese was performed at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 1 October 1725 by Lally and Mrs Wall and then at Drury Lane on 25 November 1725 by Rainton and Miss Robinson. This duet had been advertised for the first time at Drury Lane in 1724-1725, where Rainton and Miss Robinson danced it on 18 March 1725 followed by Lally and Mrs Wall on 20 April. This duet would last for several seasons. The title must surely mean ‘Polonaise’ – perhaps prompted by the forthcoming marriage of the French King Louis XV to the Polish Princess Maria Leszcynska on 5 September 1725 (N.S.).

The Dutch Skipper was given on 21 April 1726 by Thurmond Junior and Miss Tenoe, for the shared benefit of Rainton. At Lincoln’s Inn Fields it was performed by Pelling and Mrs Ogden on 24 June. Although ‘Dutch’ dances can be traced back to the 17th century in London, the earliest known billing of the Dutch Skipper was 7 June 1704, when Philippe Du Ruel danced it with his wife at Drury Lane. The duet quickly entered the repertoire and, following the opening of the Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre in 1714, was regularly performed in the entr’actes at both playhouses. It was usually a duet for a man and a woman, but was sometimes danced by two men or even two women. It was also occasionally danced as a solo – in 1725-1726 it was so performed at Drury Lane by Sandham (or perhaps his son). Music for the Dutch Skipper, sometimes called ‘Du Ruel’s Dutch Skipper’ survives in several sources, none of them earlier than the second decade of the 18th century. This version comes from the Lady’s Banquet, 3d Book, published around 1732 (although an earlier edition, which does not survive, was dated 1720):

Lambranzi depicts a Dutch sailor and his wife in part 2 of his Neue und curieuse theatrialisches Tantz-Schul, who might provide a clue to the costuming of the Dutch Skipper dances on the London stage.

Although the solo Dutch Skipper was usually performed by speciality dancers, the duet was often given by those who also performed a belle danse repertoire suggesting that it was not simply a comic-grotesque number.

A Pastoral duet was danced at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 29 September 1725 by Lally and Mrs Wall and on 5 January 1726 by Le Sac and Miss La Tour, who performed it several times before the end of the season. During the Lincoln’s Inn Fields summer season, the Pastoral was taken up by Burny and Mrs Anderson. At Drury Lane, a Pastoral duet was first given by Boval and Mrs Brett on 3 May 1726 and then taken up at later performances by Michael Lally and Mrs Walter. Were all these duets the same or different choreographies, or were they perhaps variations around a shared choreographic theme? The first Pastoral to be advertised on the London stage was a solo by Miss Schoolding at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1717-1718, while the duet was first given in a version danced by Delagarde’s two sons in 1718-1719. It is possible that, at Lincoln’s Inn Fields at least, the choreography for the 1725-1726 duets derived from the Pastoral performed by Glover and Mrs Wall in 1723-1724. Glover was also the lead dancer in a group Pastoral Dance given at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1726-1727, so he may have been the choreographer of both versions. Without music, it is difficult to have much idea of what these dances were like – although we could, perhaps, look to Myrtillo for clues.

The Saraband and Minuet are well-known as dance types and at Drury Lane and Lincoln’s Inn Fields both were performed at benefit performances as duets. In 1725-1726 at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Glover and Mrs Laguerre danced a ‘Saraband and Minuet’ together for the benefit she shared with her husband the actor-singer John Laguerre on 14 April 1726. At Drury Lane, Boval and Mrs Brett danced the same combination at her shared benefit on 6 May 1726. As a duet, the Saraband seems to have reached the entr’actes only in 1723-1724, although it had been danced as a solo from at least 1713-1714. Similarly, the solo entra’cte Minuet dates back to at least the first decade of the 18th century. It made its first entr’acte appearance as a duet with Glover and Mrs Laguerre in 1725-1726 – also the first time that a Saraband and Minuet were billed together. The Minuet was also given with other ‘Ball Dances’, although it was rarely performed in the entr’actes other than for benefits. I give more information about both dances in my earlier posts about the Saraband and the Minuet on the London stage.

