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Auguste Vestris and the Expansion of Technique

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2014

John V. Chapman
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Extract

At the end of the eighteenth century, ballet was split between those supporting tours de force and those who believed that “difficulties,” as they were called, should be avoided in favor of a more expressive, refined, graceful, and artless style of execution. Though the controversy neared its most intense period in 1800, as early as 1760 Jean-Georges Noverre (1727-1810) was pleading, in his extremely influential Lettres sur la danse, that his fellow artists renounce entrechats and cabrioles, abandon tours de force, which he considere to be meaningless. Ironically, 1769 was the year of birth of the man whose brilliance would make tours de force de rigueur for audiences and performers. Auguste Vestris (1760–1842) would overwhelm the dance world with his spectacularly athletic technique; his approach to dancing would be emulated by his fellow dancers as they tried to perform increasingly elaborate beats, greater numbers of pirouettes and tours en l'air, and higher leg elevations. The opposition of those seeking abstract dancerly qualities and those demanding feats of athletic virtuosity was the major controversy of the first three decades of the nineteenth century.

Type
Research Article
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , Summer 1987 , pp. 11 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © Congress on Research in Dance 1987

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References

FOOTNOTES

1. Dancerly is intended to designate non-technical features of dance that were considered fundamental aspects of the art, for example grace, ease, elegance, lightness, nobility, naturalness, and muscularity.

2. Noverre, Jean-Georges, lettres sur la danse (Lyon, 1760), p. 231Google Scholar. the use of accents in the Lyon edition of Lettres is inconsistent. Rather than overburden quotations with ‘sic,’ I have corrected where appropriate.

3. Ibid., pp. 232-233.

4. For further discussion of the genre system see Blasis, Carlo, Traité élémenteire, théorique et practique de l'art de la danse (Milan, 1820)Google Scholar.

5. Lettres, p. 233.

6. Bournonville, August, My Theatre Life, trans. McAndrew, Patricia N. (London: A. and C. Black, 1979Google Scholar; first pub. Copenhagen, three vols., 1848,1865, 1877), p. 456.

7. Le Journal des Débate, 10 January 1801 (20 Nivose an IX).

8. Ibid.

9. My Theatre Life, p. 458.

10. Noverre, Jean-Georges, Lettres sur la danse (Paris, 1807), vol. II, p. 125Google Scholar.

11. Ibid., pp. 126-127.

12. Cahusac, Louis de, La Danse andenne et moderne (La Haye, 1754)Google Scholar

13. Ivor Guest, The Romantic Ballet in Paris (London: Isaac Pitman and Son, 1966), p. 18Google Scholar, writes: “The disappearance of the genres …was as much a Romantic victory as the successful assault by the Romantic dramatists on the three unities of classical tragedy.”

14. In “due s to Ballet's History” (Dance Research, vol. III, no. 1, Autumn 1984)Google Scholar, Sandra Noll Hammond demonstrates the continuity over three centuries of the development of dance technique. She shows that in over half the petit and grand adage classroom exercises described by Blasis, Theleur, Adice, and Michel and Arthur Saint-Léon, clear precedents can be found in early eighteenth-century texts such as those by Feuillet and Rameau. Though other class work — barre exercises and allegro for example — must be studied before firm conclusìons can be drawn, the evidence indicates that: “In the technical history of ballet, the ‘eras’ sometimes labelled ‘Baroque,’ ‘Romantic,’ and ‘Neo-classical’ did not suddenly begin or abruptly end. Rather, the stylistic and technical ‘periods’ are always in a state of transition ….” (p. 63)

15. Le Journal des Débats, 20 May 1804.

16. The Examiner, 13 August 1809.

17. Ibid., 12 April 1818.

18. Ibid., 11 March 1827.

19. Blasis, p. 47.

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid., pp. 24-25.

22. Lettres, Paris ed., vol. II, p. 138.

23. Pierre Gardel (1758-1840) was ballet master at the Opéra from 1787 to 1820. His ballets were dance oriented at a time when ballet d'action theory, expounded in Noverre's Lettres, was prompting ballet masters to create works in which silent acting predominated. One of Gardel's major contributions was to give dancers such as Vestris an opportunity to display their tours de force as well as their mimic talents.

24. My Theatre Life, p. 458.

25. Le Moniteur, 26 November 1799 (5 Frumarie an VIII).

26. Le Journal des Débats, 25 November 1799 (4 Frumaire an VIII).

27. Ibid., 10 June 1808.

28. My Theatre Life, p. 458.

29. Coulon was a teacher of considerable reputation. He was renowned for passing on to his students correct and sound principles. As a teacher at the Opera he guided the development of many top dancers, Louis Duport, Louis Henry, Fanny Bias, Monsieur Albert, Constance Gosselin-Anatole, Genevieve Gosselin, Maria Mercandotti, and Marie Taglioni among them. He was said to be “especially firm in the true principles of his art” (Le Journal des Débats, 14 January 1813); his school was called “le Magasin de l'Opera” (Le Journal des Débats, 4 June 1811).

30. Le Journal des Débats, 20 May 1804.

31. Ibid.

32. Lettres, Paris ed., vol. II, p. 173.

33. Le journal de Paris, 3 June 1804.

34. Ibid., 19 December 1804. Le Journal des Débats wrote in 1804 (12 December) that Duport may have intentionallly brought ridicule to the role because he considered the ballet's choreographer to be a rival and sought to damage his work.

35. Circuses of the time often staged large battle scenes in which hundreds of performers took part. Geoffroy is probably, however, referring to the Roman Circus.

36. Le Journal des Débats, 22 October 1804.

37. Lettres, Paris ed., vol. II, pp. 171-173.

38. Le Journal de Paris, 3 June 1804.

39. Le journal des Débats, 9 December 1806.

40. Ibid., 10 March 1807.

41. Le Journal de Paris, 11 October 1804.

42. Lettres, Paris ed., vol. II, p. 145.

43. Ibid., vol. II, p. 146.

44. Morning Chronicle, 25 May 1822.

45. Le Journal des Débats, 25 November 1813.

46. Le Journal de Paris, 23 July 1813. Gosselin was not the inventor of pointe, for there is evidence that others were practicing the art of pointes as well. Le Journal des Débats wrote in 1809 of Mile Marinette that “she has been seen with pleasure; but it is necessary to recommend to her to take more care with what are called in the terms of the art les pointes.” (13 July)

47. Le Journal des Débats, 31 July 1813.

48. Cited in Guest, p. 77.

49. Le Journal des Débats, 3 August 1827.

50. Filippo Taglioni (1777-1871) and Monsieur Albert introduced a new syllabus for training dancers which, according to Adice, G. Léopold (Théorie de la gymnastique de la danse théâtrale [Paris, 1859])Google Scholar, “included new enchaînements of gruelling length which progressively developed the lungs, gave the legs a new found mastery, and prepared the whole body for movements of a difficulty and complexity which only a generation before would have been considered impossible.” (Cited in Guest, p. 16.) Carlo Blasis also refers to innovation amongst teachers: “Even among good teachers there are those with a mania for innovation who claim that their methods are a constructive contribution to the true precepts of the art …” (Traité, p. 7.)