The Dancing King: Ballet in Ancien Régime France
Hyacinthe Rigaud, Portrait of Louis XIV (ca. 1700), Louvre Museum
In the lavish and opulent world of the Ancien Régime (France before the 1789 Revolution), dance was considered to be just as important as music, literature and the visual arts. Whilst today we tend to separate the categories of opera and ballet as two distinct art forms, in previous centuries they formed part of a much grander spectacle.
Even in everyday life, dance was part of the social language of the time. A turn of the hand; the position of the feet; a bend in the knee—these gestures could easily affect how you were perceived. To be taken seriously in the courtly societies of Paris and Versailles, one had to know how to dance.
The importance of dance was, in part, down to one man’s tastes. Beyond his role as the divinely ordained ruler of France—an “absolute” monarch—Louis XIV (1638-1713) was also a prolific dancer, having first performed on public stage at the age of twelve. Louis was often known as Le Roi Soleil (The Sun King), a symbolic metaphor he chose to draw parallels between himself and Apollo, the mythological god of music and dance, as well as with the sun, the ultimate symbol of constancy and vitality. One year before his coronation in 1654, Louis commissioned the Ballet Royal de la Nuit (“The Royal Ballet of the Night”) to celebrate the final victory of royalists forces over the opposition. The ballet lasted twelve hours and ended at sunrise with the appearance of fourteen-year-old Louis as the rising sun.
Hyacinthe Rigaud’s famous portrait of Louis places a great emphasis on the monarch’s legs, for these were dancers’ legs which served as a symbol of both his political strength and his graceful decorum. Just as the ornate architecture of Versailles served to express the cultural supremacy of French society, ballet served as a vehicle for Louis to demonstrate his own power in a social setting in which his subordinates could look on with amazement.
Following the death of his chief minister (and godfather) Cardinal Mazarin in 1661, Louis began to govern on his own terms, and the establishment of France as a European cultural superpower was one of his top priorities. That same year, Louis established the Académie Royale de Danse, giving thirteen different experts on dance the task of standardising and perfecting their art.
Alongside the dance academy, the Académie Royale de Musique was established in 1669. Of all the illustrious musicians in that company’s history, the most famous of all was Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) who, similarly to Louis, exercised complete control over the artistic activities he oversaw. Aside from the recitatives in his operas (the sections that mimic spoken dialogue to progress the story along), most of Lully’s music can be danced to. Have a listen to this beautiful chaconne (a stately dance in triple meter) from the opera Phaëton (1683), danced to by Carlos Fittante.
But how can we study dance from more than 300 years ago? Of all the art forms, dance is perhaps the most ephemeral. Composers leave behind their scores; writers their manuscripts; artists their paintings and sculptures. You might think that dancers leave behind little to no trace of their activities, but the dancing masters of the Académie came up with a solution.
First devised by Pierre Beauchamp (1631-1705), and then claimed by Roger Anger Feuillet (c. 1660-1710) as his own, the system of choreographic notation now known as Beauchamp-Feuillet notation preserved the dances one would expect to see performed at the social events of Louis XIV’s court. They are to be read from a birds eye view, with each pattern representing a specific dance step to be executed whilst following the direction of line below. These drawings unite music and dance in a visually arresting manner, and give us an insight into the dance of the past.
Raoul-Auger Feuillet (1660-1710), Chorégraphie, ou l'art de décrire la danse (“Choreographie, or the Art of Describing the Dance”) (1700). Wikimedia Commons