19th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dance and the City’ New College, Oxford, 18 & 19 April 2017

Abstracts

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Papers

19th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dance and the City’ New College, Oxford, 18 & 19 April 2017

Olive Baldwin, Thelma Wilson Essex

Few and far between: female dancing teachers in eighteenth century British cities

The most cursory look at eighteenth-century newspapers reveals a large number of schools in British cities that offered dancing as an extra, taught by ‘proper masters’, ‘able masters’, ‘eminent masters’ and, by the end of the period, ‘professors of dancing’. Many of these masters combined attendance at boarding schools with running their own establishments for the teaching of social dancing to both children and adults. It might be thought that principals of schools for young ladies would have preferred female dance teachers, and that fathers might have seen male dance teachers as a threat to the virtue of their daughters, and so preferred lady teachers, but this was not the case. Indeed female dance teachers were very few and far between. This paper will explore why it was very difficult for women to support themselves by teaching dancing in British cities and towns, and why they managed to do so successfully in both Bath and Edinburgh. It will look in detail at the careers and personalities of the women who worked as teachers of dance in these two centres.

19th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dance and the City’ New College, Oxford, 18 & 19 April 2017

Ricardo Barros Royal Academy of Music

From the ‘Terreiro’ to the ‘Paço’ – The extraordinary journey of a dance form in colonial Rio de Janeiro

The year is 1807. Threatened by Napoleonic invasion, the Portuguese Prince Regent D. João VI flees and settles his court in Rio de Janeiro. As the courtiers mingle with the locals (in surreal ceremonials and liaisons which reflect how unusual the royal family was), we witness how the lascivious ‘Lundú’, formerly prohibited by the church, gradually made its way into the noble salons. This paper will accompany its continuing mutation over the centuries- from the initial absorption of Iberian influences to the later recapturing of its African roots - in a living proof of the melting pot and cultural blending that permeates Brazilian society to this day. The paper will be complemented by a practical workshop on the first conjectural historical reconstruction of the Lundú, by the author.

19th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dance and the City’ New College, Oxford, 18 & 19 April 2017

Theresa Buckland University of Roehampton, London

Dance, Space and the City in Nineteenth-Century Britain

The rapid pace of spatial and architectural changes in Victorian cities impacted upon customary spaces for dancing. Once communally respected spaces such as streets and greens where annual dance festivities took place became subject to new pressures from commerce and the property owning classes. This antagonism against public dancing often resulted in legal restrictions and, in many cases, the eventual decline of the dancing practice. Morris dancers in the Manchester hinterland, for example, were frequently subject to this battle for ownership of the space and literally lost their passage through the city, as new buildings were erected on their traditional route for dancing. On the other hand, some dance practices flourished in urban conditions as entrepreneurs opened up their premises for dancing and, indeed, built new venues to accommodate the rising population’s interest in social dancing. New interest in health and safety measures often continued to exercise constraints on how city spaces were used for the people’s recreational dancing. This paper explores how transformations of space usage in expanding cities such as London, Manchester, Liverpool and Bristol impacted upon the dancing habits of the working people during Victoria’s reign. Source materials include newspapers, diaries, paintings, fiction and music sheets.

19th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dance and the City’ New College, Oxford, 18 & 19 April 2017

Iris Julia Bührle Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, New College, University of Oxford

Shakespeare ballets from Noverre to Taglioni

Shakespeare’s plays have been the principal inspiration for literary ballet plots in the history of dance. Several sources affirm that the first Shakespearean ‘ballet d’action’ was ‘Cleopatra’ by Jean-Georges Noverre (1765). In 1785, his pupil Charles LePicq created a ‘Macbeth’ ballet in London and in the same year, the tradition of the innumerable adaptations of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ began in Venice. In Milan, Salvatore Viganò created several extensive and elaborate ‘coreodrammas’ in the early nineteenth century. The Parisian Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin presented a ‘Hamlet’ ballet with a happy ending in 1816; the Paris Opera followed about two decades later with a highly eclectic version of ‘The Tempest’ (Adolphe Nourrit/ Jean Coralli, 1834), a play that was adapted even more freely four years later by Filippo Taglioni. This paper will look into a number of significant Shakespeare ballets which were created in various dance metropolises (especially London, Paris and several Italian cities) during the eighteenth and nineteenth century. It will examine possible reasons for the choice of sources and for the often significant changes made by the librettists and choreographers.

