2016-Vorträge

Mikhailova-Smolniakova, Ekaterina: On the problem of pictorial dance sources: dance "formulas" in Italian figurative arts in the Age of Basse dance
(Ekaterina Mikhailova-Smolniakova)

The object of current research is the group of Italian iconographic dance sources depicting dance pair (as a single image or as a part of a scene) and dated mainly from 1380 to 1450. The objective is to offer the applicable method of iconographic analysis of dance images as a secondary source. The lecture will contain the description of the main dance formulas for the depicting a dance pair in the period in question in Italy and the presentation the main questions we should ask ourselves analyzing the dance pictures. We are going to replace the idea of descriptive analysis by the alternative one and demonstrate how we can interpret these pictures (both as a visual source and as a work of art) and use the pictorial information. Finally, we will review the main difficulties and get to know spokesperson's solutions for described pictorial dance formulas.

Ekaterina Mikhailova-Smolniakova, St. Petersburg, Russland:

SmolniakovaE bearb1 Ekaterina Mikhailova-Smolniakova has started the career in historical dances in 2001. The leader of the renaissance dance ensemble "Vento del Tempo", one of the leaders of St. Petersburg Historical Dance Club, the secretary of the Historical Dance Association, a member of the organizing committee of the annual conference considering the reconstruction of European historical dances of XIII-XX c., the author of the book "Dance of the Renaissance" (published in Russian in 2010). Main field of interests is the dance and festival culture of the Renaissance in the context of aesthetic of the period.

Venetian theatrical dance coming to Paris: Italian influence on French ballet during the seventeenth century
(Bianca Maurmayr)

This paper is about the cultural exchange between Venice and Paris during the Seventeenth-Century, particularly in dance culture, by groups of itinerant artists. In this context, the influence of Venetian artists on Parisian aesthetics in opera and theatrical dance will be analyzed, in a frame of seventeen years (1645-1662).
A first encounter with the Venetian theatrical production dates back to 1645, when La finta pazza was performed in Paris. The two main agents of this cultural exchange are the famous set-designer Giacomo Torelli and Giovanni Battista Balbi, one of the most imitated ballet composers of the time in Venice. Which impact did this first choreographic exchange have on French culture? Which characteristics were adopted and which ones were refused? Except from the young dancers who played in La finta pazza, did Balbi encounter other French dancers and/or ballet masters? We will stress on Balbi's significant role in demonstrating dance versatility, expressiveness through pantomime, and fancifulness in France.
As Le Nozze di Teti e di Peleo were performed in 1654, France had seized the eclectic aspects and the expressive strength Italian theatrical dance could represent. Especially, France had integrated the idea that song and dance were essential parts of the drama, and had to look for unity of action.
As far as Venetian opera was commercialized, networks were created between important cities, as Venice, Florence, Rome, and Naples; the French version of Ercole amante (1662) should therefore also be recalled, as an adaptation of Italian theatrical production: Buti's verses were still sung in Italian, but the entrées de ballet were fully French.
Stressing on the variety of subjects and styles of Venetian balli, this paper underlines that ballet was not mainly a French invention. Even, it reveals the central role of Venetian artists in the development of French theatrical dance during the middle of the Seventeenth-Century.

Bianca Maurmayr, Rom, Italien:

MaurmayrB bearb1 Bianca Maurmayr graduated at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis in 2012 in Theories and Practices of Arts – Dance Studies. She is now following a PhD at the same University under the supervision of Marina Nordera, and has benefitted of a doctoral contract. Her research deals with the cultural exchange between Paris and Venice during the Seventeenth-Century, and stresses on theatrical dance. She served an internship at the Cini Foundation in Venise (2012) and at the Centre National de la Danse of Paris-Pantin (2011).

Balli e Banchetti
(Alan Jones)

A Renaissance ball was never an isolated event, but was always given together with a banquet or supper and customarily followed by a collazione of light refreshments. This alone is reason enough for dance historians take interest in the developing field of culinary history. In the particular case of sixteenth-century Ferrara, two cooking professionals (scalchi or maîtres d'hôtel) offer rare information on how balls, choreographed interludes and other entertainments functioned in the context of an aristocratic meal. Cristoforo da Messisbugo (Banchetti, 1549 and subsequent editions) and Giovan Battista Rossetti (Dello Scalco,1584) describe many dozens of festive meals at the Este court over the course of several generations. The highpoint of Rossetti's career was at Urbino, in the employ of Lucrezia d'Este, to whom Caroso dedicated the passo e mezzo Ardente sole. After considering the general structure of different meal types in Renaissance Italy (banchetti, cene, pranzi, desinari) the presentation will focus on two that are particularly interesting for their choreographic elements. Among the questions on which Messisbugo and Rossetti shed light: When did a ball begin, and when did it end? What instruments and dance types were favored? How were theatrical dances incorporated into a meal? How were the performers costumed, and how did they make their entrances and exits?

Alan Jones, Paris, Frankreich:

Alan Jones, American dance historian living in Paris, reconstructs choreography from the late Renaissance to the early Romantic period. In recent years he has gone well beyond the strict frontiers of dance, exploring culinary history, domestic and theater architecture and other aspects of everyday life that influenced balls and ballets. Author of the Dictionnaire du désir de la bonne chère (Honoré Champion, 2012), he is at work on a study of menus through the ages.

