Michael John Burden

17th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dancing for Anniversaries and Occasions: Chamber, Court, Theatre & Assembly’ New College, Oxford, 21 & 22 April 2015

Abstracts

Papers

17th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dancing for Anniversaries and Occasions: Chamber, Court, Theatre & Assembly’ New College, Oxford, 21 & 22 April 2015

Olive Baldwin, Thelma Wilson Essex

Celebrating and entertaining a new king and his bride

George II died on 25 October 1760 and was succeeded by his 22-year-old grandson. After a three week closure of London’s theatres George III’s theatre visits were of a serious kind, for he showed a particular interest in Shakespeare’s history plays. Celebrations were not appropriate for a king’s death, but the new king’s birthday in June 1761, was marked by a sung and danced serenata at the opera house. It was with the arrival of Charlotte of Mecklenburg that September as the chosen bride and consort that festivities really began. This paper will look at the ways in which the wedding and coronation were celebrated with dancing and at the part dance played in the theatrical evenings that the young couple attended in the first few months of their married life.

Olive Baldwin and Thelma Wilson have written extensively on 17th and 18th century singers for musical periodicals and for New Grove. They were Research Associates for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, for which they wrote over 60 articles, and have edited facsimile editions of the complete songs of Richard Leveridge in Music for London Entertainment 1660-1800 (1997) and of The Monthly Mask of Vocal Music, 1702-1711 (2007). ‘The Harmonious Unfortunate; new light on Catherine Tofts’ appeared in the Cambridge Opera Journal, vol. 22 (2011) and ‘The Subscription Musick of 1703-04’ was in the Musical Times for Winter 2012. Their ‘Theatre Dancers at the Court of Queen Anne’ was published in Court Historian in December 2010 and, with Michael Burden, they compiled ‘Images of Dancers on the London Stage, 1699-1800’, published in Music in Art, vol. 36 (2011). [email protected]

17th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dancing for Anniversaries and Occasions: Chamber, Court, Theatre & Assembly’ New College, Oxford, 21 & 22 April 2015

Iris Julia Bührle Sorbonne-Nouvelle Paris/ Stuttgart University

Dancing in Versailles from the Sun King to the French Revolution

The path of the French monarchy from the peak of absolutism to its downfall was accompanied by court festivities which often reflected the sovereign’s internal and external policy. In the latter half of the seventeenth century, the garden of Louis XIV’s newly built castle of Versailles became the setting of sumptuous celebrations in which dancing played a crucial role. The first major celebration, which took place in 1664, saw the premier of Molière and Lully’s “Princesse d’Élide”, an early example of the new genre of “comédie-ballet” which later culminated in Molière’s works “Le bourgeois gentilhomme” and “Le Malade imaginaire”. Louis XV and Louis XVI continued to celebrate political successes and family events such as royal marriages and births in Versailles until the eve of the Revolution. In 1770, a new opera was inaugurated in the castle; at the same time, Queen Marie Antoinette gave private “fêtes” in her own Trianon castle which were directed by her protégé Jean-Georges Noverre. The paper will focus on the different settings (the garden and the theatre of the castle, the Trianon), performers (the sovereign, courtiers, professional dancers), genres (ballets, comédie-ballets) and their relation to the political context.

Iris Julia Bührle was born in Rome, Italy and studied History of Art, Comparative Literature and International Relations at Stuttgart University, Sorbonne-Nouvelle Paris, Sciences Po Paris and Oxford University. She has written numerous reviews and scholarly papers on ballet, including two Master’s theses on Clavigo by Beaumarchais, Goethe and Roland Petit and Death in Venice by Mann, Britten and John Neumeier. In 2008, she assisted in organizing the Bavarian State Ballet’s festival week, Petipa symposium and John Cranko gala and wrote an article on choreology for the company’s publication ‘John Cranko: the choreographer and his work in Munich’. Her other research interests include UNESCO (articles in Revue d’histoire diplomatique and UNESCO Courrier), an organization she worked with for various projects on history and the arts, including dance. Her doctoral studies focus on choreographic adaptations of literature in France and Germany from the 18th century to the present day. In December 2011, she authored a bilingual biography of the British dancer Robert Tewsley: Robert Tewsley: dancing beyond borders (Wurzburg: Königshausen & Neumann). [email protected]

17th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dancing for Anniversaries and Occasions: Chamber, Court, Theatre & Assembly’ New College, Oxford, 21 & 22 April 2015