19th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dance and the City’ New College, Oxford, 18 & 19 April 2017

Michael Burden New College, University of Oxford

Dancing with the Didelots

One of James Gillray’s most striking dance caricatures is ‘Modern Grace; or the Operatical Finale to the Ballet of Alonzo e Caro’. It shows three dancers: Charles-Louis Didelot who had arrived in London in 1796; his young wife Rose, whom he had lured away from the Paris Opera in 1793; and Mademoiselle Parisot, one of the most accomplished dancers of the late 18th century. On their arrival, the Didelots were an instant success, with Rose Didelot’s ‘grace, dignity and ease’ being singled out for praise; she was also praised for ‘the graceful disposition of her body’, and is frequently pictured in a see-through costume. There was clearly a complicated relationship between these three dancers; Rose is shown as a rather sharped-faced women with a long nose, a profile accentuated in a later solo print ‘No Flower that Blows is like this Rose’. And this particular pose appears in the illustration of the second volume of Rudolph Ackermann’s The Microcosm of London, which had illustrations by Thomas Rowlandson (who did the figures), and Auguste Charles Pugin (who provided the architectural details). The ballet supposedly being performed was the 1788 L’Amour et Psiché, revived in 1796, but Rowlandson has re-used Gillray’s image to represent the dancers, and as well as examining the inter-relationships of dancers and images. This paper argues that the watercolour version of Modern Grace by Rowlandson at the Yale Centre for British Art, relates in fact to Rowlandson’s and Pugin’s print.

19th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dance and the City’ New College, Oxford, 18 & 19 April 2017

Hillary Burlock

‘What Dukes, what Drapers, what Barbers, and Peers’: Representations of the Election Ball

Eighteenth-century elections have been extensively analysed by Frank O’Gorman as instances of civic ritual. However, his analysis only briefly touches on the contributions of election balls to civic identity. The field of dance history often analyses dance forms, styles, and footwork, but relatively little has been written on dance as a political tool. Similarly, political history overlooks dance as an alternative lens for viewing electoral culture. My research seeks to bridge this gap. Caricatures are a rich resource for reconstructing popular attitudes towards election balls. These caricatures form the base of my analysis, with newspapers, novels, and journals filling in the details, demonstrating the importance of dance within the urban environment. Election ball caricatures are key sources, unveiling themes of class, gender, the role of the MP, and how dance played out in the ballroom. Election balls were significant social and political events that brought the community together following an MP’s election. Social dance was a tool that aimed at social cohesion, while politics and social hierarchies were enacted in the ballroom. My paper demonstrates that the ballroom was a politically-charged arena of display in which the intricacies of social behaviour and movement through dance contributed to the political campaign.

19th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dance and the City’ New College, Oxford, 18 & 19 April 2017

Keith Cavers Independent Scholar

Hanquin & Columbinichee; Dancing, Punch, and Muffins at Poplar Grove and the Dancers of the Juvenile Drama

The starting point of this paper is a strange set of prints which have recently come to light and which have clear dance connections – their history connects to the ballet in the London Theatres in the period 1810s and 1820s, a period which is often underrated, falling as it does between the neo-classical ballets of earlier years and the undoubted glories of the ‘Romantic Ballet.’ But do the dances and dancers of this period deserve their relative obscurity?

19th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dance and the City’ New College, Oxford, 18 & 19 April 2017

Mary Collins Royal Academy of Music and Royal College of Music

‘I never saw a more beautiful scene… attended by great crowding and confusion’

So writes the Duke of Dorset of both the splendour and chaos at a ball at Dublin Castle during the commemoration of the King’s Coronation in October 1731. In eighteenth-century Ireland Dublin Castle was not only the centre of political power but also the epicentre of the strategic social round which both contained and entertained the Irish beau-monde within a harsh environment of inequality and social division. Amidst the pomp, ceremony, civic and legislative business which comprised the Viceregal court was a need for constant hospitality and entertaining. These activities were so numerous they sometimes spilled out of the castle into the city. But how well did these activities achieve their aim and how efficiently did the various Lords Lieutenants, Viceroys and Vicereines discharge their responsibilities in this area? This paper investigates the opportunities for dance within the context of the eighteenth-century Viceregal court and how they were affected by conditions, policy, scandal and attitudes during each term of office.

