The ballerina's ascent:
pantomime, voluptuousness and the portrayal of women
in pantomime ballets during the second half of the eighteenth-century
(Béatrice Pfister)
With the rise of pantomime ballet in the 18th century, the audience was no longer supposed to admire dancers only for their beautiful body movements but also for their acting skills. How did this major transition affect ballerinas, traditionally lauded for both their natural attractiveness and talent? One might expect less biased male assessment; but the result was that voluptuousness was even more emphasized. This phenomenon was linked to the trend of libertine literature and ballet themes. But the mere addition of pantomime created an opportunity for ballerinas to be more seductive, even slightly provocative, when portraying passionate love stories, intense emotions or playing touching and ingenuous young women, often pursued by infatuated wealthy men. Our hypothesis is that while the late 18th century still featured extremely famous male dancers, a transition was underway, positioning women for a more prominent role in ballets, ultimately leading to their dominance over male dancers in the 19th century.
Béatrice Pfister, Paris, France:
In 2009, Béatrice Pfister was admitted to the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris in the humanities. She obtained her Master’s degree in French literature in 2012. From 2013 to 2021, she held various teaching and research positions at French universities, including Sorbonne Nouvelle, Aix-Marseille, Versailles-Saint-Quentin, and Lille. Her teaching areas included world literature and French literature for literature students, as well as theatre history for students in the performing arts. In 2020, she defended her PhD in Comparative Literature at Sorbonne Nouvelle University in Paris under the supervision of Françoise Lavocat. Her dissertation, titled “Dance trying to conquer the status of art: apology and theory of ballet in French and Italian texts from the end of the 16th century to the end of the 18th century”, explored how dance in French and Italian writings from the late 16th to the late 18th century sought to establish itself as an art form.
