TheTravesty Dancer in Nineteenth-Century

LynnGarafola

More than any other era in the historyof ballet, the Unlike the theatersof the periphery,where govern- nineteenthcentury belongs to theballerina. She hauntsits mentcontrol of arts organization remained intact, those of lithographsand paintings,an etherealcreature touched the European core operated, or began to operate, as withthe charm of another age. Yet even when she turned private enterprises.1Entrepreneurs stood at the helm, into the fast, leggy ballerina of modern times, her with subscriberspaying all or a substantialshare of the ideologysurvived. If todaythe artof balletcelebrates the costs-even at theParis whichcontinued to receive danseurnearly as oftenas thedanseuse, it has yetto rid its partialsubsidy from the governmentafter losing its royal aestheticof yesterday'scult of the eternalfeminine. Like licensein 1830. This changein the economicstructure of hernineteenth-century forbear, today's ballerina, an icon balletplaced the audience-particularlythe key groupof of teenyouth, athleticism, and anorexicvulnerability, in- monied subscribers-ina new and powerfulposition. It carnates a feminineideal defined overwhelminglyby led to a new kind of starsystem, one based on drawing men. power ratherthan rank,while eliminating,for purposes The nineteenthcentury did indeed createthe mystique ofeconomy, the pensions and otherbenefits traditionally of the ballerina.But it also gave birthto one of the more accruingto artistsin governmentemploy. The disap- curious phenomena of ballet history.Beginning with pearance of the male dancer coincidedwith the triumph romanticism,a twenty-yeargolden age stretchingfrom ofromanticism and marketplaceeconomics. theJuly Revolution to about 1850,the danseuseen The ban on male talentwas not, strictlyspeaking, ab- usurpedthe positionof the male danseurin the corpsde solute.Even in the second halfof the centuryin England balletand as a partnerto theballerina. Stepping into roles and on theContinent, men continuedto appear in charac- previouslyfilled by men, women now impersonatedthe terroles such as Dr. Coppelius,the doddering,lovestruck sailor boys, hussars, and toreadors who made up Pygmalionof Coppelia,parts thatdemanded of dancers "masculine" contingentsof the corpsde ballet,even as skill as actors and mimes and could be performedby theydisplaced real men as romanticleads. Untilwell into thoselong past theirprime. Men on the balletstage were thetwentieth century, the female dancer who donnedthe fine,it seemed,so longas theyleft its youthful, beardless muftiof a cavalier was a commonplace of European heroesto the ladies and so longas theywere elderlyand, ballet. presumably,unattractive. In real life,donning men's clothingmeant assuming the Initially,then, the "travesty"problem defines itself as power and prerogativesthat went with male identity. one of roles,specifically, that of the romantichero, who Cross-dressingon the stage,however, had quite different incarnated,along with his ballerina counterpart,the implications.Coming into vogue at a timeof majorsocial, idealizedpoetic of nineteenthcentury ballet. In the new economic,and aestheticchanges, it reflectedthe shiftof era opened by theJuly Revolution, this aesthetic and the balletfrom a courtly,aristocratic to an entertainment stylesof masculine dancing associated with its expression geared to the marketplaceand the tastes of a new became gradually"feminized." Scorned by audiences as bourgeoispublic. unmanly,they became the propertyof the danseuseen Thus the danseurdid notvanish in ,where travesti,that curious androgynewho invoked both the August Bournonvilleguided the destinyof the Royal highpoetic and the bordellounderside of romanticand Theater for nearly five decades, or at the Maryinsky post-romanticballet. Theaterin St. Petersburg,where ruledthe Althoughtravesty roles were not unknown before Imperial Ballet for a similar tenure. On these courtly 1789, they were rare, especially in the so-calledgenre stages the male remained, even if eclipsed by the noble,the mostelevated of the eighteenthcentury's three ballerina. balleticstyles.2 Indeed, its most distinguishedexponents Where he fought a losing battle was in those were men, dancerslike AugusteVestris, who broughta metropolitancenters that stood at theforefront of the new supremeelegance and beautyof personto the stageand aesthetic-Parisand London.At the prestigiouscradles of majestic perfectionto the adagios regarded as the ballet romanticismin these cities,the and touchstoneof theirart. No one embodied more than the King'sTheatre, he was edged graduallybut firmlyfrom danseurnoble the courtlyorigins of ballet,its aristocratic thelimelight by a transformationin the social relationsof manner, and the masculinityof a refined, leisured balletas thoroughgoingas the revolutiontaking place in society. itsart. Alreadyby 1820, the danseurnoble appealed to a very

