The Art of Ballet

by Mark Edward Perugini

With such a queen on the throne, at such a time of stress, can it be wondered at that theatrical dancing was at a comparatively low ebb? Why, there were only two theatres, Drury Lane and Lincoln’s Inn Fields! and they were striving hard to outdo each other—in dullness.

Indeed, it was not until practically the close of Queen Anne’s reign that stage-dancing began to come to its own; for though the craze for pantomimes (and his importation of French dancers) started by John Rich in Anne’s last year, were mainly responsible for this, I cannot help thinking that Steele and Addison’s ever lively Spectator, together with the works of Mr. John Weaver, had considerable effect in rousing the attention of playgoers as to the possibilities of dancing on the stage; for while there are four papers in The Spectator in which dancing as a social accomplishment is discussed, Steele, in one of them, makes the interesting suggestion that “It would be a great improvement, as well as embellishment to the theatre, if dancing were more regarded, and taught to all the actors”; and another calls special attention to An Essay towards an History of Dancing, by John Weaver (a 12mo. volume published in 1712), who was also author of a very interesting History of Pantomimes. These literary efforts cannot have been without their influence on current taste in things theatrical.

Before the appearance of The Spectator, however, Addison had made amusing reference to a dancing-master in one of his papers for The Tatler. The date is 1709. He heads it as written “From my own Apartment, October 31,” and goes on: “I was this morning awakened by a sudden shake of the house; and as soon as I had got a little out of my consternation, I felt another, which was followed by two or three repetitions of the same convulsion. I got up as fast as possible, girt on my rapier, and snatched up my hat, when my landlady came up to me and told me that the gentlewoman of the next house begged me to step thither, for that a lodger she had taken in was run mad; and she desired my advice; as indeed everybody in the whole lane does upon important occasions,” he slyly adds.

With much detail and delightful humour Addison goes on to describe his adventure, at greater length than can be given here. Suffice it to say that he went in next door and upstairs, “with my hand upon the hilt of my rapier and approached this new lodger’s door. I looked in at the keyhole and there I saw a well-made man look with great attention at a book and, on a sudden, jump into the air so high that his head almost touched the ceiling. He came down safe on his right foot, and again flew up, alighting on his left; then looked again at his book and, holding out his right leg, put it into such a quivering motion that I thought he would have shaken it off.”

Eventually, of course, he discovers the lodger is a dancing-master, and on asking to see the book he is studying Addison “could not make anything of it.” Whereupon the maître explains that he had been reading a dance or two ... “which had been written by one who taught at an academy in France,” adding the interesting comment “that now articulate motions, as well as sounds, were expressed by proper characters; and that there is nothing so common as to communicate a dance by a letter.” Ultimately Addison begs him to practise in a ground-room, and returns to his own residence “meditating on the various occupations of rational creatures.”

To return, however, to the later publication, The Spectator, in which Addison was also assisted by Steele and other writers of such varied character as Motteaux (debauchee, tea-merchant and translator of Don Quixote), Ambrose Philips (whom Swift nicknamed “Namby Pamby”), and Isaac Watts—the famous hymn-writer. In a comparatively early number a short note introduces in very learned fashion a quaint letter purporting to be from “some substantial tradesman about ‘Change,’” in which the writer grows querulous over the way in which his daughter (who “has for some time been under the tuition of Monsieur Rigadoon, a dancing-master in the city”), has been taught to behave at a ball he takes her to.

With some of the dancing the old man is delighted, as he is with the art generally, but presently he has to complain: “But as the best institutions are liable to corruptions, so, sir, I must acquaint you that very great abuses are crept into this entertainment. I was amazed to see my girl handed by and handing young fellows with so much familiarity,” and he finds that fault especially with “a most impudent step called ‘Setting.’”

There can be little doubt, however, that the good citizen was shocked by a dance that was probably quite innocuous, and only seemed to suggest a familiarity of behaviour unusual to his prim eyes, viewing a ball-room for the first time.

Almost the whole of one issue of The Spectator is taken up with a letter from John Weaver, to whom Steele gives a fine advertisement by not only printing the letter in extenso, but introducing it with sapient comments from himself. One point he makes somewhat recalls to mind the complaint of Arbeau’s young friend, the law-student Capriol, who had grown dusty over his studies.

Speaking of dancing, Steele says: “I know a gentleman of great abilities, who bewailed the want of this part of his education to the end of a very honourable life. He observed that there was not occasion for the common use of great talents; that they are but seldom in demand; and that these very great talents were often rendered useless to a man for want of small attainments.” One can hardly perhaps consider dancing to-day as a “small attainment,” however it may have been considered in the reign of Queen Anne.