In spite of his great reputation and influence, Noverre found it difficult to reform the stage fundamentally. He failed to perform his own ballets in the way he wished. Thus in the ‘Horatii’ Camilla appeared in hooped petticoat, her hair piled up and decorated with fantastic ribbons and flowers. However, his reforms gained ground little by little. Much as he tried, he failed in reforming the stage celebrities of his time. This actuated the great reformer to say, ‘what we lack is not talent, but emulation. It almost seems, in fact, as if this were deliberately repressed. How I should rejoice to see a great dancer performing some noble part without plumes or wig or masks! I should then be able to applaud his sublime talent with satisfaction to myself; and I could then justly apply the term “great” to him, whereas now the most I say is: “Ah la bella gamba!” It is evident, therefore, that theatrical dancing demands many reforms. They cannot, of course, all be carried out at once; but we might at least begin. Let us do away with those gold painted masks, which deprive us of what would be one of the most interesting features of a pas-de-deux, the expressions of the performers’ faces. The disappearance of the periwig would follow of itself, and a shepherd would no longer dance in a plumed helmet.’
It is said that the Noverre’s ballets reached the number of fifty. But most known of them are ‘The Death of Ajax,’ ‘The Clemency of Titus,’ ‘The Caprices of Galatea,’ ‘Orpheus’ Descent Into Hell,’ ‘Rinaldo and Armida,’ ‘The Roses of Love,’ ‘The Judgment of Paris,’ etc. Several of these he produced at the courts of Stuttgart, Vienna, St. Petersburg and Florence. It was through his influence upon the Empress Anna of Russia that the great Russian Imperial Ballet School was founded, whose graduates have been electrifying the European audiences during the present and past decades.
Noverre’s reform ideas were much perfected by the French composers and dancers of the following generation, men whom we have previously mentioned—Gardel, Dauberval, the Vestris brothers, and, in addition, Duport, Blasis and Milon. Auguste Vestris was twelve years old when he made his début in Paris, in 1772, in the ballet La Cinquantaine, and aroused the wildest enthusiasm in the audience. His high leaps were so popular that his father used to boast, ‘If Auguste does not stay up in the air, it is because he is unwilling to humiliate his comrades.’ For thirty-six years he was premier danseur of the Opéra of Paris, and preserved his popularity till the age of sixty-six, when he retired to give lessons in dancing at the Academy. Of an eighteenth-century performance Weber writes graphically:
‘On June 11, 1778, Mile. Guimard and the younger Vestris danced in the new ballet, Les Petits Riens, with Dauberval and Mlle. Anglin. The performance was a great success. The only author mentioned was Noverre, the celebrated ballet-master. It was he who had imagined the three scenes, which were in fact the groundwork of his ballet. The first scene represented Love, caught in a net and put in a cage; the second, a game of blind-man’s buff; and in the third, which was the greatest success, Love led two shepherdesses up to a third, disguised as a shepherd, who discovered the trick by unveiling her bosom. “Encore!” cried the audience. Mlle. Guimard, the younger Vestris, and Noverre were heartily applauded, but not one “bravo!” was given to the composer of the music—who was no other than the divine Mozart. Mozart, who, fifteen years before, had been acclaimed in Paris as an infant prodigy and an inspired composer, was vegetating in the city in poverty and obscurity. The success of Les Petits Riens apparently made little difference to him, for a few days after the performance we find him leaving Paris, and seeking employment as an organist to ensure his daily bread.’
This sad episode of the treatment of one of the greatest musical geniuses of his time is partly proof of how little valued was the musical side of a ballet at that time, yet it is also a graphic picture of the mental level of audiences of any time—ours not excluded—who judge a genius by public sentiment artificially aroused, either by means of some press-agent or by incidental novelty.
Of the Gardel ballets the most popular were Paul et Virginie, La Dansomanie, Psyche, L’Oracle, Telemaque, and Le Déserteur. The writer witnessed a performance of Psyche given by the Russian Imperial Ballet with all the true atmosphere of its age, and it made a peculiar impression, similar to that which we get in visiting ethnographic museums of Europe. It was performed in Paris first time on December 14, 1790, at the Théâtre des Arts and pleased the people so immensely that it has been repeated not fewer than a thousand times since. The Dansomanie, which was given during the Revolution, was less effective and the author was apparently depressed, though he had chosen a subject of timely character—peasants, villagers and Savoyard farmers acting as the heroes. His ballet, Guillaume Tell, promised to be more successful, as the Committee of Public Safety had ordered its performance, but the money granted for its staging was stolen by politicians and Gardel took back his manuscript. It was given after his death. But his spectacular ballet Marseillaise created a furore when it was given at the Opéra. The ballet opened with a blast of trumpets, and was executed by dancers dressed as warriors and participants in a hungry mob. Mlle. Maillard, personifying Liberty, took her rôle so well that the actors on the stage and the audience fell on their knees before her, as though in prayer. The solemn hymn passage of this part of the opera, and the slow, majestic dance of the artist were so impressive that the audience burst into sobs.
II
Though the ballet lost its previous splendor under the Revolution, yet it became more vigorous in its enforced simplicity. The French writers admit that the ballets performed in connection with the fêtes of the Republic were marked by more serious tendencies and possessed certain profound emotional qualities. Actors and dancers soon accommodated themselves to the new ideals of social life. The Festival of the Supreme Being, conducted by Robespierre himself, was the most important of the itinerant ballets of that time. It was a ceremony of classic nature, performed with slow and march-like steps. Special ceremonial dances were also performed by the colossal statue of Wisdom to the accompaniment of an orchestra. The members of the Convention had their places on a specially erected platform, while choirs chanted a hymn to the Supreme Being. The President set fire with a torch to an image of Atheism. ‘An immense mountain,’ writes Castil-Blaze, ‘symbolized the national altar; upon its summits rises the tree of Liberty, the Representatives range themselves under its protective branches, fathers with their sons assemble on the part of the mountain set aside for them; mothers with their daughters place themselves on the other side; their fecundity and the virtues of their husbands are their sole titles to a place there. A profound silence reigns all around; touching strains of harmonious melody are heard: the fathers and their sons sing the first strophe; they swear with one accord that they will not lay down their arms until they have annihilated the enemies of the Republic, and all the people take up the finale.’
This short picture gives a fairly clear idea of the Revolutionary period, which laid a new foundation to the French arts, including the art of dancing. The historians tell us that scarcely was the Terror at an end when twenty-three theatres and eighteen hundred dancing salons were open every evening in Paris. The costumes worn by the dancers under the first Republic were more or less imitations of those of the ancient Greeks. The women arranged their hair in imitation of the coiffures of Aspasia and Sappho, and appeared with bare arms, bare bosoms, sandalled feet, and hair bound in plaits round their heads. Even during the Terror people danced in every restaurant on the boulevards, in the Champs Élysées, and along the quays. It is said the people danced in order to forget the tragedies of the day. Milon was a celebrated composer and ballet-master under the Consulate. The most popular of his ballets during this period were Les Sauvages de la Mer du Sud, Lucas et Laurette, Héro et Leandre, Clary, Nina, Le Carnaval de Venise, etc. As in their dress and their ideals, so also in their dancing the people showed an outspoken tendency to appear à la sauvage. However, the political turmoils that shook France in these centuries, when the art of ballet crystallized into a systematic shape, assisted its natural development, chiefly by forcing it to swing from one extreme to the other.
The foundation which the French grand ballet laid for the art of dancing still prevails in all the dancing schools of Europe. The ballet codes of all the modern nations use the same French grammar of technique as that which was taught to Mlles. Sallé, Camargo, and Guimard during the past centuries. To the French Academy of Dancing the world owes the principles of the ballet-technique, the pirouettes, jetés, chassés, etc. The French ballet-masters found it necessary to divide dancing into five different positions, which formed the foundation of all dancing; and then classified the various styles of steps. In describing first, the positions, we begin with the right foot, but the movements would be the same if we would choose the left foot. First position: place the heels against each other, the knees and toes turned well out, the legs firm and straight, the body erect and well balanced, standing equally on the two feet. Second position: pass the right foot to the side to the length of the foot, the weight of the body resting on both feet, the right heel turned forward. Third position: bring the heel of the extended foot close to the hollow of the other instep, in the middle. Fourth position: move the right toe to the front, the toe pointed, the heel forward. Fifth position: let the feet be completely crossed, the heel of one foot brought to the toe of the other.