Michael Burden New College, University of Oxford

Prospecting before us; an anti-occasion for dancers in London’s opera world

One of the most famous theatrical prints of the late 18th century is entitled ‘The prospect before us’. It shows two dancers centre stage at the new Pantheon Opera House, the building and institution that replaced London’s King’s Theatre which burned down in 1789. The angle of the view in the print is unusual in that it is taken from behind the dancers looking through the proscenium into a packed auditorium. The print marked the opening of the new theatre, which was intended to replace the King’s Theatre as London’s premiere venue for elite opera and dance. The King’s Theatre had been in a perpetual crisis since it had been taken over by William Taylor in the early 1780s, and Taylor’s opponents used the fire as an excuse to seize power. However, in the process, the dancers lost out, and an alternative print also entitled ‘The prospect before us’, parodied the original, for the ‘prospect’ before the dancers was ruin and starvation. This detailed print has been little studied and has not been thoroughly decoded, and this paper, in undertaking both, will analyse the nature of the dancers’ protest in the context of London’s theatre history.

Michael Burden is Professor in Opera Studies at the University of Oxford, and is Fellow in Music at New College, where he is also Dean. His published research is on the theatre music of Henry Purcell, on the staging of opera and dance in London in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, and the administration of the Pyne-Harrison and English Opera Companies. His study of the soprano Regina Mingotti’s London years was published in 2013. He is Past President of the British Society for 18th-century Studies, a Visitor to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, a trustee of RISM, and director of productions of New Chamber Opera, www.newchamberopera.co.uk. He organises the annual Oxford Dance Symposium with Jennifer Thorp, with whom he co-edited the Ballet de la Nuit in 2009. [email protected]

17th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dancing for Anniversaries and Occasions: Chamber, Court, Theatre & Assembly’ New College, Oxford, 21 & 22 April 2015

Keith Cavers Independent Scholar

The Vanishing Point 1815 – 2015: Two hundred years of Dancing on Pointe?

Today, in 2015 there is still no real consensus as to a date for the invention of the technique of dancing on the points of the toes – The ‘usual suspects’ tend to award the crown to Marie Taglioni and the date to 1831 – the year in which she was memorably depicted by Alfred Edward Chalon dancing ‘en pointe’ as Flora in Didelot’s Flore et Zephyr (or is she?). This paper examines Chalon’s original drawing for the print and reviews and interrogates some visual evidence for some of the aspirants to Taglioni’s crown.

Keith Cavers is a Consulting Iconographer. He studied Stage Management at RADA and the History of Drawing and Printmaking at Camberwell College of Arts. Subsequently Slide Librarian and visiting lecturer for twenty years at Camberwell. For twelve years Information Officer at the National Gallery, London. He gained an M.Phil at the University of Surrey with “James Harvey D’Egville and the London Ballet 1770-1836.” and a John M Ward visiting research fellowship in music and dance for the theatre to research dance prints at Harvard. He runs Pimpernel Prints (http://www.pimpernelprints.com/), antiquarian print dealers specialising in the iconography and ephemera of the performing arts, and provides lectures and seminars on the examination of prints and drawings. He hopes to produce his catalogue of English dance prints 1667-1836 this year. [email protected]

17th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dancing for Anniversaries and Occasions: Chamber, Court, Theatre & Assembly’ New College, Oxford, 21 & 22 April 2015

Mary Collins Royal Academy of Music and Royal College of Music

The ‘Dublin Gaities’ and ‘a tidy family party’: Dancing at Castletown House

The Conollys of Castletown House in Cellbridge, near Dublin, were a typical example of the Protestant Anglo-Irish families who regularly moved between England and Ireland and who formed part of the powerful nucleus of Dublin society. When such wealthy landowners were not abroad attending theatres balls or parties they were entertaining at home. Castletown House was approximately two hours carriage drive outside the city and the Conollys, unlike many of their neighbours, preferred to entertain at their Palladian home whenever possible. Like all landed gentry, they considered the hosting of influential guests and the provision of various ways to divert and entertain them throughout their stay to be a vital requisite for social success. Louisa Conolly, like her mother-in-law Katherine Conolly before her, was acknowledged as one the most hospitable hostesses of her era. Louisa provided an array of events featuring music and dance at her Dublin 'palace'- events which brought her both fame and, more intriguingly, censure! This paper will explore the opportunities for dancing not only in the city but in the private houses of Dublin, and the role which dance professionals played in this context.

