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'National' and Character Dances in Late-Romantic Divertissement and Their Relationship with Baroque Suite

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Lecture-demonstration 'NATIONAL' AND CHARACTER DANCES IN LATE-ROMANTIC DIVERTISSEMENT AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP WITH BAROQUE SUITE By Maria Irene De Maeyer (University “La Sapienza”, Rome, Italy) Abstract (1) The dance structure of the divertissement has known in the Late-romantic ballet’s season a renovated glory and attention, and has been object of a new configuration; it’s easy to understand why, for a single divertissement - like a microcosm - included all the characteristics required for a successful ballet at the time: variety, spectacularity, virtuosity. Yet divertissement, by then was already around three centuries old, and succeeded Renaissance’s entrées. Abstract (2) Divertissement had a mutual relationship with the structure of the suite, that is literally “what follows, continuation”, thus letting us know how the major characteristic of a divertissement was, at this point, the inclusion of various performances put together. We will examine in depth how variety was not only intended as quantity but also very strongly as quality; for now we can say that both suite and divertissement were, as I stated, “container-formulas”. ⇒ 1.1 AN INTRODUCTION The Late Romantic ballet approximately 1870-1900 “ Divertissement meaning diversion, refers to a dance number offered to divert the audience's attention with momentary entertainment. Such displays of dancing for the sake of dancing, rather than for the sake of narrative or dramatic effect, came into history of ballet history out of the entrées […] Sometimes these separate little diversions made up a suite , as in the suite of national dances in the ballroom scene of Swan Lake or in the suite of fairy-tale characters in the wedding scene of Sleeping Beauty .” (Robert Greskovic, Ballet 101: A Complete Guide to Learning and Loving the Ballet. Limelight Editions 2005) “Memorable for this subject is the Paradise Feast organised at Castello Sforzesco [Milan] on January the 13rd, 1490 by Ludovico il Moro for his nephew Giangaleazzo Sforza’s wedding with Isabel of Aragon... The choreographical part was made up by a sequence of entrances in which entertainers dressed as foreign ambassadors were paying homage to the betrothed, performing dances from their original countries.” (Silvana Sinisi, Storia della danza occidentale. Carocci Editore, Roma 2005.) [Translation is mine] “Suite , in music, a group of self-contained instrumental movements of varying character, usually in the same key. During the 17th and 18th centuries, the period of its greatest importance, the suite consisted principally of dance movements. In the 19th and 20th centuries the term also [...] included selections for concert performance of incidental music to plays (e.g., Felix Mendelssohn’s music for Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream [composed 1843] and Georges Bizet’s L’Arlésienne suite [composed 1872]) and ballet music (e.g., Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker suite [1892] and Igor Stravinsky’s Firebird suites [1911, 1919, 1945]).” (entry Suite, in Encyclopædia Britannica. VV.AA.) ⇒ 1.2 DIVERTISSEMENT IS VARIETY « Varietas » “...auditorem varietas maxime delectat…” (Rhetorica ad Herennium) “Divertissement” (French), “divertimento” (Italian) : from Latin « di-vertere » Binche, 1549: 7th day of Mary of Hungary’s feasts (Triomphes de Binche) for Charles V’s visit; moresque-like entrée providing an allemande for four knights and ladies Paris, 1625: Ballet de la douairière de Billehaut; entrées “offered” by the main character to her lover, most exotic-themed Chambord, 1670: Le bourgeois gentilhomme; Cérémonie des Turcs and ballet des nations French, Spanish and Italian ⇒ 2. NATIONALISM AND ABSOLUTISM IN LATE ROMANTIC ERA Russian Monarchs in Late Romantic ballet period Alexander II (b.1818 - crowned 1855 - 1881) Alexander III (b.1845 - crowned 1881 - 1894) Nicholas II (b.1868 - crowned 1894 - abdicated 1917 - 1918) “[the romantic taste] elsewhere is already in its declining phase… La Bayadère is realized in 1877, a time surely belated for such themes, elsewhere totally dismissed.” (Silvana Sinisi, Storia della danza occidentale. op. cit. already) [Translation is mine] Arthur Saint-Léon (Paris, 1815 - 1870) The Late Romantic ballet approximately 1870-1900 Marius Petipa (Marseille, 1818 - Saint Petersburg, 1910) “...for his choreographies, he tapped into the most diversified idioms, the new can-can included, and the european folk dances he got in touch with, extracting the singular elements and melting them with the academic language: knowing the trends of the most advanced technique, he gave life to a synthesis between the classical idiom and the countless dialects...” (Concetta Lo Iacono