Baroque Dance - France

by Gloria Ssali

Title

Baroque Dance - France

Artist

Gloria Ssali

Medium

Drawing - Drawing

Description

Baroque dance is dance of the Baroque era (roughly 1600–1750), closely linked with Baroque music, theatre and opera.

The great innovations in dance in the 17th century originated at the French court under Louis XIV, and it is here that we see the first clear stylistic ancestor of classical ballet. The same basic technique was used both at social events, and as theatrical dance in court ballets and at public theaters. The style of dance is commonly known to modern scholars as the French noble style or belle danse (French, literally "beautiful dance"), however it is often referred to casually as baroque dance in spite of the existence of other theatrical and social dance styles during the baroque era.
Primary sources include more than three hundred choreographies in Beauchamp-Feuillet notation,[1][2] as well as manuals by Raoul Auger Feuillet and Pierre Rameau in France, Kellom Tomlinson and John Weaver in England, and Gottfried Taubert in Germany. This wealth of evidence has allowed modern scholars and dancers to recreate the style, although areas of controversy still exist. The standard modern introduction is Hilton.[3]
French dance types include:
• Bourrιe
• Canarie (canary)
• Chaconne
• (French) courante
• Entrιe grave
• Forlane (forlana)
• Gavotte
• Gigue
• Loure (slow gigue)
• Menuet (minuet)
• Musette
• Passacaille (passacaglia)
• Passepied
• Rigaudon
• Sarabande
• Tambourin
The English, working in the French style, added their own hornpipe to this list.
Many of these dance types are familiar from baroque music, perhaps most spectacularly in the stylized suites of J. S. Bach.[4] Note however, that the allemandes, that occur in these suites do not correspond to a French dance from the same period.
Theatrical dance
The French noble style was danced both at social events and by professional dancers in theatrical productions such as opera-ballets and court entertainments. However, 18th century theatrical dance had at least two other styles: comic or grotesque, and semi-serious. Other social dance styles
Other dance styles, such as the Italian and Spanish dances of the period are much less well studied than either English country dance or the French style. The general picture seems to be that during most of the 17th century, a style close to that of late Renaissance dance was widespread, but as time progressed, French ballroom dances such as the minuet were widely adopted at fashionable courts. Beyond this, the evolution and cross-fertilisation of dance styles is an area of ongoing research.

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November 23rd, 2011

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