19th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dance and the City’ New College, Oxford, 18 & 19 April 2017

Anne Daye TrinityLaban, London, and The Historical Dance Society

A Masque in the City, the City in a Masque: The Triumph of Peace, 1634

The seasonal masque of 1633/34 was offered to Charles I by all four Inns of Court, written by James Shirley. With numerous antimasques, a team of sixteen Grand Masquers chosen from the most handsome, youthful and graceful members of the Inns, designs and costumes by Inigo Jones, and embellished with music by William Lawes and Simon Ives, this was one of the most sophisticated ballets de cours seen at Whitehall. The king expressed his appreciation of the performance by ordering a repeat performance in the City of London. With a first performance organised by committees of lawyers, then a second controlled by city authorities, an unusually extensive batch of documents has survived to illuminate the performance beyond the text alone. The overarching theme was the celebration of Peace, Law and Justice under the reign of Charles I (a few years before the dissension that led to the Civil War). Antimasque themes included the control of ale-houses, the problems of financial monopolies and an appearance of London artisans. From the wealth of information available for analysis, this paper will seek to capture the essence of the events and demonstrate how an argument was developed through dance.

19th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dance and the City’ New College, Oxford, 18 & 19 April 2017

Joseph Fort King’s College, London

The Public Balls in Late-Eighteenth-Century Vienna

This paper explores the social makeup of the public balls in late eighteenth- century Vienna. Focusing in particular on the Hofburg Redoutensäle and the Mehlgrube venues, I draw on contemporaneous descriptions and ticket lists preserved in the Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv to determine who attended these events. I argue that members of the nobility, the bourgeoisie, and the artistic community were all present at these balls, and consider the dance hall’s role as a vital mixing ground for eighteenth-century Viennese society. I also compare dance-hall attendance with concert-hall attendance, to demonstrate the potential for cross-fertilisation between the two domains. I claim that Jürgen Habermas’s basic three criteria for the emergence of a public sphere (1962)— disregard of status, accessibility of culture products, and inclusivity of the space—are found in this setting, and consider ways in which the dance hall might relate to later extensions and critiques of Habermas’s theory.

19th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dance and the City’ New College, Oxford, 18 & 19 April 2017

Sophie Horrocks

Stone dancers in the city: the ‘ballet girl’ and the nineteenth century public imagination

In an 1857 exhibition of the models for the new Wellington Monument, critics were shocked by the veritable ‘invasion’ of stone dancers featured on the majority of the proposed designs. At once a debased, disgusting rabble and an object of voyeuristic fascination, by the mid nineteenth-century London newspaper accounts increasingly drew attention to the figures of the ‘ballet girls’ as a social entity outside the theatre. Rather than being confined to the theatrical stage, contemporary accounts of ballet girls mapped these dancers onto the streets of London and into visible aspect of everyday city life, including public transport and civic buildings. This paper will investigate how the rhetoric behind the common parlance term ‘the ballet girl’ takes its place in the growing contemporary phenomenon of urban culture, amidst political and nationalist grievances, and alongside the concept of the urban crowd. Moreover, it will seek to demonstrate how the public imagination continually reconfigured the role of dancers in everyday society outside of the theatre and beyond their dancing days.

19th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dance and the City’ New College, Oxford, 18 & 19 April 2017

Joanna Jarvis Birmingham City University

Costume and the availability cascade. Female costume for dance on the London stage in the early eighteenth-century

It is commonly asserted that Marie Camargo was the first dancer to raise the hemline of her skirt to allow her footwork to be seen by the audience. This is backed up by the fact that she was known for her skill in beaten steps, and the 1730 portrait by Lancret showing her dancing in a shortened skirt. It is also well known that French dancers moved between Paris and London at this time, especially to dance for John Rich’s company. One image from London however, hints at a more complex story; the 1731 frontispiece engraving of Harlequin Horace, in the centre of which a couple are dancing, the woman having tucked up her skirts to reveal her feet and ankles. Can we believe the histories, or has the information about skirt lengths for dancers been the victim of an availability cascade? The phenomenon defined as a self-reinforcing cycle that explains the development of certain kinds of collective beliefs. This paper will discuss female costume for dance on the London stage in the early part of the Eighteenth century, and whether reaction to its form can be seen as part of the social discourse on politeness, deportment, and bodily control.

