The Great Leap from Earth to Heaven: The Evolution of Ballet and Costume in England and France in the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

The evolution of classical ballet from its accepted origins as one method of displaying status and aristocratic power in Renaissance Italy to its Romantic form, featuring professional ballerinas in white costumes dancing en pointe, took place largely during the long eighteenth century. This article discusses this transformation from the dual perspectives of choreography and costume by using the premise that these two vital elements in the presentation of ballet were co-dependent, each prompting the other to develop and evolve. Concentrating on Paris and London, it examines the relationship between court dress, fashion and theatre costume, and how this affected both the choreography and the style of dance throughout the long eighteenth century.

Keywords:

• eighteenth century
• ballet
• costume
• baroque
• theatre
• Louis XIV

Notes

¹ The Oxford English Dictionary defines ballet as ‘[a] dramatic entertainment consisting of dance and mime performed to music; (in early use) a theatrical spectacle intended to illustrate the costumes and culture of other nations, or to dramatise through music and dance some myth or narrative; (later) a theatrical dance performance using precise and highly formalised set steps and techniques’. <http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/14949?rskey=5eN3Z0&result=1#eid> [accessed 14 February 2015].

² Susan Au, Ballet and Modern Dance (London: Thames & Hudson, 2002), pp. 24–26. The ballet school of the Paris Opéra, still in existence today, was founded in 1713 to train professional dancers for the stage.

³ Pierre Rameau, Le Maître à danser (Paris, 1725), trans. by Cyril W. Beaumont (New York: Dance Horizons, 1970), pp. ix–x. For biographical detail, see Graham Sadler, The Rameau Compendium (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2014).

⁴ Danse noble and other terms associated with dancing techniques in late-seventeenth-century France are discussed in Jennifer Thorp, ‘Pecour’s Allemande, 1702–1765: How German Was It?’, Eighteenth-Century Music, 1:2 (2004), 183–204.

⁵ James Laver, Drama: Its Costume and Décor (London: The Studio Publications, 1951), p. 150.

⁶ Details of Subligny’s career are found in Philip H. Highfill, Kalman A. Burnim and Edward A. Langhans, A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers, and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660–1800, 14 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University, 1991), 328–29.

⁷ Tonnelet is the French word for a little barrel, which aptly describes the shape that the male tunic skirt began to take, as designers added small hoops of a similar shape to those worn by women, to denote leading characters. The term half-aerial was defined by Gennaro Magri, whose 1779 treatise, Trattato teorico-prattico di ballo, is one of the leading publications about eighteenth-century dance technique. See Deborah Crane and Judith Mackrell, Oxford Dictionary of Dance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 290.

⁸ Details of Ménestrier’s career can be found in Marian Hannah Winter, The Pre-Romantic Ballet (London: Pitman Publishing, 1974), pp. 7–12.

⁹ Père Ménestrier, Des Ballets Anciens et Modernes (Paris: Rene Guignard, 1682), p. 255.

¹⁰ Details of Balon’s career can be found in Highfill et al., Biographical Dictionary, Vol. 1, pp. 239–40.

¹¹ For Jean-Baptiste Lully, see Alison Latham (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

¹² Au, Ballet and Modern Dance, pp. 26–27.

¹³ A coryphée is a rank above the chorus but below soloist; usually dances in a small group. See Sandra Noll Hammond, ‘The Rise of Ballet Technique and Training: The Professionalization of an Art Form’, in Cambridge Companion to Ballet, ed. by Marion Kant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 65–77.

¹⁴ Rigaudon de Vaisseaux, Recueil de dances, composées par M. Pecour [...] et mise sur le papier par M. Feuillet (Paris: L’auteur et M. Brunet, 1700); see also Ferdinando Reyna, A Concise History of Ballet (London: Thames and Hudson, 1965), pp. 54–56.

¹⁵ Kellom Tomlinson, The Art of Dancing (New York: Dance Horizons, 1970), p. 151. Details of Kellom Tomlinson’s career can be found in Highfill et al., Biographical Dictionary, Vol. 15, pp. 21–23.

