Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg
Grotesques 1

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This page is a collection of images of dancers, primarily from the Renaissance through Baroque periods. The intent of this section is to show the costumes and environments of dance, especially insofar as dance was part of the social ideology based upon rhetoric. As dance created power to maintain social stratification, we discuss many of the political aspects of dance as state ideology. The discussion is based primarily on material from two sources:
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"... many historians conclude that court ballet did not prefigure theatrical dancing as such but the more diffuse spectacle of opera ..." but "... court ballet was the mannerist scene of a power struggle." "What were the cutural politics of the baroque dance?" Court ballet was succeeded by ballet in opera.2
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"The early baroque period, marked by burlesque and mannerist elements in art, literature, and performance, challenges what will become French neo-classicism and academism." Evolution is displayed in "Le Ballet comique de la Royne (1581), the first well-documented burlesque ballet, Les Fées des forests de Saint Germain (1625), and Molière's comedy – ballets, notably Les Fâcheux (1661) and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1670)." 3
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"... Margaret M. McGowan established a clear-cut periodization of court ballets. She classifies them as predominantly allegorical and political between 1581 and 1610, as melodramatic from 1610 to 1620, and as burlesque from 1620 until 1636." and "... Valois court ballet (1564-84) ... was the period of 'flowering' (1643-72) ... burlesque (c. 1620-36)." 4
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Burlesque ballet was both preceded and followed by a contrary and apparently conservative tendency; one that construes dance as textual in every conceivable way short of actually having dancers speak. Not coincidentally, during these so-called textual periods monarchial ideology dominates court ballet. "... their bodies [dancers], all noble subjects ... were subservient to texts designed to aggrandize the monarch." 5
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"In reaction to geometrical dance, antitextual, or burlesque, dance was an attempt to establish a legibility for dance independent of verbal means." 5
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"Dance history reveals a striking correlation between political resistance and the body's freedom from, or ironic rapport with, the text in performance. The choreographic struggle between dance and text in the burlesque reveals the text to be a metaphore for autocratic power. Consequently, a body wresting itself - as in burlesque ballet - from control of an explicative text is potentially subversive. 5
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"After the burlesque experiment with choreographic autonomy from texts, Molière returned dance to its role in verbal theatre." 5
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"Burlesque performance did not stop at pornography as a means for oppositional statement. By proceeding from the burlesque works of the 1620s to Molière comedy-ballets of the 1660s and 1670s, I [M. Franko] am concerned to trace an aftermath of the burlesque trend ..." 5
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"By a 'textless' body I mean two interrelated things: first of all, an independence from verbal, Aristotelian theatre whose model is the rhetorical one of verbal and phonetic communication and whose goal is the imitation of human action in a progressive and linear sense, and the psychological consistency of character that imitation implies. Second, the text-opposed body signifies a political autonomy aspired to by many of those who planned, created, and actually performed court ballets. Burlesque ballets were often the work of the highest aristocrats and princes of the blood: the duke of Vendôme, Gaston d'Orleans, the dukes of Guise, Nevers, and Nemours. These grandees used court ballets to theatricalize a privileged subculture. Late humanist emphasis on skepticism and stoicism, the political attitudes of Gallicanism in France, and a more intangible yet widespread impiety and cynicism - probably the result of France's long history of religious civil wars - must have contributed to the satiric impulse of the baroque era. Yet it was the nobility's political precariousness that most directly fueled that critical and satiric impulse in court ballets. The period of the most virulent critical burlesque ballets, from 1624 until 1627, coincided with the first years of Richelieu's administration. At this time, Richelieu's ministry was engaged in suppressing the political power of Protestants and princes in order to consolidate centralization." 6 "... [O]ne of Richelieu['s] financial reforms instituted during the 1620s was to cut nobles' pensions by more than half." and "... Richelieu was assailed by a 'paper war' of satirical pamphlets during these years." and "... the minister's support of melodramatic ballet led to the opposition of burlesque ballet as an antigenre. Richelieu was also confronted with a hail of satirical ballets ...". 7 "The princely magnates attempted a failed palace coup against Richelieu in 1626. Concurrently, they exercised political resistance by satirizing heroic ballets promoted by Richelieu: part of their satire's meaning, as well as its built-in safety mechanism, was the reduction of the use of words as a context for ideological control. Distance from text, however, was achieved at the price of eroticism and obscenity. The popular tradition of carnavalesque reversals and low style was endemic to the kind of satire that burlesque performance produced. Burlesque ballets were not conceived and performed in isolation by separate factions but enacted with the participation of Louis XIII." 6
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"... a carnivalized or grotesque element survived the Renaissance: ... burlesque court ballets (also called 'travesti'), as well as in Molière's comedy-ballets." 8
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"... Les Fées des forests de Saint Germain (1625) is the first well-documented example of the burlesque style in court ballet." 9
