Moira Goff here continues the conversation begun in summer about baroque dance. Macaulay Can you talk at all about ballet before Louis XIV? There had been ballets de cour in France - ballets danced by royalty and aristocracy for the public - going back to Catherine de Medici. I suspect something similar had occurred in some of the courts of Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
First, am I right to say that what happened in the French court in transformed courtly dancing across Europe with lasting effect? If so, am I right to believe the transformational innovation was the introduction of turnout - with five turned-out positions of the feet - as a basis of style?
How new was this? Was turnout already used, but not as a crucial central feature? Goff The influence of French dancing and French court ballets was strong throughout Europe well before , although that dancing had itself developed from a variety of European styles and techniques particularly from Italy. This must have provided fertile conditions for the development of the art of dancing, including the use of turnout to achieve a particular style and facilitate the performance of some steps, among them those requiring virtuosity.
This period also saw the codification of the five positions as well as other facets of technique, for example the principle of opposition of the arms. I am not sure how important the increased use of turnout was in and of itself, although it was certainly a fundamental component of the technical developments during this period. We tend to talk of turnout as something that happened only beneath the waist.
But the arms of baroque ballet seem thoroughly turned-out too. There are vital points of style here within the torso that the notation and even the dance manuals may not illuminate, but what comments do you have?
