Tea at Trianon: Ballet and Noverre

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, May 5, 2018

Ballet and Noverre

From The Hindu:

A product of his times, Jean-Georges Noverre (1727-1810), was very much a son of the era of French Enlightenment. He is believed to have been the man who literally took ballet out from the courts where it languished as a pastime or divertissement, as it was called in the day, and turned it into a vehicle of elegant storytelling, thereby helping it gain in stature as an independent art form to be reckoned with known as ballet d’action or ballet of action.

In order to truly appreciate Noverre’s beliefs and his motivation behind his most celebrated work ‘Lettres Sur La Danse (1760)’ it is important to understand the intellectual environment of the times that he lived in. Eighteenth century France was a nation in ferment with new ideas and thoughts, where writers and thinkers like Rousseau and Voltaire wielded much influence in artistic and cultural circles. Rousseau was an advocate of naturalism and in his La Nouvelle Heloise, criticised the ballet of the day, of being devoid of substance and dramatic reason, thereby lacking in purpose. Extending the idea of ‘naturalism’ to ballet, Noverre propounded that artificiality and empty movements be jettisoned in favour of expressiveness and emotionality. (Read more.)