The other duet performed at both playhouses was Peasants, which might perhaps be classified as the opposite to the Pastoral duet. ‘Peasant’ dances were very popular and I included them in my post The Most Popular Entr’acte Dances on the London Stage, 1700-1760. One of the issues in 1725-1726, as in other seasons, is whether the dances variously billed as French Peasants and Peasants are actually the same dance. At Lincoln’s Inn Fields, a Peasants duet was given by Nivelon and Mrs Bullock on 19 October 1725 when he had danced a French Peasant with Mrs Laguerre on 29 September. At Drury Lane, Sandham’s children danced Peasants on 25 May 1726 (there was no entra’cte French Peasants duet there that season). Peasants duets apparently entered the entr’acte repertoire a decade later than French Peasants, in the 1710s. The first such duet to be advertised was danced by Shaw and Mrs Younger at Drury Lane in 1718-1719. Again, without music it is difficult to know what such dances might have been like, although I suspect that they were similar in many respects to the French Peasant dances, for which both music and choreography may be found in French sources.

In my next post I will look at the other duets given at Drury Lane.

The Saraband on the Restoration Stage

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I keep coming across references to sarabands in plays from the Restoration period. I am wondering why this dance was popular at this period. I have previously written about the saraband as an entr’acte dance in London’s theatres during the early 18th century, but here I will look a little further back.

My research into dancing on the London stage only goes back to 1660 and a little before. The earliest mention of a saraband I have encountered appears in Sir William Davenant’s The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru, first performed in 1658. The entertainment has six Entries, each of which ends with a dance.  In the fourth Entry:

‘… a saraband is played, whilst two Spaniards enter from the opposite sides of the scene, exactly clothed and armed according to the custom of their nation and, to express their triumph after the victory over the natives, they solemnly uncloak and unarm themselves to the tune and afterwards dance with castanets.’

Davenant’s The Law against Lovers (a conflation and adaptation of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and Much Ado About Nothing) was seen by Samuel Pepys on 18 February 1662, when he noted ‘the little girl’s (whom I never saw before) dancing and singing’. She was Mary (‘Moll’) Davis, who played Viola in Davenant’s play and is described in the text as ‘dancing a Saraband awhile with Castanietos’.

Did John Dryden draw on one or the other (or both) of these for the scene in his The Indian Emperor in which two Spaniards ‘dance a Saraband with Castanieta’s’? The Indian Emperor was first performed in 1665 and published in 1668. The dance comes near the beginning of act four scene three. Here is the description from the second edition of 1668 (coincidentally the year the play was performed at the court of Charles II).

Indian Emperor Saraband 1668 (2)

The context for the dance, with its unarmed Spaniards, is strikingly similar to Davenant’s in The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru.

Here is a Spaniard dancing with castanets from a much earlier work. Might he have influenced the dancing seen on the London stage?

Spaniard Ballet de la Nuit

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

I was prompted to write this post by the discovery of yet another saraband performed in a play. Shakespeare’s The Tempest was adapted by Davenant and Dryden and, in their new version, first performed in 1667. I won’t go into all the details of the adaptation here but, among other additional characters, Ariel was given a companion female spirit named Milcha. At the end of the play, just before Prospero’s final speech, Ariel and Milcha dance a saraband together.  It is worth noting that Ariel may originally have been performed by Mary Davis.

I am aware, of course, of the ‘sarabands’ in The English Dancing-Master published by John Playford in 1651. Further afield, there are the appearances by Mlle Verpré in the ballets de cour of Louis XIV, as ‘L’Espagnolle … dansant avec Castagnettes’ in the final Entrée of the Ballet de la Raillerie (1659) and ‘dansant une Sarabande’ in the seventh Entrée of the Ballet des Saisons (1661). The saraband appears most notably in the ‘Ballet des Nations’ within Le Bourgeois gentilhomme in 1670, which just postdates the period I have been concentrating on. Research among the music sources of the period would doubtless reveal many more examples of this dance, with and without castanets.

What were the reasons for Davenant’s and Dryden’s repeated use of the saraband in their plays? How would their audiences have seen and interpreted this dance? It isn’t difficult to see, with these examples, that on the early Restoration stage the saraband was often closely linked to Spanish characters, but is there more to its use than simply the Spanish connection? Further research, in both earlier and later periods, could well uncover a far richer picture and perhaps reveal more about dancing in London’s theatres during the 1660s and 1670s.