Mary Collins is an early dance specialist of international repute. She works with dance, theatre and TV companies as an adviser, choreographer, dancer and actress and tours regularly giving master-classes, lecture-recitals and workshops. A faculty member of AestasMusica in Croatia and The Ringve International Summer Course in Norway, she works with many of the world’s leading exponents of early music. Mary revives original choreography and gesture for historical performance. Credits include productions by Purcell, Blow, Charpentier, Cavalieri, Rebel, Rameau and Gluck. Mary teaches at the Royal Academy of Music and Royal College of Music in London, also at the University of Birmingham. Outside the UK she has given concerts and courses in Norway, Sweden, Germany, Ireland, South Korea, Romania, USA and Brazil. In Romania, Mary also inspired and helped create the Orange Young Musician Award to find and promote young musical talent throughout the country. She has presented several programmes on early dance and its music for TV, and includes projects for the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, The National Trust, English Heritage, and The British Museum, and a forthcoming collaboration with the Irish Baroque Orchestra. [email protected]

17th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dancing for Anniversaries and Occasions: Chamber, Court, Theatre & Assembly’ New College, Oxford, 21 & 22 April 2015

Anne Daye TrinityLaban, London, and Dolmetsch Historical Dance Society

Entertaining the Mother-in-law: Salmacida Spolia 1640

Marie de Medici, mother to Henrietta Maria, could not have arrived in England at a more difficult time. Her stay, from 1638 – 1641, coincided with resistance in England against the king’s taxation of Ship Money and anger in Scotland at his insistence on the acceptance of the Book of Common Prayer. The provision of hospitality to an exiled Catholic monarch augmented dissatisfaction with the king’s rule. Salmacida Spolia, the masque for the Christmas season of 1640, was presented as an honour to Marie de Medici. The theme addressed the ‘sullen times’ showing the forces of insurrection soundly defeated by the moral influence of the king. This paper will offer an analysis from a dance performance perspective to reveal the structured argument delivered by the antimasques. In relation to the history of professional dancing in England, the text of the masque is unique in identifying the antimasque performers by name, alongside several costume designs for antimasque characters by Jones. Salmacida Spolia was the last Stuart masque as the court disbanded soon after. However, Davenant began to stage mixed entertainments called ‘opera’ including dance during the Commonwealth, laying a foundation for the new theatre of the Restoration and providing continuity with the achievements of the Stuart court.

Anne Daye pursues documentary research and practical reconstruction of dances and dancing of the past, with specialist study of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Her doctoral thesis examined the antimasque of the Stuart masque, exploring its development as a political and artistic concept, alongside the emergence of the professional dancer in England. Post-doctoral research investigates further the growth of expressive dance on the London stage. Anne teaches, rehearses and publishes widely on 16th - 19th century dance, combining theory and practice. She has contributed sections on dance to two recent publications: The Palatine Wedding of 1613 (2013) ed. S. Smart and M. Wade; Singing Simpkin and other Bawdy Jigs by R. Clegg and L. Skeaping. In addition to teaching in HE dance departments, such as TrinityLaban and the University of Bedfordshire, Anne is the Chairman of the Dolmetsch Historical Dance Society. [email protected]

17th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dancing for Anniversaries and Occasions: Chamber, Court, Theatre & Assembly’ New College, Oxford, 21 & 22 April 2015

Petra Dotlačilová Academy of Performing Arts, Prague

Ballets, balls and parties in the correspondence of brothers Pietro and Alessandro Verri

In my paper I would like to present the social and theatrical life of Milan and Rome in the late 18th century through the eyes of the brothers Pietro and Alessandro Verri. They were important personalities of northern Italy in the 2nd half of 18th century and they brought to Milan the new thoughts of the Enlightenment of the French and English philosophers. They wrote about philosophy, economics, politics, history and Alessandro was also interested in literature and theatre. Nevertheless, from the selected letters emerges that they were also active participators of the social and cultural life of their cities, they were going to see opera and ballet performances (Pietro Verri offers interesting reflection of ballet-pantomimes by J.-G. Noverre and G. Angiolini), attended masqued balls, private parties and other festivities. Dance, either social or theatrical (often both of them) was an inseparable part of all these events. The selected letters are from the years between 1771 and 1781, period in which Pietro lived in Milan and Alessandro in Rome – that offers us interesting comparison of different style of entertainment in these two cities. Their description of performances, balls and parties is very detailed and reveals interesting and sometimes amusing facts from the social life of the higher classes in the late 18th century, where the dance – in different forms – was indeed omnipresent.