Dance ResearchJournal 17/2 & 18/1[1985-86) 35 "Ratsd'opera," Paris, 1854. "Rat" was theslang expression for the balletgirl. Note the rapturous expression on thefaces of the elderly in the boxand theman with the Note, A caricatureof the period that leaves little doubt of the growing con- gentlemen stage operaglasses. forthe male dancer. too, the youthof the dancersand theireyes, trained on theirad- tempt mirers. limitedpublic-connoisseurs and men of refinedtastes. protectedits daughters. (Taglioni, for instance, arrived in To theincreasing numbers from the middle classes who Parisin 1827with a brotherto partnerher and a father beganto frequent the Paris Opera in the later years of the who coachedher, choreographed for her, and actedas Restoration,his measured dignity and old-fashioned dress herpersonal manager.) The rest,however, belonged to betrayed,like the genre noble itself, the aristocratic man- theurban slums. "Most of thedancers," wrote Alberic nerand frippery ofthe Ancien Regime. Secondin 1844,"first saw thelight of day in a concierge's In thechanging social climate of the 1820s, then, a new lodge."4Bournonville summed up thelot of the majority kindof gendering was underway.The menabout town succinctly-humbleorigins, little education, and wretch- who formedthe backboneof the growingbourgeois ed salaries.5 publicsaw littleto admirein thestately refinements of Poverty, naturally, invites sexual exploitation, the danseurnoble. Their taste, instead,ran to the especiallyin a professionof flexiblemorals. (Liaisons energizedvirtuosity ofa danseurde demi-caract&re likeAn- sweetenalmost every ballerina biography.)6 In the 1830s, toinePaul whoseacrobatic leaps and multiplespins of- however,the backstageof the Paris Oplra becamea feredan analogueof their own active, helter-skelter lives. privilegedvenue of sexual assignation,officially coun- Thehigh poetic of ballet, the loftiness of feeling embodied tenancedand abetted. Eliminating older forms of "caste" by thedanseur noble, came to be seen as notmerely ob- separation,the theater's enterprisingmanagement solete,but also unmanly.With the triumphof roman- dangledbefore the elect of its paying public a commodity ticismand the new, ethereal style of Marie Taglioni in the of indisputablerarity and cachet-itsfemale corps of early1830s, poetry, expressiveness, and gracebecame dancers. theexclusive domain of the ballerina. At the same time, Imaginefor a momentthe inside of the old Paris Opera. advancesin technique,especially the refiningof pointe Descendingtier by tierfrom the gods, we moveup the work,gave her a secondvictory over the male: she now socialscale, until, finally, we standat thegolden horse- addedto her arsenal of tricks the virtuosity ofthe danseur shoe of wealth,privilege, and powerwhere, in boxes de demi-caractere.By 1840, a criticcould write, "If male three-deepon eitherside of the proscenium,sit the dancingno longercharms and attracts today, it is because pleasure-mindedsportsmen of the Jockey Club. hereis no Sylphide,no magic-wingedfairy capable of As theOpera's most influential abonnes, the occupants performingsuch a miracleand doingsomething that is ofthese loges infernales-all male, of course-enjoyed cer- endurablein a maledancer."3 tainprivileges: the run of the coulisses, for example, and In appropriatingthe aestheticidealism and virtuoso entryto theFoyer de la Danse,a largeroom lined with techniqueassociated with the older genres of male danc- barresand mirrorsjust behindthe stage.Before 1830, ing,the ballerina unmanned the danseur, reducing him to lackeysin royallivery had wardedprying eyes from this comiccharacter and occasional"lifter." But her gain had warm-upstudio. When the new regime turned the Opara anothereffect, more lasting even than the banishment of over to privatemanagement, the Foyerde la Danse themale fromthe dance stage.Beginning with roman- acquireda differentfunction.7 No longeroff limits to men ticismand continuing throughout the nineteenth century, ofwealth and fashion,before and afterperformances it femininityitself became the ideologyof ballet,indeed, becamean exclusivemaison close, with madams in the thevery definition of the art. Ideology, however, turned shap of mothersarranging terms. Nowhere was the outto be a falsefriend. Even as nineteenth-centuryballet claevoked time and again in lithographs and paintings, exaltedthe feminine, setting it on a pedestalto be wor- betweenthe idealized femininity ofballetic ideology and shipped,its social realitydebased the danseuse as the realityof femaleexploitation so strikingas in the worker,a woman, and an artist. Opera'sbackstage corridors. Fromthe romantic era withits triumphant bourgeoisie The commercein dancers'bodies was notpeculiar to and marketethos came the dual stigmaof working-class Paris.In London,remarked Bournonville, it lacked even originsand sexualimpropriety that branded the woman the pretensionof gallantrythat accompanied such ex- dancer well into the twentiethcentury. The great changesacross the Channel. To be sure,some dancers did ballerinascontinued, by and large,to emergefrom the eventuallymarry their "protectors." Many morebore theatricalclans thathad survivedfrom the eighteenth childrenout of wedlock,sending them in secrecyto century,a kind of caste thattrained, promoted, and distantrelations or countryfamilies to be reared.Nor did

36 Dance ResearchJournal 17/2 & 18/1(1985-86) AngelinaFioretti and BlancheMontaubry in the divertissementof an AmboiseThomas Lu- Caricatureby Marcelinof EugenieFiocre as Frantzin CoppAlia. , operaby (1868),choreographed by cien Petipa. marriagesbetween dancers farewell in thisatmosphere practice. If Taglioni's "aerial, virginal grace" evoked of libertinage:one thinksof the choreographerArthur romanticism'squest forthe ideal, italso summonedto the Saint-Ion, 's on and off-stagepartner, stage the marriageabledemoiselle, chaste, demure, and who, jealous of the giftsshowered on his beautifuland genteel.So, too, Elssler's "swooning,voluptuous arms," brilliantwife (which he could neither duplicate nor like her satins, laces, and gems, linked the concept of reciprocate),left the field of battle to his competitors.8 materialismwith a particularmaterial reality-the en- The association of ballet and prostitutionwas so per- ticing,high-priced pleasures of a grandehorizontale. vasive thatIvor Guest in his historyof ballet under the The travestydancer practisednone of these symbolic Second Empire makes a special point of noting the feminineconcealments. As shipboysand sailors,hussars Opera's good girls-modelwives, midnightpoets, authors and toreadors,the proletariansof the Opera's corps de ofbooks of religiousreflections. But such cases were only ballet donned breeches and skin-tighttrousers that exceptions.For pleasure-lovingParis, dancers were the displayed to advantage the shapely legs, slim corseted creamof the demi-monde. waists, and rounded hips, thighs,and buttocksof the Aestheticstoday stressesthe dancer's symbolicfunc- era's ideal figure.Like the prostitutesin fancydress in tion: it views physicalprcsence as the formof dance it- Manet's "Ball at the Opera," the danseuse en travesti self. In the nineteenthcentury, however, the danseuse brazenlyadvertised her sexuality.She was the hussy of was firstand foremosta woman. Like her audience, she theboulevards on theatricalparade. saw the task of ballet as one of charmingthe sensibility, The masqueradeof fooled no one, norwas not elevatingthe mind. Tiltingher face to the logesinfer- itmeant to. The danseuseen travestiwas always a woman, nales,flashing the brilliants of her latest protector, making and a highlydesirable one (a splendidfigure was one of up withcoquetry the shortcomingsof technique,she pre- therole's prerequisites).She may have aped the stepsand sentedherself as a physicalsynecdoche, a dancerwithout motionsof the male performer,but she never imperson- the dance. For the nineteenth-centurypublic, ballet of- ated his nature.What audiences wanted was a masculine fereda stagedreplay of the class and bordellopolitics that image deprived of maleness, an idealized adolescent,a ruled the theatercorridors. beardlessshe-man. Gautier, in particular,was repelledby Conventionalwisdom has it thatthere were two sorts the ruggedphysicality of the danseur,that "species of of romanticballerinas: "Christians" who evoked roman- monstrosity,"as he called him.-0"Nothing," he wrote, ticism'sspiritual yearnings and supernalkingdoms, and "is moredistasteful than a man who shows his neck, "pagans" who impersonatedits obsession with exotic, his big musculararms, his legs withthe calves of a parish carnal,and materialthemes.9 But this paradigm, invented beadle, and all his strongmassive frameshaken by leaps by TheophileGautier to describethe contrastingstyles of and pirouettes."'' Marie Taglioniand ,is at best misleading. His critical colleague, Jules Janin, shared Gautier's For no matterhow patlythe virgin/whorescheme seems prejudices:even thegreatest of danseurs paled againstthe to fitthe ideology of romanticism, it ignoresboth the danc- delicate figure,shapely leg, and facial beauty of the er's totemicreaity-her positionwithin the social order travestydancer. Janin, however, added anotherelement of ballet-and that troublingthird who articulatedthe to Gautier'slist of characteristicsunbecoming in a male commonground of the period's balletic avatars of Eve. As dancer - power. No real man, that is, no upstanding an emblem of wanton sexuality,feminized masculinity, memberof the new bourgeoisorder, could impersonate and amazon unviolability,the danseuseen travestisym- the poetic idealism of the ballet hero without ungen- bolized in her complexpersona the many shades of lust deringhimself, without, in short,becoming a woman in projectedby theaudience on the nineteenth-centurydan- male .Janin's remarks, published in theJournal des cer. Debats, are worth quoting at length: Unlikethe older genre distinctions based on body type, movement, and style, romanticism'sfemale tryptich Speak to us of a prettydancing girl who displaysthe alignedballetic image with a hierarchyof class and sexual grace of her figure,who reveals so fleetinglyall the

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treasuresof her beauty.Thank God, I understand amazon,that untamedDiana who so fascinatedthe thatperfectly, I know what this lovely creature nineteenth-centuryimagination. In Gautier'sdescription wishesus, and I wouldwillingly follow her wherever of EugenieFiocre as Cupid in Nemea,note the sapphic she wishesin thesweet land of love. Buta man,as allusions. as and a wretchedfellow who about ugly you I, leaps CertainlyLove was neverpersonified in a more withoutknowing why, a creaturespecially made to or more body.Mle. Fiocrehas carrya musketand a swordand to weara uniform. graceful, charming Thatthis fellow should dance as a womandoes - managedto compoundthe perfectionboth of the younggirl and ofthe youth, and to makeof them a impossible!That this bewhiskered individual who is sexless whichis itself.She have a of the an elector,a municipal beauty, beauty might pillar community, beenhewn from a blockof Paros marble by a Greek councillor,a man whose business it is tomake and ... and animated a miraclesuch as thatof unmakelaws, shouldcome beforeus in a tunicof sculptor, by Galatea.To thepurity of marble,she adds thesup- sky-bluesatin, his head coveredwith a hat witha of life.Her movementsare and his cheek, a pleness developed wavingplume amorouslycaressing balancedin a sovereignharmony...What admirable frightfuldanseuse of the male sex ... this was surely Diana thehuntress would them!What an andintolerable, and we havedone well to legs! envy impossible easy, proud and tranquilgrace! What modest, remove such ... artistsfrom our pleasures. Today, measured and thanksto this revolution we haveeffected, woman is gestures!...Socorrect, rhythmical the of ballet ... no forcedto cut offhalf nobleis hermiming that, like that of themimes of longer old, it be two unseenflute- hersilk petticoat to dressher partner in it.Today the might accompaniedby manis no tolerated as a useful players.If Psyche saw this Cupid she might forget the dancing longer except original.13 accessory.12 As theconcept of masculinity aligned itself with produc- Fiocre,an exceptionallybeautiful woman who created tivity,the effeminatesterility of the danseurbecame therole of Frantz in Coppelia, was oneof