CHAPTER IX
THE GRAND BALLET OF FRANCE
Louis XIV and the ballet; the Pavane and the Courante; reforms under Louis XV; Noverre and the ballet d’action; Auguste Vestris and others; famous ballets of the period—the Revolution and the Consulate; the French technique, the foundation of ‘choreographic grammar’; the ‘five positions’; the ballet steps—Famous danseuses: Sallé, Camargo; Madeleine Guimard; Allard.
I
Though Catherine de Medici, Henri IV, and Cardinal Richelieu are often quoted as the first rulers who enabled and encouraged their subjects to revive the ancient dances and thus lay the foundation of the modern ballet, the honor really belongs to Louis XIV. His love for dancing was so vital that he himself figured frequently on the stage, and emphasized the fact that the theatre was not a Pagan or immoral institution. He personally inspired Lully, Benserade and Molière to devote their genius to the stage. He introduced Minuets, Gavottes, Pavanes and Courantes at his court functions and they were copied by all the other rulers and by the nobility. In 1661 the Royal Academy of Dancing was founded. To its graduates were given the privileges that were enjoyed only by the highest officers of the empire. It is said that the king danced in the Masque of Cassandra when he was thirteen years of age. The French historians write that Louis XIV danced in twenty-seven grand ballets, not to mention the intermezzi of lyrical tragedies and comedy-ballets. In the Ballet du Carrousel, given in 1662 on a large open space before the Tuileries, the king danced in the rôle of a Roman emperor and his brother in that of a Turkish sultan. On the occasion of the king’s marriage in 1660 the ballet ‘Hercules in Love’ was given at the palace.
Lully’s ballet, ‘Cupid and Bacchus,’ was said to be a piece full of imagination, dramatic, vigorous and rich in timely mood. ‘The Triumph of Love,’ performed in 1681, being the first ballet in which women appeared, is considered one of the best creations of this time musically and scenically. One of the most popular comic ballets of that era was Impatiencem, composed of series of disconnected scenes of extremely humorous nature. Pecour and Le Basque were the two celebrated dancers of those days, while Beauchamp, a talented composer and artist of considerable imaginative power, acted as Director of the Academy of Dancing and ballet-master in the Opéra. All his ballets were distinguished by their extraordinary complexity of mechanical contrivances, by imposing effects and their allegorical character. However, towards the end of the century Dupré appeared on the stage and soon far surpassed all his predecessors. Noverre speaks of him as the god of dancing, whose harmony of movements was of marvellous perfection.
The principal tendency of dancing of this era was to be magnificent and noble, but it lacked individuality and failed to stir the emotions. The best examples of this kind of stateliness and stiffness are offered by the Pavane and Courante, which still survive. The gentleman, with hat in one hand, a gilded sword at his side, an imposing cloak thrown over his arm, gravely bowed before his partner, stiff and statuesque in her long train, and began the dance walking gravely around the room. The Pavane was ridiculously ceremonial and conventional. The Courante was different, somewhat resembling the Minuet. It was rather graceful, consisting of backward and forward steps. How fond the king was of the Courante is evident of what Regnard writes: ‘Pecour gives him lessons in the Courante every morning.’ Littré says that the Courante began by bows and courtseys, after which the dancer and the partner performed a set figure, which formed a sort of elongated ellipse. This step was in two parts: the first consisted in making plié relevé, at the same time bringing the foot from behind into the fourth position in front by a pas glissé; the second consisted of a jetté with one foot, and a coupé with the other. The dancers performed the back stay step twice, returning to position, and turned, beginning the movement again by repeating the first springing step and the back stay step, so that the partners changed places and turn. All these three figures were then repeated, commencing with the opposite foot. Eight bars of music were always occupied with the slow pas de basque in a circle. This briefly shows the same designs and forms in the dance of this era that we find in the Rococco style of architecture.
But the beginning of the eighteenth century shows a marked reaction against the statuesque solemnity, the dead stiffness and merciless etiquette that had prevailed. An era of artificial reforms begins with Louis XV. To this period belongs the origin of our modern industrialism. The views and feelings of the feudal system begin to give place to those of coming realism and individualism. But the change is insignificant, as the art of dancing lacks in this as it did in the other, energy, feeling and soul. The one was more impressive through its grand outlines, the other excelled through its dainty charm, like the fashions, decorations and other arts of that time. Long, gilded mirrors, gay garlands of flowers, frail elliptic carvings, graceful designs, gauzy tissues, mauve ribbons, painted faces and hands, perfumed atmosphere, these and numerous other impressions emanate of the art of dancing of the first part of the eighteenth century, although to this era belong the vigorous attempts of Jean-Georges Noverre, the greatest of all the dance authorities of the past centuries.
Noverre, the celebrated ballet-master of France, is considered the father of the ballet and classic dancing generally. The brothers Gardel and Dauberval based their ideas upon the principles of Noverre. It was he who drove the masks, paniers, and padded coat-skirts from the stage and made it human. ‘A ballet,’ he said, ‘is a picture, or rather a series of pictures, connected by the action which forms the subject of the ballet. To me the stage is a canvas on which the composer paints his ideas, notes his music and displays scenery colored by appropriate costumes. A picture is an imitation of Nature; but a good ballet is Nature itself, ennobled by all the charms of art. The music is to dancing what the libretto is to the music.’ According to his theory the action of the dancer should be an instrument for the rendering of the written idea. Before Noverre laid the foundation to his ballet d’action, dancing had existed as an auxiliary form to opera and was lacking in any signs of life. The dancers wearing powdered hair piled up a foot on their heads, and the men in their long-skirted coats made the impression more of a big puppet-show than of a living dance. This made the use of intricate and plastic movements of the body and, moreover, of mimic expressions, absolutely impossible. This is Noverre’s argument:
‘I wish to reduce by three-quarters the ridiculous paniers of our danseuses. They are opposed equally to freedom, to quickness and to the prompt and animated action of the dance. They deprive the figure of its elegance and of the just proportions which it ought to possess. They diminish the beauty of the arms; they bury, so to speak, the graces. They embarrass and distract the dancer to such a degree that the movement of her panier sometimes occupies her more seriously than that of her limbs.’