 

Describing a Saraband

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Quite some time ago, I wrote a piece on the saraband which included the following description from Pomey’s Le Dictionnaire royal augmentée (1671) in a translation by Patricia Ranum.

‘At first he danced with a totally charming grace, with a serious and circumspect air, with an equal and slow rhythm, and with such a noble, beautiful, free and easy carriage that he had all the majesty of a king, and inspired as much respect as he gave pleasure.

Then, standing taller and more assertively, and raising his arms to half-height and keeping them partly extended, he performed the most beautiful steps ever invented for the dance.

Sometimes he would glide imperceptibly, with no apparent movement of his feet and legs, and seemed to slide rather than step. Sometimes, with the most beautiful timing in the world, he would remain suspended, immobile, and half leaning to the side with one foot in the air; and then, compensating for the rhythmic unit that had just gone by, with another more precipitous unit he would almost fly, so rapid was his motion.

Sometimes he would advance with little skips, sometimes he would drop back with long steps that, although carefully planned, seemed to be done spontaneously, so well had he cloaked his art in skilful nonchalance.

Sometimes, for the pleasure of everyone present, he would turn to the right, and sometimes he would turn to the left; and when he reached the very middle of the empty floor, he would pirouette so quickly that the eye could not follow.

Now and then he would let a whole rhythmic unit go by, moving no more than a statue and then, setting off like an arrow, he would be at the other end of the room before anyone had time to realise that he had departed.

But all this was nothing compared to what was observed when this gallant began to express the emotions of his soul through the motions of his body, and reveal them in his face, his eyes, his steps and all his actions.’

This passage is well-known among dance historians and has been cited by many of us.

Recently, I was looking at an essay in the volume The Ancient Dancer in the Modern World, edited by Fiona Macintosh and published in 2010, and I came across the following quotation (p. 30):

‘What would someone admire more? The continuity of their many pirouettes or, after this, their suddenly crystallised posture, or the figure held fixed in this position? For they whirl round, as if borne on wings, but conclude their movement in a static pose, as if glued to the spot; and with the stillness of the pose, the image presents itself.’

This passage comes from one of the Orations of the Greek rhetorician Libanius, describing a dancer in the classical period. I was immediately struck by the link between Libanius’s description and that of Pomey more than a thousand years later and, of course, many writers of Pomey’s era (and later) were steeped in classical literature.

I haven’t followed this up, and I don’t really intend to, but I do have a couple of questions. Is there a direct link between the two passages? If there is, what might that tell us about dancing, and particularly the saraband, in the late 17th century?

Dancing ‘Spaniards’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

The Saraband on the London Stage

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The first saraband to be advertised as an entr’acte dance on the London stage was danced, together with a ‘Jig’, by the actress Elizabeth Younger at Drury Lane on 3 May 1714. Her appearance was described as ‘being the first time of her dancing alone on the stage’ – she was just fourteen but already had several years of acting experience. The last advertisement to mention a saraband was for a performance at Covent Garden on 13 February 1742. The dancer was the Italian virtuoso Barbara Campanini, ‘La Barbarina’. Little evidence survives to tell us what these dances were like. Both dancers were trained in French dancing, la belle danse. Miss Younger was really an actress who danced, although the surviving choreography for the Türkish Dance duet by Anthony L’Abbé shows that her technique was quite considerable. Perhaps her solo saraband was comparable to Feuillet’s Sarabande de Polixène. Although she was only twenty-one, La Barbarina was a first-rate ballerina fresh from success at the Paris Opéra where her technique had dazzled audiences.  I wonder whether her saraband was more like those created by Feuillet and Pecour for male soloists?

The first saraband duet was advertised for a performance at Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre on 5 May 1724. The dancers were Dupré and Mrs Wall. He was then one of the leading male dancers in the company, while Mrs Wall seems to have been a promising newcomer (she disappeared from the bills within just a few years).  She danced another saraband later the same season with Leach Glover, also a leading dancer at Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Both Dupré and Glover were accomplished exponents of la belle danse. Glover went on to perform sarabands with Mrs Laguerre and then Miss La Tour, both leading dancers in John Rich’s company, into the early 1730s. A clue to the nature of all these duets may lie in the Saraband’ of Issee, created by Anthony L’Abbé in the mid-1710s for Dupré and Mrs Bullock and published in his A New Collection of Dances around 1725. The duet is one of three choreographies to the same piece of music, taken from Destouches 1697 opera Issé. The other two dances are both by Pecour. L’Abbé’s dance is technically the most demanding of them. Mrs Bullock, as well as Dupré, was expected to perform beaten steps, turns and ornamentations normal for male technique (although she did not do the entrechats-six notated for Dupré, substituting plain changements instead).