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"Following the dominance of geometrical dance at the close of the sixteenth century and burlesque 10 style ballets in the early seventeenth century, Molière's invention of comedy-ballet represents the third most significant innovation in baroque theatre dance. The first work of this genre, Les Fâcheux (1661) 11 ... Grafting burlesque entrées 12 onto the acts of his play, Molière rehabilitated the use of interlude. 13
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Views concerning the relationship between rhetoric and dance evolved. Thus Baïf: "The ballet adhers to the song/step by step/, as they both follow speaking" (the rhetoric of gesture). 14 Also, "The union of the arts of poetry, dance, and music ... music and dance merely enhance the word and become rhythmically dependent on it." 15 Beaujoyeulx focused upon harmony of opposing views, "... where geometrical dance represents social and political cohesiveness in terms of ordered shape, rhythmical measure, and relative legibility." However, harmony of diverse views supported a degree of "... moral and political ambivolence ... as an emblem of mutability." "... mutability was presented as a hidden attribute of unity and celebrated ... as a principle of stability rather than a threat to order."
Each season, each element
Each star is made differently;
And everything would become topsy-turvey,
If by diverse changes,
Always diverse Nature
Did not maintain the Universe. 16
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However, the Molière changed this! Usually the play was "interrupted" by (dance) interludes entre'act: the play drove the interludes. In burlesque the interludes drove the play! This becomes evident in Les Fâcheux, which is dependent upon the entrées being interrupted; thus, repeated incidence of fantasmata. 17, 18 "Burlesque ballets stage no geometrical figures, ...". "... one can think of the baroque in purely stylistic terms as 'rebellion against earlier fear of dissonance.' " 19
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"Dissonance in court ballet was signaled by eroticism, thinly veiled obscenity, and transvestism ..." 19
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"Obscenity was vaguely justified as part of a larger stylistic preoccupation with ingenuity that led to juxtaposing and blending the serious and the grotesque ('un ballet de buffoonerie et de gravite entremeslee'). Ambiguities of social class position resulted in the ambiguity and destabilization indicated by signs of sexual ambiguity, homoerotic overtones, tranvestism, as well as racial dominance. Thus there appeared androgenous, half men/half women figures (Le Grand bal de la douairière de Billebabhaut, [1626]). Sexual ambiguity, the ambiguity of the androgyne resulted in dance movement that was a hybrid of male and female dance vocabularies as grotesque dance. 20
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For the Eunuchs
What do I see here? Are these bodies
Which are alive as ourselves,
Or stumps which by means of springs
Are made to dance in men's clothing?
O Beauties, beautiful suns of souls,
Until we know what they are
If they be men, beasts or women,
They are everything you would like them to be. 20
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At least some of the causes of this evolution of dance can be identified:
  1. "An anti-Catholic pamphlet, Le Ballet politique (1627), satirizing ballets as metaphors for oppression emanating from the state: 'Il se faict à Paris le plus excellent et politique Ballet, qui ait oncques esté representé au monde' ('You can now see in Paris the most excellent and political Ballet that was ever produced in the world')." In Franko's view, "... the most satiric of burlesque ballets were in dialogue with the monarch and society at large over nobility rights versus royal power." Indeed, this was the time of Mazarinades. 21
  2. Consolidation of power by Cardinal Richelieu and Cardinal Mazarin at the expense of courtiers.
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At this time, one of the most important burlesques appeared: The Ballet des infatigables. One of the entrées was the récit of Monsieur le Compte de More, in which it is likely that an aristocrat plays the part of a bourgeois, a role reversal in which he suggests switching his role with that of the king click here. Thus, class mobility between bourgeois and king conflates political potency with sexual potency. 22
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"It is logical that court ballet performance became a surrogate outlet for political contestation." 23
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"The classic Ballet à entrée will consist of several parts, vaguely connected, each of which will have the structure of a ballet mascarade with its initial récit followed by entrées, the whole ending in a grand ballet." This is effectively a definition of "burlesque". A mascardae has no structure or rules. "Unlike plays that develop character and action through dialogue, burlesque ballets attempt to communicate principally through the dancer's appearance." 24
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Burlesque "figures" were "Rounded projections from the shoulders and hips, conelike volume to the skirts often, but not always, reaching the ground, and voluminous sleeves widening away from the torso in unexpected directions ... triangular, spherical, and conical distortions. ... Some costumes reduced the body to one anatomical feature, such as an enormous head or legs walking without a trunk." 25
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While the object of court ballet was to praise the "presence", ... "burlesque ballets erode the intention to praise while still appearing to be about nothing: 'pure caprice.' The object of a dancer's impersonation was freqently commented on by cartels: small scrolls handed or thrown, and sometimes shot with an arrow, by performers to members of the audience for them to be read aloud." The objective being Menippean satire, the satire NOT of individuals (such as found in Mazarinades), but rather of mental attitudes found in representative "types" such as pedants, bigots, cranks, parvenus, virtuosi, rapacious officials, etc. 26
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Eventually, the king and his court spent an excessive amount of time on dance and other aspects of fêtes that the court was in danger of bankruptcy. Furthermore, attention was no longer paid to both external threats such as from Spain, as well as internal unrest. Criticism was directed towards the Crown that these spectacles recalled the Roman gladiators and circuses. Click to see.
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For a somewhat detailed analysis of some of the costumes used in burlesque ballets, click here.

