Blondi, Beauchamps’ nephew; Feuillet, Desaix, Ballon, Baudiery-Laval, and his son Michel-Jean, a good dancer and an excellent mechanical contriver; Mesdemoiselles Subligny, Prévôt, Carville, and Le Breton, were also stars of the period, of some of whom there will be more to say presently.
BOOK II: THE SECOND ERA
CHAPTER XII
SOME EARLY STARS AND BALLETS
For some time after the founding of the King’s Dancing Academy the French Opera stage was ungraced by the feminine form, though women took part in the performance at some of the minor theatres, such as the famous Theatres of the Fair in Paris.
For the entertainment of the more exalted sections of Society the more exalted ladies themselves performed; at Court, however, not on the public stage, where, as in our own theatre in Elizabethan times, youths played the women’s rôles.
Such was the case in the production of a ballet by Lulli and Desbrosses in 1672, “Les Fêtes de l’amour et de Bacchus,” in which M. le Duc de Monmouth, M. le Duc de Villeroy, M. le Marquis de Rassen, and M. Legrand, executed various dances “supported” by Beauchamps, M. André, Favier and Lapierre, professional male dancers at the Opera.
Of these the leader was Beauchamps, director of the Royal Academy of Dancing, composer of, and superintendent of, the Court Ballets of Louis XIV in 1661, and made maître des ballets to the Academy in 1671. He danced with the king in the entertainment at Court, and though La Bruyère says of him, “qu’il jetait les jambes en avant, et faisait un tour en l’air avant que de retomber à terre,” showing that even in those days the public loved “sensation,” he was ordinarily a grave and dignified executant. He was one of the first experimentalists in the direction of inventing a system of Choreography, or the writing down of dances in a kind of shorthand, so that a dance once designed should never be lost, but could be read and repeated as easily as a piece of music. In this he was only following on the track of old Arbeau, but his system was different, and, if not ideal, at least it paved the way to a better. Beauchamps died in 1705.