19th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dance and the City’ New College, Oxford, 18 & 19 April 2017

Fabienne Lagrange Bordeaux Montaigne University

Ballroom dancing at the heart of the City of Bordeaux, during the long eighteenth century

As new economic and social models are taking shape during the long eighteenth century, more and more emphasis is put on leisure and entertainment, and ballroom dancing plays a significant role in urban sociability. The archives of Bordeaux are repositories of a number of documents related to dance, but few were exploited, and most of them are still unpublished. Chronicles, diaries, travel journals of foreigners staying in the city, orders and decrees, police reports, trials and sentences issued by the courts, accounting records, administrative or private correspondence, original drawings and architects plans, and so on, bear witness to the love of dance shared by every class of Bordeaux society, the key role that dancing-meeting places played in social and political life, and the fortunes and misfortunes of a great variety of venues, which number is rising along with the spread of ‘dansomania’ at the turn of the century. Some of these documents enable a special focus on the ‘Bordeaux Wauxhall(s)’: in 1769, with the shareholder company holding the privilège des spectacles he just set up (and controls), the Marshal Duke of Richelieu, Governor of the Province in Bordeaux, launches a large-scale project, claiming to follow the ‘English example’ in order to gather ‘all kind of citizens’ in a new and innovative venue. The chosen architect is a Parisian, Nicolas Le Noir Le Romain whose ‘Wauxhall de la Foire Saint-Germain’ ensured his fame and reputation as un homme admirable pour créer, comme par enchantement, des lieux d’assemblée riches, élégants, & commodes. But very soon this ambitious undertaking becomes a major issue of rivalries between local governments.

19th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dance and the City’ New College, Oxford, 18 & 19 April 2017

Caitlyn Lehmann University of Melbourne

From Saddle to Stage: Ballet at Astley’s Amphitheatre, 1780-1800

In the early 1780s, the success of ballets by Noverre and the celebrity of the Vestris père et fils inspired a wave of spoofs, satires and loving send-ups among London’s theatrical establishments. From south of the Thames, Astley’s Amphitheatre played its part with the announcement of an ‘astonishing’ new spectacle of dancing on horseback by young John Astley, comprising both comic and serious dances. Taking his cue from the ballet’s topicality, John’s dashing blend of terpsichorean dexterity and equestrian mastery was to become the mainstay of the Amphitheatre’s entertainments during the ensuing years, fusing physical athleticism with refinement, and introducing elegance into the motley milieu of circus. This paper will focus on the Amphitheatre’s borrowings from ballet, and how John and his father Philip Astley charmed, thrilled and perplexed the London public with their balletic offerings. In the process, the paper will reflect on the role of ballet in the evolution of the circus as family- friendly entertainment—and the contribution of circus to the accessibility and growing appeal of ballet in the late eighteenth century.

19th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dance and the City’ New College, Oxford, 18 & 19 April 2017

Carol G. Marsh Washington, DC

The Theatrical Origins of Gennaro Magri’s Contraddanze

Dance historians have focused on Magri primarily as a theatrical dancer, but the 39 contraddanze included in the appendix to his 1779 treatise Trattato teorico- prattico di ballo also deserve more scholarly attention. These choreographies, composed for balls at the court of Ferdinand IV of Naples, present a wide array of figures; and Magri’s seemingly limitless imagination offers us a wonderful smorgasbord of ways to move bodies through space in symmetrical patterns. The complexity of many of the dances required practice in advance of court balls, and in this regard they are far removed from the undemanding dances published by the hundreds in England and northern Europe in the last decades of the 18th century. Magri bases most of his choreographies on the principle of longways progression that was established as the norm in England in the late 17th century. But Magri does not limit himself to the usual two-couple exchange found in the English model: instead he presents eight different starting configurations, and he includes several dances for uneven numbers of men and women, sometimes paired as same-sex couples. I propose that these unusual features reveal a theatrical origin, and that Magri’s contraddanze were adaptations of his group dances choreographed for his ballets at San Carlo. A comparison of Magri’s dances with theatrical contredanse notations from the 1782 Ferrère manuscript supports this theory.