Dances took place at different sites, including:
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Dance Costume
Court costumes (used to praise the court)
Grotesque, Burlesque
Commedia dell'Arte
Dance and Society (Fencing, Dressage, Military)
Dance of the common people

Ballet d'Action
With the ever increasing emphasis placed upon rhetoric of eloquent dance, mime started to take on a significant life of its own. After all, isn't mime another form of rhetoric tacens? Choreographers such as John Weaver, Gennaro Magri, Jean-Georges Noverre, and others created a new form of dance in which the gestures of rhetoric muette took their origin from pantomime. A dance form using pantomime had to be able to convey complex ideas, and emotions in a dialog form, sans text (spoken, written, or sung). Was this possible? "Ballet d'Action" was the name given to this new art form.

1 The tradition of anti-masques eventually faded, to be picked up and developed as the grotteschi in the Commedia dell'arte. This was very much due to the influence of Gennaro Magri, dancer and choreographer, known internationally as ballerino grottesco. See "The Grotesque Dancer on the Eighteenth-Century Stage: Gennaro Magri and His World", Harris-Warrick, Rebecca; Brown, Bruce Alan (Eds.), Univ. Wisconsin Press, 2005.
2 "Dance as Text: Ideologies of the Baoroque Body", Mark Franko, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993, p. 1
3 Ibid., p. 2
4 Ibid., p. 3
5 Ibid., p. 5
6 Ibid., p. 6
7 Ibid., p. 195 (footnote 33)
8 Ibid., p. 7
9 Ibid., p. 9
10 "Burla" means jest (origin from gest, or gestures used in rhetoric). "Burle" and "bourle" means mystification. Burlesque replaced the earler term grotesque. Ibid., p. 69
11 "Fâcheux" in Les Fâcheux is a play on several French words, thus "fâcheux" can have all of these meanings, depending upon the subjective interpretation (Ibid. pp. 115-116):
  1. fáchée: anger
  2. fâcheux: a bore
  3. fâcheux: an obstacle
Entrées in "Les Fâcheux" (see the next footnote) focused upon déclassé (dispossessed courtiers or aristocrats) acting out or playing roles that by being overly verbal, bore or frustrate by interrupting the "story". There was a vasillation involved here as this performer could be a courtier playing the role of a déclassé, or could be a déclassé playing the role of a courtier playing the role of a déclassé, etc. Thus the irony of one who vascillates between classes, no longer fixed in the social strata (moving "up" or moving "down"). Certain "roles" were commonly used to purposely frustrate or delay the story line. Thus these bores cause anger due to the obstacles they introduce that interrupt the action! Some of these "roles" include:
  1. joueurs de mail: croquet players
  2. joueurs de boules: boccie players
  3. petits frondeurs: stone throwers
  4. savatiers et savatières: shoe makers (sabots - sabotage)
  5. jardiniers: gardeners
  6. les curieux: the curious (crowds that push people or otherwise get in the way but contribute nothing constructive)
12 An entrée is used in burlesques as a succession of "scenes", each introduced by a récit (recitals, or vocal air, narrative, story: Ibid., p. 163) at the commencement of each "scene". As the dancers play out the entrée, cartels may be thrown (or "shot with a small bow and arrow) to the audience. These scrolls or cartels allow some textual explanation related to the entrée.Click here
13 Ibid., p. 11
14 Ibid., p. 26
15 Ibid., p. 27
16 Ibid. p. 64
17 Ibid. pp. 116, 117
18 Fantasmata are "discordant concordia", mirroring the discordant concordia between Catholics and Protestants (the religious wars of the Frond). Ibid. p. 51
19 Ibid. p. 65
20 Ibid. pp. 66-69
21 Ibid., pp. 69, 70
The Fronde: a series of civil wars in France between 1648 and 1653, occurring in the midst of the Franco-Spanish War, which had begun in 1635. The word fronde means sling, which Parisian mobs used to smash the windows of supporters of Cardinal Mazarin. These wars were between the Catholics in France (Catholic League) opposed to the Protestants (Huguenots). The Protestants were not only those in France, but also those in the Netherlands. An example of these Mazarinaides (propaganda), directed against not only Mazarin, but Mazarin's army as well as aristocratic supporters, follows:
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Buggering bugger, buggered bugger,
Bugger to the supreme degree,
Hairy bugger and feathered bugger,
Bugger in large and small volume,
Bugger sodomizing the State,
And bugger of the purest mixture...
—Paul Scarron, La Mazarinade (1651)
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22 Ibid., p. 73
23 Ibid., p. 77
24 Ibid., p. 79
25 Ibid., p. 80
25 Ibid., p. 81

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