The Saraband’ of Issee was a showpiece, which later dancers advertised in sarabands may or may not have been able to emulate. There is also a quite different saraband danced on the London stage and published in notation. L’Abbé’s The Prince of Wales’s Saraband was created for the birthday of Queen Caroline and performed at Drury Lane on 22 March 1731 by William Essex and Hester Booth. This ballroom duet has no spectacular steps. It makes its effects through subtle ornamentation, including modulations to the timing of individual pas composés although, like the stage choreographies, it recalls the contrast between fast and slow, dynamic and languid described by Pomey in 1671. Such an unadorned choreography requires true elegance and the utmost refinement of technique from its dancers. Hester Booth (née Santlow) was famous for her ‘address’ (which may loosely be translated as comportment). Her partner William Essex (son of the dancing master John Essex who had translated Rameau’s Le Maître a danser) must have been her equal. Was the notated choreography what they actually danced at Drury Lane? Evidence from other notated dances suggests that they may well have included some difficult unrecorded ornamentations.

Did the saraband really disappear from the London stage after 1742?

Anthony L’Abbé. Saraband’ of Issee [c1725], first plate.

Anthony L’Abbé. Saraband’ of Issee [c1725], first plate.

Anthony L’Abbé. The Prince of Wales’s Saraband [1731], first plate.

Anthony L’Abbé. The Prince of Wales’s Saraband [1731], first plate.

 

 

Feuillet’s Sarabands

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Six of the surviving notated sarabands are by Raoul Auger Feuillet. All are solo dances. He included two in his 1700 collection of his own choreographies, both to the ‘Spanish’ saraband in the Ballet des Nations from Le Bourgeois gentilhomme. I’ll look at those later, alongside Feuillet’s versions of the Folie d’Espagne. The other four sarabands are from a manuscript collection possibly compiled between 1710 and 1720. Three are solos for a woman and the fourth is a solo for a man.

As I said in my last post, I’ve been working on one of the sarabands for a woman – the Sarabande de Polixène. I’ve been wondering how the three female solos relate to one another, given that they are all by the same choreographer. I’ve long been interested in the very different choreographies created for male dancers (the complexities of most of these suggest that they were created for male professionals). These four sarabands provide an opportunity for some analysis. Unfortunately, I only have recorded music for the Sarabande de Polixène which makes reconstruction of the other solos difficult. I feel that such reconstruction is always the best basis for any analysis. I’ll just have to see what the notations themselves can tell me.

None of these solos is long. The Sarabande de Mr. Feüillet for a woman, whose music remains unidentified, has 40 bars. The Sarabande de Mr. Feüillet to music from act 1 scene 5 of Gatti’s opera Scylla (1701) has only 36 bars – I’ll refer to this dance as the Sarabande de Scylla. The Sarabande de Mr. Feuillet for a man, also with unidentified music, has 48 bars. The Sarabande de Polixène is the longest, with 64 bars of music taken from act 3 scene 5 of Colasse’s opera Polixène et Pirrhus (1706). All the music for these dances has a basic AABB structure with a B section longer than the A section. However, the Sarabande de Scylla has an AABBB’ structure in which both A and B have 8 bars and B’ has 4.

I find it useful to do some basic analysis to start with, looking at how many steps in a choreography incorporate jumps or beats or turns. Sometimes such ornamentations can point to a dance for the stage rather than the ballroom. In all three of the female solos around one-third of the steps include one or more jumped elements. The inclusion of beats runs from only 3% of steps in the Sarabande de Scylla to 11% in the Sarabande de Polixène. Both the female solo Sarabande de Mr. Feüillet and the Sarabande de Scylla add turns to around 45% of their steps, but the Sarabande de Polixène does this with only 22%. Does this suggest that the last is more presentational than the other two? Well, it might depend on where the dancer most often faces at the end of individual steps. The number of basic, unornamented steps ranges from 35% in the female Sarabande de Mr. Feüillet to 50% in the Sarabande de Scylla. Are there any conclusions that can safely be drawn from this?

