Dancing in the Seminary: Reconstructing Dances for a 1749 Viceregal Peruvian Opera
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Dancing in the Seminary: Reconstructing Dances for a 1749 Viceregal Peruvian Opera This dissertation is presented to the faculty of the College of Fine Arts of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy Peggy L. Murray December 2015 © 2015 Peggy L. Murray. All Rights Reserved. 2 This dissertation titled Dancing in the Seminary: Reconstructing Dances for a 1749 Viceregal Peruvian Opera by PEGGY L. MURRAY has been approved for the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and the College of Fine Arts by Marina Peterson Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts Tresa Randall Associate Professor of Dance, Film & Theater Margaret Kennedy-Dygas Dean, College of Fine Arts 3 ABSTRACT MURRAY, PEGGY L., Ph.D. December 2015, Performance Studies Dancing in the Seminary: Reconstructing Dances for a 1749 Viceregal Peruvian Opera Directors of Dissertation: Marina Peterson and Tresa Randall This study explores the dance characteristics and aesthetics likely employed in Venid, venid deydades, a performance piece from mid-eighteenth-century Cusco, Peru. This seminary opera by Fray Esteban Ponce de León was composed and performed in the Seminary of San Antonio Abad to honor its rector, who was named Bishop of Paraguay. The music and libretto for the work are extant in the Seminary’s archive, yet its choreography is unknown--a common condition that impedes the understanding of dance in its historical context. This study unites diverse textual and embodied resources to re- create dances consistent with the opera’s style. Theoretically, this study analyzes the task of early dance reconstruction using Diana Taylor’s conception of the archive--historical textual material--and of the repertoire--unwritten embodied information that societies pass down over time.1 The methodological aim of the study is to provide an explained model for the process of historically informed early dance reconstruction; thus, a minuet and contradanza are reconstructed in Chapter Five. Such reconstructions inform historical performance and provide a way to investigate dance history. This understudied opera emanates from a vibrant era of varied performance genres in Peru’s culturally diverse colonial period. It reflects the powerful, official world 1 Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2003). 4 of elite Spanish and criollo ecclesiastical circles. This investigation thus examines European Baroque dance and its archive and repertoire, as Bourbon-era tastes in Peru reflected the Spanish and continental affinity for Italian music and French dance. The research considers the roles of archive and repertoire in this dance style’s preservation and in its loss from practice, both in Europe and in Peru. This study makes use of a historical and ethnographic methodology to guide the researcher in re-animating dances of the past. As such, it connects and interprets remains through historical and aesthetic analysis (including Laban Movement Analysis). Examining the contributions of both textual and kinesthetic sources allows us to question the functioning of both types of repositories in preserving dance information and consider their links to cultural memory. 5 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It is with sincere thanks that I acknowledge those who have graciously assisted me in the course of my research and writing for this project. My committee is comprised of scholars from diverse fields. Dr. Marina Peterson, from performance studies, has been my mentor from the outset of my doctoral studies. She and Dr. Tresa Randall from dance, have together guided this work according to the expectations of the disciplines in which it most directly rests. Additionally, Latin American historian Dr. Mariana Dantas and art historian Dr. Charles S. Buchanan have enriched my work by offering their perspectives. Thanks are also due to the Billman family and Ohio University’s College of Fine Arts, for the I. Hollis Parry/Ann Parry Billman Fine Arts Award, which allowed me to realize fieldwork for this study in Lima and Cusco, Peru. I am profoundly grateful to the professionals in the arts and academia I interviewed during my research. These individuals contributed to my knowledge of Peru’s performance culture and its history: Sr. Guillermo Durand, Dr. José Carlos Vilcapoma, Dr. Raúl Romero, Dr. José Peirano, Dr. José Antonio Rodríguez Garrido, Prof. José Quezada Macchiavello, Mtro. José Luque, and Mtra. Fabiola Serra. Dr. Dorothy Olsson has nurtured my interest in dance history and reconstruction for many years. I am ever grateful for her generous mentorship. My thanks to Mtra. Ana Yepes for enthusiastically offering her historical dance expertise and written sources to me. Heather Mackler selflessly shared her incredible wealth of knowledge about 6 Baroque dance, as well as the primary sources from her sizable personal collection in microfilm, digital and print formats. Holly Sammons and the staffs of the Onondaga County Public Library Local History and Interlibrary Loan departments, along with Suzanne Schwartz at the Cornell University libraries, were helpful not only in providing access to sources I needed, but also in encouraging me and making me laugh—an important contribution to my progress. I am indebted to friends who read pieces, chapters and revisions of this work, adding suggestions from their own disciplinary perspectives. Dr. Tamara Caulkins read through an eighteenth-century Atlantic World lens, and Dr. Orly Krasner read with a musicologist’s eye. Dr. Susan Kanter extended editorial expertise and kept me focused. My thanks also to Manuel Hidalgo Iglesias, dancer, kindred spirit, and translator, for language assistance. Other friends who have been stalwart in their support of me through this process include Magdalena Villarán, Raúl Falcó, Elaine Taddeo, Helen Landfear, Maureen Craner and Ronnie Snader. My sister, Kathleen Murray, brother-in-law, Mark Simpson, and parents, Lillian and Richard Murray, have sustained and assisted me in ways too numerous to mention over the course of this project. 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract ................................................................................................................................3 Acknowledgments................................................................................................................5 List of Tables .......................................................................................................................8 List of Figures ......................................................................................................................9 Introduction – Overview and Prior Studies .......................................................................10 Chapter One – Methodology ..............................................................................................46 Chapter Two – Venid, venid deydades: Background and Context .....................................73 Chapter Three – The Opera’s Dances through the Archive .............................................120 Chapter Four – Embodying the Archive and the Repertoire ...........................................171 Chapter Five – Reconstructing Choreographies: Notes, Narratives, and Recommended Procedures ........................................................................................................................241 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................300 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................317 Appendix A – Sample Dance Observation Worksheets ..................................................341 Appendix B – Sample Interview Instruments ..................................................................344 8 LIST OF TABLES Page Table 1. Choreography for Minuet Reconstruction .........................................................256 Table 2. Choreography for Contradanza Reconstruction ................................................282 9 LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 1. Cover page from Pablo Minguet e Yrol, El noble arte de danzar a la francesa y española ...........................................................................................................................260 Figure 2. Dance notation, “Passapie de España” .............................................................261 Figure 3. First page, Minuet, “Bien lo pregona la voz del clarín” from Venid, venid deydades, Fray Esteban Ponce de León (1749). Transcription and performing edition by Samuel Claro, Antología de la música en América del Sur .............................................262 Figure 4. Second page, Minuet, “Bien lo pregona la voz del clarín” ..............................263 Figure 5. Third page, Minuet, “Bien lo pregona la voz del clarín” .................................264 Figure 6. Dance explanation, “Los muchachos hermosos” from Pablo Minguet e Yrol, El noble arte de danzar a la francesa y española. ...............................................................286 Figure 7. Dance notation, “Los muchachos hermosos” ...................................................287 Figure 8. Dance explanation, “Los petímetres y petímetras,” Minguet, El noble arte de danzar a la francesa y española ......................................................................................288 Figure 9. Dance notation, “Los petímetres