in: L’arte della danza..., op. cit. already; Chapter Il balletto in Russia. Dalle origini alla rivoluzione. VV.AA.) [Translation is mine] “These modern pageants, in both their balletic and ceremonial forms, harked back to the very origins of absolutist court spectacles and the ballet des nations [...] Significantly, Petipa conceived the Sarabande of The Sleeping Beauty (in act III) ‘d’après le carrousel Louis XIV… given by Louis XIV in 1662 to celebrate the birth of the throne heir.” (Damien Mahiet, “The First Nutcracker, the Enchantment of International Relations, and the Franco-Russian Alliance.” Article for « Dance Research », Vol. 34, Issue 2, Winter 2016. Edinburgh University Press.) “...staged scenes of national dances entertaining onstage characters (as in the ball scene of Don Giovanni and in La Jolie Fille de Gand, for example, and then late in the century in Swan Lake and The Nutcracker) actually mirrored the events of a real-life public ball... ” (Lisa C. Arkin & Marian Smith, “National Dance in the Romantic ballet”, in: Lynn Garafola, Rethinking the Sylph. Hanover, NH. Wesleyan University Press 1997.) “...in the reign of Alexander II, aspirations are drawn of both Occidentalists and Slavophiles, which bring back traditions in the believing of being able to progress only in the respect of their own identity...” (Concetta Lo Iacono in: L’arte della danza..., op. cit. already; Chapter Il balletto in Russia. Dalle origini alla rivoluzione. VV.AA.) [Translation is mine] “...When Peter the Great came into power in 1682-1725, he forced Western ideals and culture into the very way of life of the aristocracy [...] However, when Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Russia in 1812, he threw the pro-French aristocracy in Russia into an identity crisis… the intellectuals began producing literature, music, and artwork that represented Russian culture and served to separate them from France and its culture.” (Joshua J.Taylor, “Musically Russian: Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century”, Article of 04. 20. 2016 for « The Research and Scholarship Symposium » , n. 4, Cedarville University, Ohio 2016. ) “Operating in a French manner, he adopts in abundance dances suites at the point that Bournonville - while visiting Petersburg in 1874 - accuses him of compromise the most inspired scenes with virtuous interferences...” (Concetta Lo Iacono in: L’arte della danza..., op. cit. already; Chapter Il balletto in Russia. Dalle origini alla rivoluzione. VV.AA.) [Translation is mine] ⇒ 3. DANSES DE CARACTÈRE IN ROMANTIC ERA AND THE RISE OF ‘NATIONAL’ DANCES IN 18th-19th CENTURY The Pre-romantic Era for ballet (late ‘ballo pantomimo’, ‘coreodramma’, dances for “grand-opéra”) approximately 1795-1831 The Romantic ballet approximately 1832-1869 Carlo Blasis (1795 - 1878) “Trattato elementare teorico-pratico sull’arte del ballo”, 1830 “...la Provençale, le Bolero, la Tarantelle, la Russe, l’Ecossaise, l’Allemande, la Tyrolienne, la Cosaque, la Furlane, il Passo Cinese [le Pas Chinois], i passi coi Zoccolj [the Clog dance], l’Anglaise…” (quoted in: Flavia Pappacena, Il rinnovamento della danza tra Settecento e Ottocento. op. cit. already) The Romantic ballet Fanny Elssler (1810 - 1884) ⇒ 4. THE DANCES OF THE BAROQUE SUITE BAROQUE DANCES CONTAINED IN THEATRICAL DANCING SUITES AND WHICH CONSTITUTED INSTRUMENTAL SUITE MOVEMENTS: allemande (risen up in the 1500s) , sarabande, corante and corrente , passepied , chaconne and passacaille , gigue , bourrée , menuet , gavotte , forlane , rigaudon , polonaise OTHER POPULAR DANCE OF THE BAROQUE ERA THAT NEVER GOT INTO INSTRUMENTAL SUITES: canario EARLIER DANCE THAT GAVE NAME TO INSTRUMENTAL SUITE MOVEMENTS EVEN THOUGH NOT MORE DANCE-RELATED: siciliana/siciliano « affect » “Doctrine of the affections, also called Doctrine Of Affects, German Affektenlehre, theory of musical aesthetics, widely accepted by late Baroque theorists and composers, that embraced the proposition that music is capable of arousing a variety of specific emotions within the listener. At the centre of the doctrine was the belief that, by making use of the proper standard musical procedure or device, the composer could create a piece of music capable of producing a particular involuntary emotional response in his audience. [...] The contemplation of the emotional aspect of music is not limited to the Baroque era but may be found throughout the history of music. It is an essential part of ancient Greek musical theory (the doctrine of ethos)...” (entry Doctrine of the affections, in Encyclopædia Britannica. VV.AA.) “Although a metric structure often can be derived from notation, tempo cannot [...] Yet a decision about tempo is at the same time a decision about affect (or character)…” (Meredith Little and Natalie Jenne, Dance and the Music of J.S. Bach. Expanded edition. Indiana University Press. 2002.).
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