Producing Cavalli's Operas: To Dance or Not to Dance?
(Wendy Heller)

In her 2007 article entitled “Hercules Dancing in Thebes, in Pictures and Music,” Barbara observed that “a general assumption persists among musicologists and dance historians that dance in seventeenth-century opera was a French phenomenon, with Italians only occasionally staging a final ballo.” A notable exception to this attitude, as Sparti noted, can be found in the work of Irene Alm, who uncovered nearly a hundred examples of dance music for the balli in Venetian opera. Typically placed at the ends of Act I and II, the balli, as Alm had observed, were not inconsequential intermission features, but rather were of central importance to the pacing and meaning of the opera: they often comment on the action, explore an exotic theme or express some otherwise forbidden notion implicit in the plot, providing visual spectacle and variety, but also created transitions out of the rarefied world of sung drama, articulating the three act structure. Nonetheless,few productions of seventeenth-century Venetian operas today—even those that claim to be historically informed—attempt to grapple with this particular aspect of the performance; instead directors typically omit the dances, add them to places where they don’t belong, and/or use choreographies that are not only anachronistic but disruptive.
My paper explores the treatment of balli in present day performances of Cavalli’s opera. After examining some recent productions in which their omission or misplacement distorts the structure and meanings of the opera, I consider the question from the point of view of the editor of the critical edition, focusing in some detail on the problems raised by the dances in Veremonda, L’Amazzone d’Aragona (1652/3), which I am currently preparing for Bärenreiter. Finally, I hope to establish some guidelines for the inclusion of dance the operas of Cavalli and his contemporaries, and in so doing adhere to the principles exemplified by Sparti’s work.

Wendy Heller, Princeton, New Jersey, USA:

Heller bearb1 Wendy Heller, Professor and Chair of the Department of Music, specializes in the study of 17th- and 18th-century opera from interdisciplinary perspectives, with emphasis on gender and sexuality, art history, and the classical tradition. She trained as a singer at New England Conservatory, where she also studied dance with Julia Sutton, and received her PhD in musicology at Brandeis University. The winner of numerous grants and fellowships, her extensive publications include the award-winning Emblems of Eloquence: Opera and Women’s Voices in Seventeenth-Century Venice and Music in the Baroque. She is currently completing a book entitled Animating Ovid: Opera and the Metamorphoses of Antiquity in Early Modern Italy, as well as critical editions of Handel’s Admeto and Francesco Cavalli’s Veremonda L’Amazzone d’Aragona. Heller is also Vice-President of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music.

Italienische Tanzformen am kaiserlichen Hof – Die Rolle von Eleonora I. di Gonzaga (1598-1655) im choreographischen Kulturtransfer
(Gerrit Berenike Heiter)

Vom 15. bis ins 17. Jahrhundert war das Mäzenatentum am Mantuaner Hof der Gonzaga eines der blühendsten in Norditalien. Eleonora I. di Gonzaga wuchs folglich in einer von Musik, Tanz und Theateraufführungen geprägten Umwelt auf. Mit ihrer Eheschließung mit Kaiser Ferdinand II. brach eine neue Blütezeit des italienischen Tanzes am kaiserlichen Hof an. Bereits bei den Hochzeitsfeierlichkeiten im Jahre 1622 in Innsbruck begegneten sich zwei verschiedene Tanzkulturen. Der Artikel zeigt die Bedeutung von Eleonora I. di Gonzaga als Kunstmäzenin und Kulturvermittlerin nach. Die persönliche Vorliebe der Kaiserin für den Tanz zeigt sich nicht nur durch ihre Teilnahme, sondern die bewusste Einflussnahme auf die Aufführungen, die sie selbst initiierte und gestaltete. Im Kern dieses Artikels befindet sich eine Analyse ihrer choreographischen Ambitionen und persönlichen Strategie in Zusammenhang mit den Tanzaufführungen am Kaiserhof, wobei sie auch in den Kontext höfischer Tanzkultur der Zeit gestellt werden. Was aber unter einem „balletto", dem „ballo" oder den „balli" zu verstehen sei, muss man entweder aus dem Kontext herauslesen oder auch in Anbetracht der Herkunft des jeweiligen Berichterstatters versuchen zu definieren und lexikographische Probleme der Kategorisierung der Tanzformen lösen.

Gerrit Berenike Heiter, Köln, Deutschland:

Hazebroucq portrait bearb1 Gerrit Berenike Heiter ist Doktorandin, Schauspielerin und staatlich geprüfte Schauspiellehrerin mit einer Spezialisierung auf Commedia dell'arte, Barocktheater und historischem Tanz. Sie arbeitet aktuell an ihrem Promotionsprojekt der Theaterwissenschaft im binationalen Dissertationsverfahren an der Universität Wien und der Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense. Ihre Forschungsarbeit konzentriert sich auf französische Balettlibretti von 1573-1651 und auf eine Vergleichsstudie des Hofballetts in Frankreich und an den Höfen der österreichischen Habsburger. Sie unterrichtet Tanzgeschichte an der Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst Mannheim.

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Mikhailova-Smolniakova, Ekaterina: On the problem of pictorial dance sources: dance "formulas" in Italian figurative arts in the Age of Basse dance
(Ekaterina Mikhailova-Smolniakova)

Ekaterina Mikhailova-Smolniakova, St. Petersburg, Russland: