Swarthmore College Works

Dance Faculty Works Dance

4-1-2018

Review Of "La Querelle Des Pantomimes: Danse, Culture, Et Société Dans L'Europe Des Lumières" By A. Fabbricatore

Olivia Sabee Swarthmore College, [email protected]

Follow this and additional works at: https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-dance

Part of the Dance Commons

Recommended Citation Olivia Sabee. (2018). "Review Of "La Querelle Des Pantomimes: Danse, Culture, Et Société Dans L'Europe Des Lumières" By A. Fabbricatore". Dance Research Journal. Volume 50, Issue 1. 118-121. DOI: 10.1017/ S0149767718000086 https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-dance/136

This work is brought to you for free by Swarthmore College Libraries' Works. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dance Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Works. For more information, please contact [email protected]. American except for sexual preference. Farfan as it is, she appears to believe that the interface does acknowledge the role of gender transgres- of cultures and races precipitated by colonialism sion in conceptions and performances of had scant influence upon, or role within, queer queer, but by foregrounding homosexuality, and modernism performance. In this sense she recapitulates a key shortfall in later Farfan reconstructs a canon that she might oth- twentieth-century queer theory of eclipsing erwise be attempting to critique. transgender subjectivity, while using nonnor- Notwithstanding the problems in the limits of mative gender expression as an enabling notion. Farfan’ssubjectsofanalysisaswellasinher The problem with Farfan’s conception of methodology, by drawing connections between a queer arises to a certain extent from her analytical handful of queer modernist performances and method of reading historical commentary and contemporary queer theory, the author imagines other primary source material through contem- an important historical space. Artists from the porary theory. Late twentieth-century concep- late nineteenth century onward are envisaged as tions of queerness inherit the midcentury critiquing or “queering” dominant cultural values separation of gender and sexuality that late and practices. Furthermore, Farfan chronicles nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century social circles and cultural movements dedicated nonnormative identities predate. The pitfall of to such critique, establishing that while the works centralizing “sexual preference” to the exclusion often occupied contentious positions in dominant of other axes in the conception of queer extends culture, the ideas staged were integral to a broader to Farfan’s treatment of racial and cultural differ- development of modernist conceptions of gender ence, something she also begins to repair in her and sexuality, both marginal and central. discussion of Nijinsky. Talking about the reliance of Afternoon of a Faun upon Orientalism, Farfan Doran George* tempts the reader into thinking she will address how these ideas underpinned late nineteenth- *Sadly, we note Doran George’s untimely pass- and early twentieth-century notions of queerness. ing prior to the publication of this review. A Furthermore, discussing how Russia, where vibrant dance, performance, and LGBTQ Nijinsky’s ballet came from, was represented as scholar, George earned their Ph.D. from UCLA quasi-Oriental and how Nijinsky’sfeaturesand with a dissertation entitled, A Conceit of the sexuality caused commentators to view him as Natural Body: The Universal-Individual in an example of Oriental debauchery, Farfan con- Somatic Dance Training. George’ s publications nects the emergence of alternate sexual identities appeared in Queer Dance: Meanings and to colonial ideology and complicates prevailing Makings (Oxford, 2017) and Transgender understandings of Orientalism. Yet, she neglects Studies Quarterly (2014). Known for their to make the same connections in her discussion intellectual rigor, invested physical practice, and of the Decadent movement, and thus, cultural generous spirit, George will be missed. or ethnic differences seem only to arise with Nijinsky’s dance. This was simply not the case, —Ariel Osterweis which Farfan could have easily established by Book Reviews Editor contextualizing Wilde’s play and Fuller’sdance in relation to “Salomania,” a late nineteenth- century European and American fascination La Querelle des Pantomimes: with Salomé that was rife with Orientalism. Danse, culture, et société dans Had the book addressed the centrality of l’Europe des Lumières colonial ideology to the whole notion of debauchery, queerness, and cultural change in by Arianna Fabbricatore. 2017. Rennes: Presses the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Universitaires de Rennes. 471 pp., b/w illustrations, Farfan could be forgiven for choosing all white index, appendices. E24.00. ISBN: 978-2-7535-5206-7. (and all but one Anglophone) examples for her doi:10.1017/S0149767718000086 argument. With substantial critical discussion of Orientalism’s role, for example, Farfan could have deconstructed the whiteness of the queer Arianna Fabbricatore’s project in The Quarrel of modernist performance that she holds up, but the Pantomimes: Dance, Culture, and Society in

118 DRJ 50/1 • APRIL 2018 Enlightenment Europe (La Querelle des “high” genres; what Franz Lang called the crux Pantomimes: Danse, culture, et société dans scenica (an open stance built on external rota- l’Europe des Lumières) is an ambitious one: to tion of the hips) appears frequently in engrav- examine and contextualize the aesthetic and ings of commedia dell’arte scenes. Likewise, semiotic issues brought up by the famous quar- manuals, such as the Abbé Dinouart’s rel between Jean-Georges Noverre and Gasparo L’Éloquence du corps dans le Ministere de la Angiolini. As they competed for recognition in Chaire, described gestural vocabulary used in the tightly linked theatrical cities of Vienna oration, building on seventeenth-century trea- and Milan, the two ballet masters engaged in a tises including John Bulwer’s Chironomia; or, heated polemical argument around the new The Art of Manual Rhetorique and Chirologia: pantomime ballet’s poetics and the identifica- The Natural Language of the Hand. Certain ges- tion of the form’s true creator. In conversation tures, these manuals explained, were excluded with literary studies, cultural history, and musi- from the orator’s vocabulary on the basis of cology, Fabbricatore’s book derives its strength their low register. Out of place in the orator’s from the fact that it approaches the quarrel— pulpit, gestures built on “excess” and “deforma- tied up, among other issues, in questions of tion” formed the basis for the commedia del- national cultural supremacy—not with the l’arte, creating a type of verlan (French slang goal of determining the true creator of the built on syllable reversal), that “reverse[d] the genre but rather by examining how the stakes institutional language of the body” (76). on both sides of the debate reflected similar Italian performers, Fabbricatore continues, suc- issues, most especially each ballet master’s ceeded in making these gestures legible to their attempt to legitimize their common art form audiences, replacing words with specific signs in ways recognized by their nations’ respective and developing a “gestural semiotic system,” institutions of taste. which may well have served as the model for Fabbricatore begins by situating eighteenth- tragic pantomime (95–96). century ballet-pantomime within a cultural milieu Despite sharing the goal of elaborating a form dominated by interest in antiquityon the one hand of pantomime ballet, differences in national cul- and mimesis on the other. Using Greek and ture shaped Noverre’s and Angiolini’sprojects Roman models, she explains, ballet masters sought and affected the ways in which the two ballet mas- to reform dance by grounding it in the pantomime ters laid out their respective rules for the genre. In of the ancients. While antiquity provided legiti- France, the Academies created under Louis XIV macy in the form of models, mimesis did the endeavored to centralize and regulate a national same through its links to the arts of poetry and culture ready for export that differentiated itself painting. Here, the author argues that Noverre from both that of the Ancients and the Italians modeled his pantomime ballet on painting, (99). In Italy, the Academy of Arcadia promoted whereas Angiolini modeled his on poetry. theatrical reforms based on rules and order, with Noverre, she continues, used the analogy of the goal of restoring the nation’s “ancient classical dance to painting in order to link dance to poetry splendor” (100). These differences in national via painting, through what she terms an “ut salta- aims, Fabbricatore argues, show themselves in tio poesis-pictura-theatrum” (43). Angiolini, on the ways that Noverre and Angiolini approach the other hand, endeavored to create a perfor- their subject matter, Noverre relying on genius mance analogous to the dramma per musica, sim- and enthusiasm and Angiolini on a strict reading ply replacing words with gesture. In both cases, of Aristotle’s Poetics. Furthermore, she continues, Fabbricatore asserts, the ballet masters used these they reveal a divergent idea of the role of the spec- analogies to justify ballet’s legitimacy, “mobiliz tator, very much tied to social class and power. [ing] precisely the literary patrimony traditionally Between 1767, when Noverre replaced belonging to the Republic of Letters” (25). Angiolini at the Viennese court, and 1776, Delving into the links between pantomime when the quarrel concluded with the publica- ballet and Enlightenment debates on rhetoric tion of the Memorie per servire alla storia degli and gesture, Fabbricatore situates Noverre’s spettacoli del teatro di Milano, 1774–1775, the and Angiolini’s works within the greater cultural two ballet masters competed for plaudits, matrix, demonstrating that bodily comportment exchanging letters defending their dramaturgi- based on dance training was not limited to cal practices and finally mobilizing and

DRJ 50/1 • APRIL 2018 119 polarizing Milanese society. From the begin- receptionontheaudience’slackofeducation. ning, the debate took place in public, Noverre Ultimately, the exchange became a question not being singled out in an anonymous Mémoire of whose ballets were superior but of whose on the basis of his high salary and massive work better responded to the demands of the expenditures. In 1772, the two ballet masters public, a public both multiform and modern. began a direct exchange, Noverre sharing the La Querelle des Pantomimes makes several livrets for his ballets Agamemnon vengé, important contributions to dance scholarship Iphigénie, and Les Grâces, and Angiolini through a detailed analysis of primary and sec- responding in the form of two letters addressed ondary sources in French, Italian, English, and to Noverre. In his Lettere, Angiolini pushed back German. It presents a long overdue analysis of against Noverre’s claim to have invented the this important moment in the history of dance genre of pantomime ballet, citing his teacher from a point of view that does not place Franz Hilverding as its true creator. At the France and Noverre at its center.2 Through its core of Angiolini’s argument, however, was his contextualization of both sides of the argument, assertion that pantomime ballet must follow it demonstrates how the nationalistic stakes of the rules of classical tragedy, which he used to the quarrel of the pantomimes went deeper discredit Noverre on the basis of his ignorance. than simply pitting ballet masters symbolic of Following Noverre’s subsequent response, French and Italian culture against each other anonymous “Oracles” of Angiolini came to the (although Noverre’s insensitivity in Milan Italian ballet master’s defense; when Noverre seems not to have helped). Rather, the poetic and Angiolini exchanged their posts of Vienna systems underscored by Angiolini and Noverre and Milan, the quarrel escalated further. were deeply rooted in their respective traditions Here, Fabbricatore introduces two previ- and thus not only concerned with the aesthetics ously unknown texts, both anonymous: one enti- of pantomime ballet but deeply tied to ques- tled “Agli amatori dei balli pantomimi” [To tions of taste. Through the introduction of amateurs of ballet pantomime] and the other, newly discovered texts at the heart of the quarrel, “Le pacificateur Lombard” [The Lombard peace- La Querelle des Pantomimes underscores this maker] (included in an appendix).1 The first is important point, providing a first in-depth particularly important in terms of its reception. study of the polemic but also stressing its current The writer, a proponent of Angiolini, is repeat- relevance not only to dance scholars but also to edly lampooned in the Memorie on the basis of historians of culture, music, and literature. his authorial legitimacy. “The author of the Memorie,” Fabbricatore specifies, “pronounces Olivia Sabee his exclusion from literary polemics and from Swarthmore College the circle of participants with the right to speak” (305). Le pacificateur Lombard,onthe other hand, trivializes the quarrel, presenting a Notes fictionalized dialogue between Angiolini and Noverre that juxtaposes dance and philosophy. 1. See Anonymous, Agli amatori dei balli Through the analysis of these texts and the others pantomimi nel 1774, ed. Arianna Fabbricatore, involved in the quarrel, Fabbricatore argues that “Un nuovo testo sulla polemica coreutica del the debate ultimately came to consider the ques- Settecento: Agli amatori dei balli pantomimi, tion of taste. Was taste innately tied to social class 1774,” in José Sasportes, ed. La Danza Italiana or national origin? Could taste be taught? This in Europa dell’Ottocento, Quaderni, vol. 3 consideration was tightly linked to the evolving (2013), pp. 211–26. In the appendix of La public sphere, characterized by pantomime Querelle des pantomimes, Fabbricatore provides ballet’s “heterogeneous reception” (339). the following texts for reference: Le pacificateur Proponents of Angiolini, steeped in the rule sys- Lombard (pp. 419–430), a French translation tem promoted by the Academy of Arcadia, found of the Lettere di Gasparo Angiolini sopra i balli Noverre’s arrogance and lack of attention toward pantomimi (pp. 345–99), Noverre’s Introduction the Milanese public—accustomed to these rules au Ballet des Horaces (pp. 401–07), and the anon- —to be problematic. Supporters of Noverre, on ymous Lettre d’undespetitsoraclesdeMonsieur the other hand, blamed the ballet master’spoor Angiolini au grand Noverre (pp. 409–17).

120 DRJ 50/1 • APRIL 2018 2. Several scholars have recently questioned polemica coreutica del Settecento: Agli the France-centric approach taken especially in amatori dei balli pantomimi,” In La considering the historical relationship between Danza Italiana in Europa dell’Ottocento,3: French and Italian ballet, one of cultural 211–26, edited by José Sasportes, Quaderni: exchange. Debra H. Sowell calls for a similar 2013. approach in her study of Italian ballet Destemberg, Emmanuelle, Marie Glon, and Romanticism (2005, 37), and Emmanuelle Vannina Olivesi. 2014. “Review of Le Ballet Destemberg, Marie Glon, and Vannina Olivesi de l’Opéra: Trois Siècles de Suprématie Depuis acknowledge the longstanding and problematic Louis XIV.” Dance Research Journal 46 (1): tradition of considering placing France at the cen- 104–13. ter of historical studies of ballet (2014, 104–13). Sasportes, José. 2013. La danza italiana in Europa dell ’Ottocento Quaderno n. 4. ARACNE editrice S.r.l. Works Cited Sowell, Debra H. 2005. “A Plurality of Romanticisms: Italian Ballet and the “ Anonymous. (1774) 2013. Agli amatori dei Repertory of Antonio Cortesi and Giovanni ” balli pantomimi nel 1774. Edited by Casati.” Dance Research Journal 27 (1): 37–55. Arianna Fabbricatore. “Un nuovo testo sulla

DRJ 50/1 • APRIL 2018 121