The male solo saraband both overlaps with and radically departs from the step vocabulary of the other three dances, so I will devote a separate post to it. I will also look at the pas composés shared by these four solos, by which I mean those steps formed from two or more basic steps with or without further ornamentation.

In the meantime, here is some notation from one of the female solos. Note the pirouette on both feet with a full turn towards the end of this section.

Sarabande de Mr. Feüillet (undated). First plate

Sarabande de Mr. Feüillet (undated). First plate

The Saraband

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I’ve recently been working on Feuillet’s solo Sarabande for a woman to music from Colasse’s 1706 opera Polyxène et Pirrhus. This choreography survives in a single manuscript source and must date to period 1706 to 1710. The music is very different from the better-known saraband in the Entrée for Spain within the Ballet des Nations that ends Lully and Molière’s Le Bourgeois gentilhomme. It seems that, in the early 18th century, there were two distinct types of saraband – one being French, as in the Sarabande de Polyxène, and the other Spanish, the best known examplar being the Folie d’Espagne.

A remark on the radio, describing  the saraband as ‘slow and stately’ prompted me to take a closer look at this dance type. I admit to being very tired of hearing the expression ‘slow and stately’ in relation to the very varied ballroom and theatre dances of the late 17th and 18th centuries, but it is difficult to know how to counter it.

There are at least 27 surviving choreographies labelled as sarabands, to which can be added four Folie d’Espagne notations (not included in the following statistics). The dance was popular both in the ballroom and on the stage. Ten of the notated sarabands are identifiable as ballroom dances. Nine of these include the saraband alongside other dance types in mini-dance suites. Five choreographies can be linked directly either to the Paris Opéra or the London stage. Six more dances are male solos and there are five female solos. All of these may have been intended either for the stage or as exhibition dances. Four of the solos (two male and two female) are to the saraband in Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, marking them out as ‘Spanish’.

There is, of course, much more to the saraband as a dance. Do the choreographies themselves differentiate between ‘French’ and ‘Spanish’ sarabands, or do these distinctions lie hidden within style and technique rather than on view in the step vocabulary and choreographic motifs? I will try to address these issues in later posts.

In the meantime, here is a description of a dancer performing a saraband from Father François Pomey’s Le Dictionnaire royal augmentée published in Lyon in 1671. The translation of the French original comes from a 1986 article by the researcher Patricia Ranum.

‘At first he danced with a totally charming grace, with a serious and circumspect air, with an equal and slow rhythm, and with such a noble, beautiful, free and easy carriage that he had all the majesty of a king, and inspired as much respect as he gave pleasure.

Then, standing taller and more assertively, and raising his arms to half-height and keeping them partly extended, he performed the most beautiful steps ever invented for the dance.

Sometimes he would glide imperceptibly, with no apparent movement of his feet and legs, and seemed to slide rather than step. Sometimes, with the most beautiful timing in the world, he would remain suspended, immobile, and half leaning to the side with one foot in the air; and then, compensating for the rhythmic unit that had just gone by, with another more precipitous unit he would almost fly, so rapid was his motion.

Sometimes he would advance with little skips, sometimes he would drop back with long steps that, although carefully planned, seemed to be done spontaneously, so well had he cloaked his art in skilful nonchalance.

Sometimes, for the pleasure of everyone present, he would turn to the right, and sometimes he would turn to the left; and when he reached the very middle of the empty floor, he would pirouette so quickly that the eye could not follow.

Now and then he would let a whole rhythmic unit go by, moving no more than a statue and then, setting off like an arrow, he would be at the other end of the room before anyone had time to realise that he had departed.

But all this was nothing compared to what was observed when this gallant began to express the emotions of his soul through the motions of his body, and reveal them in his face, his eyes, his steps and all his actions.

There is more, but isn’t this more than enough to refute the idea of the saraband (or, indeed, any baroque dance) as ‘slow and stately’? The expressive possibilities outlined in this passage can readily be seen in the surviving notated sarabands.