Contredances of 1760-1770s in France: a pot-pourri of interesting facts.
(Maria Derkach)

In the mid-eighteenth century, France saw the publication of hundreds of leaflets containing contredanses, which are believed to resemble one another. The notation for these contredanses and the textbooks about how to dance them seem to give exhaustive information. Yet any attempt to use all this for the reconstruction of a ball meets many problems, such as the direction and the length of the starting and finishing ronds, the number and types of contredanses for one ball, specific steps mentioned but not described in the text, etc. Other questions arise when we want to choose dances for a ball with a specific date and avoid those that were composed later. Finally, for a historian and a reenactor it is also important to know the way how they informed the participants about the list of dances before the ball.

A thorough analysis of different sources including those not containing notated choreographies and pot-pourris de contredanses allows us to enrich our knowledge of popular dances among contredanses françaises of 1760-1770s and even earlier.

Maria Derkach, Moscow, Russia

Graduated from Kaluga Dance College in 1998, she began to study historical dances in 2005. Today Maria is one of the leaders of the early dance school "Golden Forests", where she teaches classes of different levels on various topics from Baroque to XIX century social dancing. Maria has taught at regional workshops in Russia as well as abroad, delivered lectures at international conferences and published articles on early dance topics. She is currently a co-organizer of the Historical Dance Festival. Maria graduated from Moscow State University and holds a Ph.D. in mathematics.

Theatre dance’s response to increased urbanisation in the late C19th
(Jane Pritchard)

The presentation, illustrated by a power point, will look at how theatre dance in Western Europe became dominated by large-scale spectacular productions aimed at new, large, urban audiences in the latter part of the C19th. These ballets provide a contrast to the Romantic ballets of the earlier part of the century. They include Italian ballo-grande such as Excelsior restaged internationally, and productions referred to as music-hall ballets. These new ballets were performed for long runs of up to a year in one venue and presented in newly-built theatres designed to house spectacles. Those included in the discussion are the Alhambra the home of ballet in London from 1865, the Eden-théâtre in Paris (1883-1895), and the Bourse in Brussels inspired by the Alhambra and Eden. The presentation will consider how the new ballets reflected both the modern world and provided escape from contemporary society; how ballets became a means of mass communication and how productions transferred from one metropolis to another.

Jane Pritchard, London, United Kingdom

Jane Pritchard is curator of dance for the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. She co-curated Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes, 1909–1929 and edited the accompanying book. She was previously archivist for Rambert Dance Company and English National Ballet.  She has curated many exhibitions and displays, made radio programmes, curated seasons of dance films and contributes to numerous publications including the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and The Annual Register. She was the author of Anna Pavlova Twentieth Century Ballerina. She has been a recipient of a Churchill Travel Fellowship and the Anthony Denning Research Award. Her primary research interest is in late Nineteenth Century ballet. She was awarded an MBE for services to the arts in the 2014 New Year’s Honours.

Repertoires im Übergang - Antoine Pointels Tanzmusikpartituren und eine verschollene Tanznotation
(Giles Bennett)

Antoine Pointel (1660-1702) war ein Amsterdamer Musikverleger, der 1688 ("Deusiesme recueil des Dances et contre-dances") und 1700 ("Airs de Danses Angloises, Hollandoises et Francoises") Tanzmusiken inklusive der sonst oft fehlenden Bässe herausgab. Seine Drucke zeigen die Verbreitung und Anpassung verschiedener, teils national kodierter Tanzrepertoires und -formen: Französisch und niederländisch adaptierte, ursprünglich englische Country Dances; niederländische Nachkommen des Tanzrepertoires des frühen 17. Jahrhunderts; das "vieilles danses" Repertoire, das sich seit den 1650ern in Europa verbreitete; und, in seinem Druck von 1700, die neu auftretenden französischen "danses de ville". 

Pointels Schwager Jean Eude du Temps war Tanzmeister an der Amsterdamse Schouwburg. 1695 bewarb er ein "Recueil" mit Contredanses, die in selbst erfundenen "caracteres" notiert seien, sowie "Tables generales des Positions" für die "changements" in "la danse Serieuse" und dem "Balet". Auf Grundlage von Pointels Tanzsammlungen und seinen Verbindungen können Hypothesen bezüglich des Inhalts dieser verschollenen Tanznotationsquelle formuliert werden. 

Giles Bennett, München, Deutschland

Giles Bennett, Historiker, wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Zentrum für Holocaust-Studien am Institut für Zeitgeschichte München, Tänzer im Ensemble "La Danza München" (Leitung: Jadwiga Nowaczek - www.barocktanz.de), Mitherausgeber von " Barocktanz im Zeichen französisch-deutschen Kulturtransfers: Quellen zur Tanzkultur um 1700" Hildesheim 2008, verschiedene Aufsätze zum Tanz vom 17. bis zum frühen 19. Jahrhundert und dessen Rezeption ab dem späten 19. Jahrhundert.

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 18^th 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.

“From Ball Dance to English Country Dance: Continuity and Change in Early 18^th-century England”
(Carol G. Marsh)

The Lorin manuscript Livre de Contredance (c1685) supplies Baroque dance steps for 13 English country dances, but Lorin himself admits that there is no uniformity in the steps used by English dancers. I suggest that a more organic approach to the problem of foot work in English country dancing might be provided by the notated ball dances that share the same titles and music as their country dance offspring, most of which were published within a few years of their ball dance predecessors.

This paper will present several case studies of these dance “twins,” focusing on the following questions: was the original tune modified in any way, e.g., meter, key, length, phrase structure?  are the floor patterns of the ball dance reflected in the country dance? are any Baroque steps prescribed for the country dance, and if not, what suggestions are provided by the music and step vocabulary of the ball dance?

I suggest that the cessation of notated ball dances in the 1730s was one factor contributing to the increasing simplicity and uniformity of English country dances.

Carol G. Marsh, Washington DC, USA

Carol G. Marsh is a Professor Emerita at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, where she taught music and dance history for 28 years.  She received her Ph.D. in musicology from The City University of New York in 1985 with a dissertation on early 18^th-century French court dance in England.  Her publications include La Danse Noble (with Meredith Little) and Musical Theatre at the Court of Louis XIV: ‘Le Mariage de la Grosse Cathos’ (with Rebecca Harris-Warrick).  She has contributed articles and reviews to New Grove, Dance Chronicle, Dance Research Journal, and other publications.

She currently lives in Washington DC and worries constantly about the collapse of democratic principles.