the most famous unacceptableto ballet's large male public. travestyheroes of the 1860s and 1870s.Like a numberof Butin definingpower as male,Janin implicitly defined Op6radancers, she shared the boards with a sister,whose powerlessnessas female.In photographsof the danseuse shapelylimbs commanded nearly as muchadmiration as entravesti posed with her female counterpart, the moder hersibling's. By far, the most fascinating sister pair of the eye notesa curtailmentof scale, a reductionnot only in centurywere the Elsslers-Fanny,the romantictempt- theheight and girthof themasculine figure, but in the resswith the body of a "hermaphroditeof antiquity,"'4 physicalcontrast of theimaged sexes. What is missing, and Therese,her partner and faithfulcavalier. For oVer aboveall, is thesuggestion of dominance, that intimation ten years they danced together,lived together,and of powerthat even the mostself-effacing danseur com- traveledtogether. On stagethey communicated a veiled municatesto his audience. In appropriatingthe male role, eroticism,while offstagetheir relationship suggested a thetravesty dancer stripped that role of power. feminizedrelic of the older clan system. In eliminatingthe danseur,ballet turnedout the A giraffeof a dancerat 5'6", the "majestic"Ther'ese remainingin-house obstacle to sexuallicense. With the servedher diminutive sister in the multiple roles reserved declineof the clan, only his lust,that last bastionof inan olderera for the ballerina's next of kin. She handled power,stood between the danseuse and the scheme so art- all of Fanny'sbusiness affairs, decided where and what ull contrivedby the entrepreneursof balletfor the sheshould dance, and staged, without credit, many of the milionairelibertines of the audience. For what was the balletsand numbersin which they appeared.As a Operaif not their private seraglio? Thanks to the travesty woman,however, Therese lacked the clan's patriarchal dancer,no male now could destroythe peace of their authority,while as a dancer,she would always be privateharem or theirenjoyment of performanceas withoutthe wealth and powerof the "protectors"who foreplayto possession. increasinglymaterialized behind the scenes- promoting In appearance,the feminineandrogyne laid claimto favorites,dispensing funds as wellas maintainingdancers anothererotic nexus. Tall, imposing,and majestic,she andtheir impoverished families. Indeed, one such protec- addedto thecharm of wantonnessthe challenge of the tor,the self-styledMarquis de La Valette,who became

38 Dance ResearchJournal 17/2 & 18/1(1985-86J Fanny's lover in 1837, eventuallydestroyed the sororial menage:his scornfor the ex-dancerwho shared her bed forcedTherese to leave. One expectsthat the likes of the Marquis de La Valette relishedthe sightof his Elsslergirls charming confreres of theloges inferales. But one also suspectsthat the travesty was not so completely unsexed as the householdhe ruled. Certainly,it had been neuteredby the substitutionof a woman forthe man, but thathardly means it was devoid of eroticcontent. Might not audi- ences have perceivedin the choreographicplay of female bodies, somethingother than two women competingto whetthe jaded appetitesof libertines? Consider Gautier's account of a duet performedby the two Elsslers: The pas executedby Mile. T. Elsslerand her sister is charminglyarranged; there is one figurein par- ticularwhere the two sistersrun fromthe back-cloth hand in hand, throwingforward their legs-at the same time,which surpasses everythingthat can be "La Belle" Otero imaginedin the way of homogeneity,accuracy, and precision.One mightalmost be said to be the reflec- tionof the other, and thateach comes forwardwith a mirrorheld beside her, which follows her and tation on the usages of gender, no critical perspec- tive on the politics that ruled their no repeatsall hermovements. sexual lives, is more and more harmoniousto revelationof the ways masculine and femininewere Nothing soothing imaged on the ballet stage. What was the gaze than this dance at once so refinedand so they exemplified the triumph of bordello politics ideologized as the precise. feminine and an Fanny, to whom Theresa has given as ever the mystique-a politics ideologyimposed more a child-like an by men who remainedin fullcontrol of balletthroughout importantpart, displayed grace, the as