19th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dance and the City’ New College, Oxford, 18 & 19 April 2017

Jelena Rothermel Department of Theatre Studies, University of Leipzig

Arlecchino crossing the Channel: Danced Interrelations between the Fairground Players of Paris and London

The London Stage of the early 18th century was packed with Harlequins, Scaramouches, and other well-known commedia all’improvviso characters. ‘Italian mimick scenes’ or ‘night scenes after the Italian manner’ – usually short afterpieces – may have influenced the development of the typical English theatrical pantomime, such as the Lun pantomimes by John Rich at Lincoln’s Inn Fields or John Weaver’s first ‘imitations of the Roman pantomime’ at Drury Lane. Despite the link to the Italian tradition of pantomime and grotesque dancing implied by their names, these scenes were often performed by Parisian Forains at London Fairs or public theatres. Using the case of Francisque Moylin, uncle of the famous dancer Marie Sallé and manager of a troupe of fairground players, I will analyse the relation between the Parisian Foire, London public theatres and London Fairs. How did the dance culture(s) in the public and fairground theatres of both cities influence one another? Could the Parisian Forains use the same repertoire in both cities or did they change it according to the need of the different audiences? Despite the lack of choreographic notations, music scores or text books, I will try to depict this cultural link between two of the most vivid European capitals of that time by putting together a variety of sources like police reports, descriptions of foreign travellers, legal documents, and account books.

19th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dance and the City’ New College, Oxford, 18 & 19 April 2017

Uta Dorothea Sauer Technische Universität Dresden

Dance in German Cities and its Influence on the Civil Development

In the 17th and the 18th centuries, dance was an important part of the bourgeois education, life and business. Dance studios were established at Universities in Strasbourg, Leipzig or Jena as well as at schools in Zittau, Dresden and Hamburg. It is known that dance was an equivalent subject to natural science, languages, history, rhetoric, logic and fencing. On the other side, dance was an instrument of communication. Businessmen danced in opulent dancing balls during the trade fairs in Hamburg, Leipzig or Frankfurt in order to come into contact and for demonstrating their dignity. Ballrooms were built by citizens in civic towns. In this paper, the role of dance for the education, the civil lifestyle and the propagation of the bourgeoisie will be discussed. On what occasions have the commoners danced? What function has the dance had for economy, culture and personal advancement? To answer these questions images of the dancing balls, festivity descriptions, chronicles and framework programmes of trade fairs will be presented.

19th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dance and the City’ New College, Oxford, 18 & 19 April 2017

Richard Semmens University of Western Ontario

Prison culture, an urban folk-hero, and a failed pantomime: Harlequin Sheppard (Drury Lane, 1724)

The first new pantomime Drury Lane management mounted following the phenomenal success of Harlequin Doctor Faustus in the 1723-24 season was a piece called Harlequin Sheppard, which premiered 28 November 1724. It had an initial run of just seven performances, and was never revived. In a very recent book I have briefly touched on this pantomime, noting how it resonated with the theme of prison culture at the time. In this talk I propose to examine some components of the production, and to consider the character who inspired it in a little greater detail. What must have been a fairly hasty decision to produce and prepare the new pantomime seems to have been something of an imperative for Drury Lane management, for the title role of the show, John Sheppard (1702-24), was based in a real-life personality who had been executed at Tyburn just twelve days before the show’s premiere. The pantomime sought to tap into a craze for John (or Jack) Sheppard that had swept through London in the Fall of 1724, and Drury Lane hoped to capitalize.

19th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dance and the City’ New College, Oxford, 18 & 19 April 2017

Samantha Sing Key Independent Scholar (formerly University of Sydney, Australia)

‘A delightful winter residence’: the civilising role of the ballroom in early Washington D.C.

