"The demoiselle behind the score: a tentative technical portrait of M.lle Guiot as she appears in the choreographies bearing her name in the Pécour-Gaudrau collection"
(Deda Cristina Colonna)

This paper aims to try to catch a reflection of a dancer's technical identity -  M.lle Guiot, who did her debut at the Paris Opera in 1689 according to Spire Pitou - , looking at the choreographies bearing her name within one specific collection of notated dances, i.e. the Pécour-Gaudrau collection. The reasons for such strong limitations of the corpus  for my research are mainly practical. The path of choreographic and notation analysis leads to comparison of as many sources as possible, so this could be the beginning of a broader study, in which the technical profiles of famous baroque dancers could be compared, as they appear in various dance collections ( see the attached files "Repertory Pécour-Gaudrau" and "Repertory Pécour-Feuillet"). For example, we can see that M.lle Guiot is the most represented dancer in the Pécour-Gaudrau collection (with 7 dances pour un homme et une femme , most of which with Mr. D. Dumoulin, 5 dances pour deux femmes, all of which with M.lle Prouost, and 4 solos), whereas M.lle Subligny appears to  be the primadonna of the Pécour-Feuillet recueuil (with 10 duets, all of which with M.r Balon, and 3 solos).

This paper continues along the path of choreographic analysis in the direction I first took when making a comparative study of the different versions of the Passacaille in Lully's Armide (5th Act), or of the loure Aimable Vainqueur. I will mostly focus on solos, which will be analyzed according to both quantitative (number of different steps, definition of Pécour's choreographic vocabulary, spacing) and qualitative (association of different steps, choreographic patterns, ornaments) criteria,  thus trying to understand whether we can at all sketch a technical portrait of M.lle Guiot, guessing what her favorite steps were and what kind of virtuosity is displayed in the choreographies that have granted her the gift of immortality. I will also concentrate on the style of the notation.

Colonna, Deda Cristina, Novara, Italia:

Deda Cristina Colonna was born in Novara, Italy; she  graduated in ballet  at Ecole Supérieure d’Etudes Chorégraphiques in Paris, where she also studied Labanotation extensively as well as baroque and Renaissance dance.  She graduated from the Sorbonne and later received a professional diploma in acting from the Teatro Stabile in Genova, Italy. She has been choreographing, dancing and teaching baroque dance for over 20 years with many different companies and in many theatres.  She is the Director of the Dance School of Civico Istituto Musicale Brera in Novara, Italy. She has recently began her career as director-choreographer, mainly staging  titles from the Baroque repertory. Her research mainly focuses on movement and notation analysis of dances notated in the  Beauchamp-Feuillet system.