¹⁶ Laver, Drama, p. 150.

¹⁷ Rameau, Le Maître à danser, p. xii.

¹⁸ Richard Ralph, The Life and Works of John Weaver (London: Dance Books, 1985), p. 743.

¹⁹ Pier Jacopo Martello, Della tragedia antica e moderna (Rome, 1715), discussed in Winter, The Pre-Romantic Ballet, p. 65.

²⁰ Lincoln Kirstein, Fifty Ballet Masterworks (New York: Dover Publications, 1984) p. 70; Laver, Drama, p. 112; and Roy Strong, Ivor Guest, Richard Buckle, Barry Kay and Liz da Costa, Designing for the Dancer (London: Elron Press, 1981), p. 14.

²¹ Laver, Drama, p. 152; and Martin Eidelberg, ‘Watteau and Gillot: A Point of Contact’, The Burlington Magazine, 115:841 (1973), 232–39.

²² Strong et al., Designing for the Dancer, p. 36.

²³ Costume designs by Claude Gillot, Jean-Baptiste Martin and Louis-Rene Boquet can be viewed in the Bibliotheque National de France digital catalogue <http://gallica.bnf.fr/>

²⁴ Ralph, The Life and Works of John Weaver, p. 743.

²⁵ For Hester Santlow, see Moira Goff, The Incomparable Hester Santlow: A Dancer-Actress on the Georgian Stage (London: Ashgate, 2007).

²⁶ Sybil Rosenfeld, The Theatre of the London Fairs in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), p. 146.

²⁷ Elizabeth Miller Lewis, ‘Hester Santlow’s Harlequine: Dance, Dress, Status and Gender on the London Stage, 1704–1734’, in The Clothes That Wear Us, ed. by Jessica Munns and Penny Richards (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1999), pp. 80–101.

²⁸ Pierre Rameau, The Art of the Dancing Master Explained, trans. by John Essex (London: J. Brotherton, 1728).

²⁹ Benjamin Victor, Memoirs of the Life of Barton Booth, Esq. (London: J. Watts, 1733), pp. 49–51.

³⁰ Winter, The Pre-Romantic Ballet, gives a date for the engraving as ‘pre 1711’.

³¹ Pierre Rameau, The Dancing Master, trans. by Cyril Beaumont (New York: Dance Horizons, 1970), p. 12.

³² Rameau, The Dancing Master, pp. 94–95, 110.

³³ For Anthony L’Abbé, see ‘A New Collection of Dances’, in Music for London Entertainment 1660–1800 Series D (London: Stainer & Bell, 1991); and for Elizabeth Younger, see Highfill et al., Biographical Dictionary, Vol. 16, pp. 362–64.

³⁴ Au, Ballet and Modern Dance, p. 31.

³⁵ James Laver, Costume in the Theatre (London: George Harrap, 1964), p. 165; and Strong et al., Designing for the Dancer, p. 36; Arlene Cooper, ‘La Camargo’s Skirt: The Eighteenth Century Ballet Re-dressed’, in Dress, 10 (1984), 33–42.

³⁶ Au, Ballet and Modern Dance, pp. 31–32.

³⁷ Mercure de France, April 1764, pp. 770–72.

³⁸ John Thurmond, Three Entertainments Performed at Theatre Royal Drury Lane (London, 1727), pp. 17–18.

³⁹ Shearer West, ‘Beauty, Aging and the Body Politic’, in The First Actresses, ed. by Gill Perry (London: National Portrait Gallery, 2011), p. 110.

⁴⁰ Gregorio Lambranzi, New and Curious School of Theatrical Dancing: The Classic Illustrated Treatise on Commedia dell’Arte Performance (New York: Dover Publications, 2003).

⁴¹ Moira Goff, ‘In Pursuit of the Dancer Actress’, in Women’s Work: Making Dance in Europe before 1800, ed. by Lynn Brooks (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008), p. 183.