Petra Dotlačilová graduated from the Italian-Czech Lyceum and the Philosophical Faculty of Charles University, Prague. Currently she studies the doctoral programme in Dance Studies at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. In 2009/2010 she spent a year as an Erasmus student in France (Université Blaise Pascal Clermont-Ferrand, Université Paris X Nanterre - Paris), during which she helped organise the Dance Festival ZOOOUM #1 Evénement Danses Contemporaines. In October 2010 she participated in the Paris International Conference dedicated to Jean- Georges Noverre and presented a paper on his influence on Czech ballet in the 18th century. She also took part in the Erasmus programmes on Dance Movement of Past and Present (IPEDAM) at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim in 2009, 2011 and 2012. Her research specialization is 18th century ballet in the Czech Republic, France and Italy; she is working on analyses of theoretical texts and ballet librettos from this period, and has published in several dance and musical periodicals and anthologies (Tanec a společnost, Živá hudba, Musicorum). In 2013 her master’s dissertation was published in Prague under the title Vývoj baletu-pantomimy v osvícenské Evropě. She is a regular reviewer of ballet and dance performances for the internet dance magazine Taneční aktuality.cz [email protected]

17th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dancing for Anniversaries and Occasions: Chamber, Court, Theatre & Assembly’ New College, Oxford, 21 & 22 April 2015

Dr. Carola Finkel Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts

‘La princesse de Darmstadt’ – letter of application« of a dancing master?

Olivier’s La princesse de Darmstadt is a nearly unknown German choreography of the early 18th century. The paper discusses the date of the manuscript, the context it was written for and contains a survey of this unique dance. The choreography seems to be a little stage piece and it is remarkable for several reasons. It is choreographed for a solo couple and a group of four couples. While the solo parts are mainly written in Feuillet notation, the group parts are written in contredanse notation. Both parts alternate with each other and at the end they all dance together. The choreography also contains interesting verbal descriptions of the Allemande hand holdings. The manuscript was dedicated to the hereditary princess of Hessen-Darmstadt by Olivier, dancing master at a small county nearby. About the same time Olivier sent his choreography to the princess, her husband got a dance collection by Pierre Dubreil, dancing master at the Bavarian court. Was that a mere coincidence? For particular reasons the author believes that both hoped to get an employment as maître de ballet at the court of Darmstadt. [email protected]

17th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dancing for Anniversaries and Occasions: Chamber, Court, Theatre & Assembly’ New College, Oxford, 21 & 22 April 2015

John Gill Brighton

Romanis and Romanovs; how gypsies danced their way into the Romantic Imagination

The occasion of Taglioni's 1838 season at St Petersburg was anticipated with quite as much fervour as that of Elssler's farewell from Moscow was lamented. For this hugely successful - and profitable - visit, Filippo Taglioni choreographed La Gitana, presenting his daughter to the Tsarist court in the guise of a gypsy; and Elssler chose to leave her adoring Muscovite public in the guise of another, Esmeralda. This paper, beyond the narrative of those occasions, will examine the iconography of the gypsy in ballets of the Romantic Period and locate the choreographic libretti of Taglioni, Mazilier, Perrot and others within the recent discourse of literary criticism that identified the Romani as destabilising of both identity and status. The gypsy girl dances out of her romanticised, eroticised and vilified culture and into the spotlight, her quality, nobility and birthright revealed and reclaimed. [email protected]

17th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dancing for Anniversaries and Occasions: Chamber, Court, Theatre & Assembly’ New College, Oxford, 21 & 22 April 2015

Madeleine Inglehearn London

A brilliant appearance of Genteel Company

In Eighteenth-Century Yorkshire all towns, large or small seem to have made royal birthdays or anniversaries an excuse for holding an Assembly, thereby demonstrating their patriotism. York being the county town, was an important centre where the assize courts for Yorkshire were held and which had its own racecourse, as well as being a market town. This meant that the landed gentry and wealth farmers would bring their family to enjoy the pleasures of the town, among which were Assemblies. John Macky writing in 1722 said that the Assemblies were ‘very convenient for young people; for formerly the Country Ladies were stewed up in their father’s old Mansions Houses, and seldom saw Company but at an Assize, a Horse-Race, or a Fair. This paper illustrates the numerous occasions on which the society of Yorkshire gathered together for dancing at their local Assembly Rooms. [email protected]

17th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dancing for Anniversaries and Occasions: Chamber, Court, Theatre & Assembly’ New College, Oxford, 21 & 22 April 2015

Joanna Jarvis Birmingham City University

Minuets and Make-believe

On Wednesday January 23rd 1782 the Morning Herald & Daily Advertiser announced:

At the King’s Theatre, in the Hay-market, TOMORROW there will be at this theatre, A GRAND MASQUED BALL, With Minuets and Quadrilles, composed by Monsieur NOVERRE, By Monsieur Gardel, Madame Simonet……

Public assemblies such as masked balls provided much needed extra revenue for the theatre, and the presence of star dancers, as well as the great Noverre himself would have provided a significant draw. In England, public masked balls and masquerades brought about a mixing of the social classes, and the anonymity, if desired to experiment with identity and gender. Theatres profited from these events both as venues, and as the purveyors of costume. A masked ball presented opportunities to use dress to cross boundaries, subvert, and challenge the sense of cultural order, and as such was often denounced in social commentaries. However, it also allowed for the ‘safe’ display of foreignness, the chance to experience a frisson of difference, by wearing oriental dress; a way of domesticating the exotic, a site for controlled experimentation. Dress was as crucial to the masked ball as dance, and the form endured for a century as a popular leisure activity in England. This paper will explore the role of various costumes and choice of dress, in allowing people the freedom to experiment, as part of this popular leisure activity.

Joanna Jarvis trained in Theatre Design and lectures on the Theatre Performance & Event Design course within the Birmingham Institute of Art & Design at Birmingham City University. She is currently studying for a PhD looking at the relationship between fashion and dance costume in the eighteenth century. Joanna is also a freelance costume designer and maker, specialising in period costume; her long association with Mary Collins has led to a particular interest in period dance and how the cut of clothes affects movement. [email protected]

17th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dancing for Anniversaries and Occasions: Chamber, Court, Theatre & Assembly’ New College, Oxford, 21 & 22 April 2015

Helena Kazárová Academy of Performing Arts, Prague

Dancing and dying for Napoleon: The Schwarzenberg Ball in Paris

On July 1 of the year 1810 Napoleon Bonaparte attended a great ball, which was organized by the Austrian Embassador Prince Karl I. Philipp of Schwarzenberg (1771-1820) to honour Bonaparte´s marriage with the Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria. Among the invited guests we could find Pauline of Schwarzenberg (born d´Arenberg, 1774-1810), wife of the older Karl´s brother Joseph II. Prince of Schwarzenberg (1769-1833). She was not only present, but also began the ball dancing in a solo quadrille with Eugène de Beauharnais, the stepson of Napoleon, joined by the Queen of Naples, wife of Napoleon´s elder brother Joseph, Marie Julie Bonaparte (born Clary) and Prince Paul Anton Esterházy. In my paper I will give not only the account of this ball, which ended by a tragic death in fire of Pauline of Schwarzenberg and 19 other people, but I will also introduce some interesting facts concerning the repertoire of the ball and archive material, surviving at Český Krumlov Castle (Pauline´s diary, dance dress and shoes of her young daughter Marie Pauline, who escaped the fire etc.).

Helena Kazárová is a Professor at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (AMU) and has been Head of the Department of Dance since 2011. In 1997 she founded the Baroque Dance Ensemble Hartig (www.hartig.cz), whose dancers are mostly former or current students of AMU. Her interests include the history and theory of dance, ballet and dance aesthetics, and she specialises in the reconstruction and revitalisation of dances from written and graphic notation, choreography and movement culture of the eighteenth century. She has danced and created dances, or advised on period movement style and gesture, for numerous performances, including Baroque dances for various music festivals, film and TV, and works by Bononcini, Händel, and Gluck. She staged the Rococo ballet La guirlande enchantée of Joseph Starzer in the castle theatres at Český Krumlov and Mnichovo Hradiště. Her publications include Barokní taneční formy/Baroque Dance Forms (AMU 2005), and Barokní balet ve střední Evropě/Baroque Ballet in Central Europe (AMU 2008). [email protected]

17th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dancing for Anniversaries and Occasions: Chamber, Court, Theatre & Assembly’ New College, Oxford, 21 & 22 April 2015

Anna Mouat University of Calgary, Canada

Dandizettes and the Grecian Bend

Between 1817 and 1820 in Regency London, the dandizette, or female dandy, made her debut in the hallowed circles of elite, fashionable society. Newspapers, journals, poems, songs, and satirical prints from this era recount her obsession with sartorial style, her penchant for attending the opera and ballet, her passion for dancing until dawn at society balls, and her general cultivation of life’s pleasures. One defining affectation of the dandizette was her posture. Contrary to the upright stance urged upon young society women by 19th century dancing masters, the dandizette stood with her spine stooped, her head poked forward, and her arms dangling at her sides, a stance that was dubbed ‘the Grecian bend.’ This paper will argue that the dandizette’s Grecian bend was adopted as a marker of social class during an era of profound exclusivity and was practiced by an aristocracy bent upon demonstrating their hegemony as the ruling class. Reminiscent of the air of complaisance affected by dancers in the 18th century ballroom, the dandizette’s Grecian bend of the early 19th century embodies the languid, leisurely air of negligence so favoured by the bon ton. And one of the most conspicuous places to display this marker of aristocratic class was at the King’s Theatre, London, where boxes served as ministages in which the beau monde enacted elaborate performances of social status. [email protected]

