A Brief History of Baroque Dance
The reign of Louis XIV of France (1638 - 1715) was a quintessence of European culture. During his rule and under his enthusiastic guidance, the art of ballet was born. His court at Versailles was a glittering one in which dance played a pivotal role. It is here that baroque dance history begins. Court Ballets, balls and operas with danced divertissements were a central feature of life at Versailles.
Louis' connection with the dance was a very personal one. When Louis acceded to throne at the age of five, his authority was opposed by a faction of nobles in a series of uprisings known as the "Frondes". After the defeat of the Second Fronde, Cardinal Mazarin (who ruled through the regent: Louis' mother, Anne of Austria) commissioned a ballet entitled Le Ballet de la Nuit. In this ballet, Louis danced the central role of the Rising Sun (hence his nickname, "Roi Soleil"). In character as the sun he warned that those who did not respect his power "would soon feel his heat", reminding the nobles that opposition to the royal authority would no longer be countenanced.
In this way, the young King employed dance as nothing less than a weapon of State. His passion for dance led to the establishment of the Academie Royale de la Danse in 1661. The ballets and operas composed by J.B. Lully (1632Ð1687) drove this point home in propagandistic prologues praising Louis XIV as the wisest, most powerful and benevolent ruler in Christendom.
Famous for his absolute control over his court, Louis gathered his nobles around him, encouraging social pursuits while effectively diverting the nobility from threatening his authority again. Politics aside, Louis XIV truly loved good amusement and among the artistic pursuits at court, he loved dancing above all else. The dance technique that developed during this period was common to both theatrical and ballroom dancing. At Court, the nobles vied for roles in dance spectacles in which the King himself danced.
To dance alongside one's King was an honour indeed, and one that was coveted by each of the thousands of aristocrats in the King's retinue. They spent hours with their dancing masters to perfect each step, as well as the accompanying graceful arm movements or "oppositions". The careful attention of Louis and the Academie shaped the style and essence of this burgeoning art form. Among the masters of the Academie were Raoul Auger Feuillet, Pierre Beauchamps and Louis Pecour. It was Feuillet who in 1700 published "Choregraphie", or The Art of Dancing. Originally conceived as a self-teaching device, not as a way of preserving dances for posterity, it was revolutionary as it was the first completed notation system to record dance steps with abstract symbols.
The popularity of French dance spread rapidly across Europe. England, Spain and others embraced court dance forms. French dancing masters journeyed as far as Russia where in 1738, Jean-Baptiste Lande established a school which would eventually become the school of the Kirov Ballet at the Maryinsky Theatre. Other French masters journeyed to the New World where French ballroom dances led the way in the salons of the governors of New France (Quebec) at later at Colonial Assemblies in which George Washington danced the minuet.
The dance forms popularized under the Sun King continued to flourish during the reigns of his successors, Louis XV and Louis XVI. In the wake of the French Revolution, and as the 19th century dawned, dance was evolving ever closer to the form we know as Classical Ballet.
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