⁴² Martello, Della tragedia, p. 313.

⁴³ The symmetrical grandiose style of the Baroque gave way to the Rococo (from the French word Rocaille — rocks), a style based on natural forms, especially shells, from which were derived abstract ornaments in S and C shapes, with asymmetrical twists. It was a lighter, more capricious style that spread to all forms of decoration.

⁴⁴ Examples of these costumes can be viewed online at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts. An example of Martin’s costume design can be seen at <http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O577793/reine-de-sylphes-fashion-plate-martin-jean-baptiste>

⁴⁵ Michael Burden and Jennifer Thorp, The Works of Monsieur Noverre Translated from the French: Noverre, His Circle, and the English Lettres sur la Danse (New York: Pendragon Press, 2014); and Deryck Lynham, The Chevalier Noverre (London: Dance Books, 1972).

⁴⁶ Jean-Georges Noverre, Letters on Dancing and Ballets, trans. by Cyril Beaumont (New York: Dance Horizons, 1975), p. 73.

⁴⁷ Laver, Drama, pp. 154–55.

⁴⁸ Noverre, Letters on Dancing and Ballets, p. 75.

⁴⁹ Ralph, The Life and Works of John Weaver, pp. 855–1031.

⁵⁰ Lynham, Chevalier Noverre, p. 138.

⁵¹ Lena Rangstrom, Modelejon Manligt Mode (Helsingfors: Atlantis, 2003).

⁵² Noverre, Letters on Dancing and Ballets, p. 74.

⁵³ Ivor Guest, Ballet of the Enlightenment (London: Dance Books, 1996), p. 51.

⁵⁴ Gaétan Apolline Baldassare Vestris (1729–1808) was a French ballet dancer who studied with Louis Dupré at the Académie Royale in Paris and later the Opéra where he became dancing master to Louis XVI. See Highfill et al., Biographical Dictionary, Vol. 15, pp. 146–50.

⁵⁵ Giovanna Bacelli made her debut at the Kings Theatre in November 1774 and danced in operas, divertissements and pantomimes; see Karen Eliot, Dancing Lives: Five Female Dancers from the Ballet D'Action to Merce Cunningham (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007), pp. 7–32. For Adelaide Simonet, see Highfill et al., Biographical Dictionary, Vol. 14, pp. 78–79.

⁵⁶ Moira Goff, John Goldfinch, Karen Limper-Hertz and Helen Peden (eds), Georgians Revealed: Life, Style & the Making of Modern Britain (London: British Library, 2013), p. 107.

⁵⁷ Guest, Ballet of the Enlightenment, pp. 35–39.

⁵⁸ Judith Chazin-Bennahum, The Lure of Perfection: Fashion and Ballet, 1780–1830 (New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 47.

⁵⁹ Chazin-Bennahum, The Lure of Perfection, pp. 105–07.

⁶⁰ Chazin-Bennahum, The Lure of Perfection, p. 103.

⁶¹ The work premiered as a musical pastiche known as Le Ballet de la Paille (Ballet of the Straw) and was later renamed. It was first performed in London in 1791; see Guest, Ballet of the Enlightenment, pp. 386–88, 396.

⁶² Victoria and Albert Museum, The Origins of Ballet <http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/o/origins-of-ballet/> [accessed 29 May 2015].

⁶³ Victoria and Albert Museum, The Origins of Ballet.

⁶⁴ Gennaro Magri, Trattato teorico-prattico di ballo (Naples, 1779). Magri’s birth and death dates are unrecorded so his career is difficult to trace. For known details, see Mary Skeaping with Armgard Berry, Theoretical and Practical Treatise on Dancing: Gennaro Magri, Naples 1779 (London: Dance Books, 1988), pp. 9–10.

⁶⁵ Victoria and Albert Museum, The Origins of Ballet.

⁶⁶ Andrew McConnell, The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi: Laughter, Madness and the Story of Britain’s Greatest Comedian (Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2009), p. 144.