17th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dancing for Anniversaries and Occasions: Chamber, Court, Theatre & Assembly’ New College, Oxford, 21 & 22 April 2015

John Romey Case Western Reserve University

Dancing in the Streets: Ballet de Cour on the Pont Neuf in Seventeenth–Century France

We know from Le Cerf de La Viéville that in the early eighteenth century airs and dance music from Jean-Baptiste Lully’s operas were being sung by street singers on the Pont Neuf, with new texts being grafted onto Lully’s melodies. In this presentation I will demonstrate that street singers on the Pont Neuf were adapting music from ballets de cour as vehicles for street performance long before Lully came to dominate French musical aesthetics. My examination of melodies from ballets de cour that were used as vehicles for new text settings in street performance demonstrates that selections were made carefully for intertextual and intermusical reasons, and that the music was freely adapted to conform to the practice and aesthetics of the street and the pont-neuf tradition. I will begin by examining the earliest known new text settings of music from a ballet de cour, as preserved in the Maurepas Chansonnier. I will then focus on ballet-based music from the time of the Fronde, known as mazarinades and published in two collections in 1649 and 1652 respectively, and other dance-based songs published in 1665 from the famous street singer Phillipot le Savoyard. [email protected]

17th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dancing for Anniversaries and Occasions: Chamber, Court, Theatre & Assembly’ New College, Oxford, 21 & 22 April 2015

Uta Dorothea Sauer Technische Universität Dresden

Thematic context-relevant assimilation in ballets de cour

A view to the sources of the masques and the German or French ballets de cour shows that occasions like anniversaries, weddings, christenings or conferences were illustrated with special motives or themes. The muses often appeared in ballets of honor, the seasons described immortal life in the ballets for royal anniversaries and the planets demonstrated the hierarchy. Arcardian motives symbolizing the Golden Age and the mythology of “Paris and Helena” or “Orpheus” were employed in the context of war. The paper will give an insight into the different methods of motive processing. At first it is an aim to discuss the costumes and the forms of dance or song for transporting the intention of special occasions. How did the viewer identify mythological or allegorical figures? Which kinds of dances and songs were used for illustrating muses, seasons, planets or mythology? Further discussing points are the roles of gestures, mimicry and posture. Based on documents of text, music and engravings the paper will answer the question whether occasions were celebrated with special themes.

Uta Dorothea Sauer studied Musicology, Social Science and History at the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Science of the Technische Universität Dresden and Psychology at the Faculty of Science, Department of Psychology (TU Dresden). During this time (1999-2005) she had worked at the European Centre for the Arts in Hellerau and at the Medical Academy "Carl Gustav Carus" in Dresden. She is interested in Music Psychology, Science of Dance and European Music History (1600-1900), with a focus on Dresden Music. Her subject-study is about Johann Christoph Schmidt, a Dresden court conductor, focusing on music theatre in the 17th century, in particular the “Ballet de cour” and “opéra-ballet”. In 2009, she received a scholarship by the European Social Fund (ESF) to write her dissertation about the “Ballet” at the Dresden court. Her research was published in the proceedings Poet and Peaeceptor, Christian Weise (1642-1708) zum 300. Geburtstag (2009), Johann Georg Pisendel (2011), Seventeenth-Century Ballet (2011), and was presented at Congresses in Warsaw (2006), Zürich (2007), London (2010) and Rome (2010). Furthermore she is supporting the dramaturgy of Dresdner Kreuzchor (2010), of the Festival on Baroque Music during the celebrations “Dresden800” (2006) and of the Festival “Robert Schumann in Dresden” by the Sächsisches Vocalensemble (2010- 2014). Since 2008, she has worked at the Institute of Art and Music at TU Dresden in the context of Conferences on the composers Robert Schumann (2008, 2010), Richard Wagner (2013) and Richard Strauss (2014).