artless agility,and an adorable roguishness; her century teachers, critics,choreographers, spec- Creole costume made her look or rather tators,and artisticdirectors. ravishing, The advent in 1909 of Russes with she made thecostume look ravishing.15 Diaghilev's its dynamic new aesthetic shattered the travesty Th6rese had choreographedLa Voliere("The Aviary" paradigm.Seeing real men on the stage in choreography in English),which like her otherballets and dances made thatexploited the strength,athleticism, and scale of the no use of men: she cast herselfin the masculinerole. Yet male body simplyelectrified audiences, causing themto despitethe differences in theirattire, what struckGautier look anew at the travestydancer. But the audience itself was the oneness of the pair: he saw them as refracted had changed dramatically.The new followingfor ballet imagesof a singleself, perfect and complete.In evoking came fromthe highlysophisticated milieu of le toutParis. an Arcadia of perpetualadolescence untroubledand un- The greatconnoisseurs, collectors, musical patrons,and touchedby man, the travestyduet hintedat an ideal at- salonnieresof the Frenchcapital-many of whom were tainable only in the realms of art and the women-replaced thesportsmen and rouesof the loges in- imagination-notthe real world of stockbrokersand females.At the same time a new androgynousthematic municipalcouncillors. and iconography,particularly evident in works created But dancingby itsvery nature is a physicalas much as for Nijinskywhere images of sexual heterodoxytrans- symbolicactivity. In the formalizedmating game of the gressedrigid categories of masculinityand femininity,re- travestypas de deux,two women touchingand movingin genderedthe ideologyof ballet, endingthe reignof the harmony conveyed an eroticismperhaps even more femininemystique. The era ofthe danseuse en travestihad compellingthan their individual physical charms. The come to an end. fantasyof femalesat play forthe male eye is a staple of eroticliterature, a kind of travestyperformance enacted in the privacyof the imagination.Ballet's travestypas de NOTES deuxgave public formto this privatefantasy, whetting 1. Forthe dramatic changes in the organization ofthe Paris Opera after audience desire,while keepingsafely within the bounds the Revolutionof 1830, see Ivor Guest, The RomanticBallet in Paris, of decorum.For love interferedwith forewordsNinette de Valoisand LillianMoore, 2nd ed. rev.(London: ultimately,sapphic Dance 22-25.In ballet the smoothfunctioning of the seraglioas much as the ob- Books,1980), pp. England,nineteenth-century In the case the where appearedexclusively in a commercialsetting. John Ebers, a former streperousmale. of Elsslers, ticket assumedthe ofthe in Thereseseems to have animatedher with agent, management King'sTheatre 1820, choreography an associationthat ended in bankruptcyin 1827.He was succeededin somethingakin to personalfeeling, the incest taboo coded 1828by PierreLaporte, who, with the exception of the 1832season, as sisterlydevotion what mightotherwise have been con- controlledthe until his deathin 1841,whereupon Ben- struedas love. And one cannot help thinkingthat the jaminLumley, in chargeof finances since 1836, assumed the theater's buxom travestyheroes of the Second Empire and sub- management.In thehands of this solicitor/impresario, Her Majesty's sequent decades flauntedan outrageous femininityto (as theKing's Theatre had been renamed) entered upon an eraof glory. ward offthe sapphism immanentin their roles. In so In the 1830sand 1840s,under the management of AlfredBunn, the Theatre Lanebecame another venuefor ballet. doing, however, ballet robbed the danseuse of erotic Royal,Drury important Duringthe latter part of the nineteenth century up tothe eve ofWorld mystery. WarI, balletlived on in the music-halls,above all, the Empireand Today,thanks to the example of the BalletsTrocadero, Alhambra.Ivor Guest, The RomanticBallet in Its we are to thinkthat in dance of- England: Development, apt travesty inherently Fulfilmentand Decline (London: Phoenix House, 1954), pp. 33, 46, 83- fersa critiqueof sexual role playing. But the travesty 87, 128-131;The Empire Ballet (London: Society for Theatre Research, dancers of nineteenth-centuryballet offeredno medi- 1962);"The Alhambra Ballet," Dance Perspectives, Autumn 1959.