Arriving in Washington City in October 1803, senatorial wife and future First Lady Louisa Adams was shocked to find a scene of ‘utter desolation’ – no roads, no bridges and scarcely any buildings. The new capital city of America in no way resembled the bustling capital cities of Europe, and was scorned by Americans and foreign visitors alike. Yet in time, Washington City became ‘a delightful winter residence’. Its transformation from a wilderness to a civilised city was aided by the constant ‘Balls, Dinners, Parties and Dejeunées Dansants’ during the winter Congressional season. Such events were held at great trouble and expense for all involved, sometimes even at risk of personal safety, but they were essential to the sociability of the city’s elite. Examining letters, diaries and newspaper accounts of early Washington D.C., this paper explores how the ballroom allowed early Washingtonians to create a new elite American identity, allowing society to project an image of civility and political legitimacy for both domestic and foreign observers. Additionally, this paper considers how Washingtonians used the ballroom to dissociate their society from old-world Europe even as they sought to emulate their European counterparts in their dances.

19th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dance and the City’ New College, Oxford, 18 & 19 April 2017

Cornelis Vanistendael Leuven, Belgium

New quadrilles for the société philharmonique d'Anvers 1813 - 1818

Commercial ballrooms appear all over Great Britain in the course of the 18th century. They represent a new type of contact zones enhancing the cultural mobility of new urban elites. As such they are a unknown phenomenon for the Southern Netherlands before 1815. Buildings solely dedicated to musical leisure remained scarce until the 1850s. Most cities only disposed of one baroque-style theatre typically seating a few hundred, also used for social dancing during the ball season. In Antwerp, the opera house exploited a monopoly on public balls just like its Parisian counterpart, but not until 1810. As a consequence of this peculiar absence of free entrepreneurship, the first commercial concert room and ballroom was erected in Antwerp only in 1813. The archives of the society have mostly vanished, except for the dance programs for the first few seasons of its existence. Because of the new influx of different social groups in a brand new social club, explanation of every dance movement seemed desirable. It guaranteed that every member could prepare decently and start on an equal footing. These programmes offer a quite unique view on the emergence of a new dance style in a small town in the Southern Netherlands on the eve of Waterloo.

19th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dance and the City’ New College, Oxford, 18 & 19 April 2017

Hanna Walsdorf Leipzig

Hosting a Congress, Spreading a Dance Craze: Vienna and the Waltz

Without a doubt, Vienna is rightly considered the waltzing ‘capital’ of the world. Though its roots are to be found in various alpine whirling dances popular during the 16th and 17th centuries, the history of the waltz is intimately connected with the city of Vienna and the peace talks held there in 1814–1815. During the Congress of Vienna, even the royalty in attendance were gripped by the rampant waltz-mania: “Le Congrès ne marche pas, il danse”, as the Austrian diplomat Charles Joseph de Ligne put it. However, making the dance socially acceptable was no mean feat: waltzing was not allowed in the presence of the emperor and his court, though these restrictions were eased somewhat with regard to the foreign princes and diplomats. The paper traces the various ways the waltz was utilized in the countless balls held in Vienna at the time of the Congress: Was it a form of dance diplomacy, or was it an instrument of politically motivated distraction? By evaluating the eyewitness accounts of Richard Bright, Auguste La Garde- Chambonas, Matthias Franz Perth, and Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, these questions shall be answered from a contemporary point of view – contributing to an urban topography of the waltz.

19th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dance and the City’ New College, Oxford, 18 & 19 April 2017

Erin Whitcroft University of Exeter

‘A natural and cultivated gracefulness’: how to move in the Eighteenth Century

The ideal of the graceful figure presented in popular physiognomic treatises and Romance novels during the eighteenth-century belied an anxiety that, despite the transparency of the body, it could be trained to ‘perform’ innate qualities such as those associated with grace. John Weaver’s 1721 treatise Anatomical and Mechanical Lectures upon Dancing is one such example of the ambivalence surrounding the idea that graceful movement could be taught. Weaver finishes his treatise with the caveat ‘a peculiar Grace and Air to the Motion; which is not only very difficult to attain; but much more so, to lay down Rules for them.’ However, earlier in the treatise Weaver presented detailed anatomical descriptions of how to attain graceful positions of the head, feet and limbs. This tension is exacerbated by the concept of grace itself, standing as it does at a crossroads between a range of theological, ethical, and aesthetic discourses. How did the differing status of grace as innate or performed permeate popular eighteenth-century texts? In this paper I will consider a range of sources, including conduct books and dance treatises, in an effort to explore the pedagogy of grace.