[email protected]

17th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dancing for Anniversaries and Occasions: Chamber, Court, Theatre & Assembly’ New College, Oxford, 21 & 22 April 2015

Lionel Sawkins London

‘Not a single step of our ordinary dance was employed’: Dolivet, Beauchamps, and Lully entertaining the King back from his victories

Isis, first performed – and published – in 1677, is the most spectacular of all Quinault and Lully's operas. Its 29 movements for instruments alone (7 of them repeated to make 36 in all) include many dances which are integrated into the divertissements where the same musical ideas are often shared by dancers and singers. Choreographed by Beauchamps and d’Olivet, Isis contains, as well as genre dances, some of the most celebrated character dances of the period. Dubos tells us: ‘It was d’Olivet who made the ballet of the old men in Thésée, of the songes funestes (deathly visions) in Atys, and of the Trembleurs in Isis. The last-mentioned was composed entirely of gestures and movements of people seized with cold. It employed not a single step of our ordinary dance.’ The Trembleurs was the inspiration for the Frost scene in Purcell’s King Arthur and other works. Such character dances remained an ingredient in French opera and may be linked to the later additions of pantomime in such works of the 1730s and 1740s. The recent publication of the first modern edition of Isis provides the opportunity for a re-evaluation of this tradition. [email protected]

17th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dancing for Anniversaries and Occasions: Chamber, Court, Theatre & Assembly’ New College, Oxford, 21 & 22 April 2015

Alexander Schwan Institute of Theatre Studies, Freie Universität Berlin

‘The flowers were at a ball last night’ Ephemerality and Festivity in 19th-Century Flower Ballets

In the middle of the 19th-century, the phantasm of flowers as animated beings (Andersen’s Little Ida’s Flowers; Grandville’s Les Fleurs animées) and the concept of floriography which encoded singular blossoms with a particular meaning, both converged in the idea of flower ballets. Most notably in Paolo Taglioni’s Thea, which was originally produced in 1847 for Her Majesty’s Theatre in London, restaged in Berlin in the same year and later reproduced in Milan in 1867, dancers incorporated various flowers and formed floral-ornamental tableaus. Eventually this connection between dance and floral festivity, which had already been established by Andersen’s 1835 fairy tale, found a late echo in the costume design by Wilhelm (Charles William Pitcher) for the Bell Flower Ballet in the pantomime Dick Whittington as performed at Crystal Palace on 24th December 1890. Why is the transitory nature of both flowers and dance so dominantly linked to the notion of festivity? This paper will deal with the relationship to 19th-century flower ballets and will ask: which aesthetical presuppositions and socio-political conditions govern the idea of festively dancing flowers and how were they realized in costume design and choreographic arrangements?

Alexander Schwan is a research associate at the Institute of Theatre Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. He studied Protestant theology, Jewish studies and philosophy in Heidelberg, Jerusalem and Berlin, and theatre directing at the Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Frankfurt/Main. He is currently completing his dissertation entitled Dance as a Spatial Inscription. Graphism in Postmodern and Contemporary Choreography in affiliation with the DFG Research Training Group Notational Iconicity. His main areas of research are romantic ballet, postmodern dance, dance and religion, and floriography. [email protected]

17th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dancing for Anniversaries and Occasions: Chamber, Court, Theatre & Assembly’ New College, Oxford, 21 & 22 April 2015

Jennifer Thorp New College, University of Oxford

Goodman’s Fields Theatre and the wedding of the Princess Royal in 1733-4

Henry Giffard’s new theatre at Goodman’s Fields, situated in the increasingly seedy part of Whitechapel north-east of the Tower of London, entered enthusiastically into the business of celebrating the betrothal and wedding of Anne, the Princess Royal, and William of Nassau, Prince of Orange. Between September 1733 and March 1734 (when the wedding finally took place), the Goodman’s Fields theatre staged two of Henry Carey’s afterpiece masques, The Happy Nuptials and Britannia or the Royal Lovers (“three hundred turned away on the opening night”), with dances by John Thurmond and others from Drury Lane theatre supplementing the Goodman’s Fields troupe. They also staged entr’acte dances with Dutch themes, and Giffard additionally made the most of the one advantage he had over his rivals at Drury Lane and Covent Garden, by putting on open-air displays of fireworks, bonfires, lanterns and triumphal arches. He even arranged a public ball at the theatre, timed to coincide with the royal wedding ball held at St James’s Palace. Such events and performances, to celebrate the first royal wedding in London since 1683, delighted audiences and participants alike at Goodman’s Fields on almost fifty nights of celebration.