Dance ResearchJournal 17/2 & 18/1(1985-861 39 In France, it should be noted,the commercialboulevard stage was the romances that dot the ballet chronicleof the 1830s, 1840s, and the breedingground for theatrical romanticism. Long beforethe Paris 1850s. Opera's Robertle consideredthe official of Diable, usually point depar- 7. For the introduced Dr. Louis Veron at the Paris Opera turefor romantic and effec- changes by ballet,spectacular techniques supernatural afterthe Revolutionof 1830, see Guest, TheRomantic Ballet in Paris, ts were in the and vaudevilles of the p. commonplace 28. Under Ebers, the Green Room builtat the Theatre theaters.Ballet was an of these Kings's perfor- popular importantcomponent spec- med a similarfunction as the de la Danse, while at Lane, tacles. it was at theaterslike the Thatre de la Porte-Saint-Mar- Foyer Drury Indeed, Bunn allowed the more influential the run of the coulisses. which maintaineda resident and new patrons tin, troupe regularlypresented Procuressesof "of the worst circulated at Lane, with type" backstage Drury ballets and revivals,that the aerial style of dancing associated them the known as Madame romanticism to in the 1820s. the talents among blackmailingbeauty specialist began crystallizeearly Among Rachel. Guest,The in England, pp. 36-37,113. associatedwith the floweringof romanticballet at the ParisOpera who gained earlyexperience on the boulevardstage were JeanCoralli, who 8. Migel, The Ballerinas,p. 218. Married in 1845 (to the chagrinof or at producedseveral balletsat the Th6etrede la Galte. Guest, The Roman- Cerrito'sparents who had hoped fora son-in-lawwith a fortune ticBallet in Paris,pp. 4-5, 13-14, 16, AppendixD, pp. 272-274; Marian leasta title),the couple brokeup in 1851. Shortlythereafter, her liaison Hannah Winter,The Pre-RomanticBallet (London: Pitman,1974), pp. withthe Marques de Bedar became public knowledge.When rumors 178-179,193-197. began to circulatein 1844 about Cerrito'simpending marriage to Saint- Leon, the ballerina's London admirers,headed by Lord MacDonald, 2. Some instancesof to the nineteenth genderswapping prior century created a public disturbance when Saint-Leon appeared onstage. are Marie Salle's as Amourin Handel's Alcina Salle appearance (which one the dancerstopped before their box and with and the three men in During performance, choreographedherself) graces impersonatedby a "sarcasticgrin" and an "indescribablegesture" hissed menacinglyat Plathee,Jean-Philippe Rameau's spoof of his own operaticstyle. The Lord Macdonald. The word cochonwas heard to leave Saint-Leon's loverin a la Twelfth was a conceit disguise Shakespeare's Night popular mouth,a grossimpertinence coming from a dancer. Saint-LIon'swrit- that called for I am to Catherine for cross-dressing. grateful Turocy ten apologyappeared in the Timesa few days later.Ivor Guest,Fanny information.For the of the London audience to Salle's this response Cerrito:The Lifeof a RomanticBallerina, 2nd ed. rev. (London: Dance see Parmenia The BallerinasFrom the Court of performance, Migel, Books, 1974),p. 85. LouisXIV toPavlova (1972; rpt.New York: Capo, 1980),p. 25. 9. "Fanny Elsslerin 'La Tempete'," in The RomanticBallet as Seen by 3. Le Constitutionnel,quoted in Guest,The Romantic Ballet in Paris,p. 1. TheophileGautier, trans. Cyril W. Beaumont(London, 1932; rpt.New York:Arno Press, 1980), p. 16. 4. Les Petits de in The RomanticBallet Mysteres l'Opera,quoted Guest, 10. "Perrotand CarlottaGrisi in 'Le Zingaro',"ibid., p. 44. inParis, p. 25. 11. "The Elsslersin 'La Voliere'," ibid.,p. 24. 5. Bournonville, TheatreLife, trans. Patricia N. McAndrew August My 12. 2 March 1840,quoted in Guest,Romantic Ballet, p. 21. (Middletown:Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1979),p. 52. 13. Quoted in Ivor Guest,The Ballet of the Second Empire (Middletown: 6. Fanny Cerrito's liaison with the Marques de Bedmar, Carlotta WesleyanUniv. Press, 1974),p. 200. Grisi's with Prince Radziwill, Elssler's with the Marquis de La Fanny 14. "FannyElssler," in Gautier,p. 22. Valette, Pauline Duvernay's with (among others) Valette and Lyne in 24. Stephens,and Elisa Scheffer'swith the Earl of Pembrokeare a few of 15. "The Elsslers 'La Voliere',"p.

40 Dance ResearchJournal 17/2 & 18/1(1985-86)