Jennifer Thorp has a particular interest in the dance of royal court and public theatre in England and France from the late-seventeenth to the late-eighteenth centuries. Her publications include studies of the status of the dancer in eighteenth-century society, the London careers of Kellom Tomlinson, Francis Nivelon, P. Siris and F. Le Roussau, and the place of dance in Rameau’s Anacreon. Her edition of Le Roussau’s Collection of new ball- and stage dances 1720 was published in 2008, and at present she is preparing for publication a biography and study of the dances of the London dancing-master Mr Isaac, and working on various aspects of the life and work of Anthony L’Abbé. She has co-edited, with Michael Burden, a study of Le Ballet de la Nuit (Pendragon Press, 2010), and The Works of Monsieur Noverre translated from the French, 1783 (Pendragon Press, 2014). [email protected]

17th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dancing for Anniversaries and Occasions: Chamber, Court, Theatre & Assembly’ New College, Oxford, 21 & 22 April 2015

Cornelius Vanistandael Leuven, Belgium

Dancing in the Barracks: Contexts for social dancing on the Eve of Waterloo

When, determined to end Napoleon's advance, the allies invaded the territory now known as Belgium, they never imagined they would stay so long. No less than 17 months lay between the first engagements at the Battle of Hoogstraten and the final battle at Waterloo. As with the Congress of Vienna, this enduring presence provided ample occasion for social mixing. And once again, dancing proved a good solution to overcome cultural barriers. Hence, many balls were organised, mostly relying on local musicians and dancing masters.

In this paper I will focus on the socio-cultural context for social dancing in the Southern Netherlands (1795 - 1830). The dissemination of music- and dance repertoires has, until now, mainly been investigated by looking at musical institutions in major cities. But at the time, balls were important events occurring far more frequently than concerts or operas. They also were more casual, even taking place in the barracks. Therefore it is vital to assess their impact. What formed the socio-cultural backcloth for the mythic Duchess of Richmond's Ball? Which cultural transfers occurred in the year preceding it and what did the international community finally take home? [email protected]

17th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dancing for Anniversaries and Occasions: Chamber, Court, Theatre & Assembly’ New College, Oxford, 21 & 22 April 2015

Hanna Walsdorf University of Leipzig

How to Dance a Point in Time: Louis Pécour's La Naissance de Monseigneur le Duc de Bretagne (1704) for the Jesuit College Louis-le-Grand

As a part of the rhetorical and theatrical education it offered, the 18th century Jesuit Ballet de Collège served to encourage personal development and to gain public recognition. The terpsichorean enthusiasm of the French included that they attached great importance to dance education in general. Not only was dance an educational instrument, but also a popular form of entertainment communicating ethical values and political world views. Privileged by the king himself, honouring the royal family became sort of a programmatic strategy of Jesuit theatre and ballet, upheld by spoken panegyric prologues and Eloges du Roy on the one hand, and by the choice of subjects on the other. The annual ballet productions of the Parisian college Louis- le-Grand were created and choreographed by famous composers and ballet masters of the Paris Opera such as Louis Pécour. For the occasion of a royal baby’s birth in 1704, the latter invented the ballet La Naissance de Monseigneur le Duc de Bretagne in which the exact moment of birth is translated into dance; the ballet production was shown only six weeks after the actual event. In my paper, I would like to present and discuss this 1704 livret in a close reading. In addition (and comparison), a Jesuit ballet with the very same title, staged in 1707 in Rennes, will be taken under consideration. Since the new-born of 1704 died after only 10 months, it will be questioned which Duc de Bretagne has been addressed in this later version – and how.

Hanna Walsdorf received her M.A. in Musicology from the University of Bonn (Germany) in 2006 and her Ph.D. in Musicology and Dance Studies from the University of Salzburg (Austria) in 2009; thesis: “Political Instrumentalization of Folk Dance in the German Dictatorships” (published as Bewegte Propaganda, Würzburg: K&N, 2010). From 2009–2013, she was a postdoc research fellow at the Collaborative Research Center 619 “Ritual Dynamics” at the University of Heidelberg (Germany), main publication: Die politische Bühne Ballett und Ritual im jesuitenkolleg Louis-le-Grand, 1701–1762 (Würzburg: K&N, 2012). She now teaches history of dance at the University of Heidelberg and at Mannheim University of Music and Performing Arts. In December 2013, she was awarded the Emmy-Noether Grant by the DFG to set up her independent research group; Project: Ritual Design for the Ballet Stage: Constructions of Popular Culture in European Theatrical Dance (1650–1760). Her research interests include Folk Dance past and present, Baroque Dance and Theater as well as cultural and aesthetic transfer between these fields. [email protected]