‘Tout, dans ses charmes, est dangereux’: music, gesture and the dangers of French pantomime, 1748–1775

2008 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 241-268
Author(s):  
HEDY LAW

AbstractIn 1779 Chabanon noted the potential danger inherent in gesture because it might produce instantaneous and harmful effects. This article examines how Rameau, Rousseau and Grétry incorporated putatively dangerous gestures into the pantomimes they wrote for their operas, and explains why these pantomimes matter at all. In Rameau's Pygmalion (1748), Rousseau's Le Devin du village (1752–3) and Grétry's Céphale et Procris (1773, 1775), pantomime was presented as a type of dance opposite to the conventional social dance. But the significance of this binary opposition changed drastically around 1750, in response to Rousseau's own moral philosophy developed most notably in the First Discourse (1750). Whereas the pantomimes in Rameau's Pygmalion dismiss peasants as uncultured, it is high culture that becomes the source of corruption in the pantomime of Rousseau's Le Devin du village, where uncultured peasants are praised for their morality. Grétry extended Rousseau's moral claim in the pantomime of Céphale et Procris by commending an uneducated girl who turns down sexual advances from a courtier. Central to these pantomimes are the ways in which musical syntax correlates with drama. Contrary to the predictable syntax in most social dances, these pantomimes bring to the surface syntactical anomalies that may be taken to represent moral licence: an unexpected pause, a jarring diminished-seventh chord, and a phrase in a minuet with odd-number bars communicate danger. Although social dances were still the backbone of most French operas, pantomime provided an experimental interface by which composers contested the meanings of expressive topoi; it thus emerged as a vehicle for progressive social thinking.

Author(s):  
Thomas F. DeFrantz

Moving from the political margins toward a black mainstream, many African American social dances often emerge in queer communities of color. This chapter explores politically embodied consequences and affects of queer social dances that enjoy concentrated attention outside their originary communities. J-setting, voguing, and hand-dancing—a form of queer dance popular in the 1970s–1980s—offer sites to consider the materialization of queer black aesthetic gesture, in dances that redefine gender identities and confirm fluid political economies of social dance and motion. These queer dances simultaneously resist and reinscribe gender conformity in their aesthetic devices; they also suggest alternative histories of black social dance economies in which queer creativity might be valued as its own end. Ultimately, the chapter suggests a haunting presence of queers-of-color aesthetic imperatives within political mobilizations of black social dance, continually—and ironically—conceived as part and parcel of rhetorics of liberation and freedom of movement.


2019 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 339-350
Author(s):  
Hope Margetts

Abstract It is widely acknowledged that the freer, more sexualized movements of social dancing in the early twentieth century (1900–1929) accompanied the beginnings of female emancipation both socially and politically. However, less explored are the similarities between the provocative, inelegant choreography of such social dances and the symptoms of female hysteria, a medical phenomenon that saw the body as a canvas for mental distress as provoked by social tensions. This essay will address the possible alignment of hysteria and popular social dance in relation to the evolving Modern Woman. It will examine the motivations of modern, ‘hysterical’ dances, and discuss their progressive status in terms of gender by considering perceived psychosomatic interactions within the female dancing body.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis Gregorio Abad Espinoza

It is well known the harmful effects that savage capitalism has been causing to the environment since its introduction in a sphere in which a different logic and approach to nature are the essential conditions for the maintenance of the ecosystem and its complex relations between humans and non-human organisms. The amazon rainforest is a portion of the planet in which for thousands of years its human dwellers have been interacting with nature that it is understood beyond its physical condition. Thus, to what extent Amazonian’s approaches to nature could be considered as a moral philosophy through which the way of conceptualizing nature and its non-human denizens enhances the continuity of life and the intimate relations between entities? To answer this question, I will explore the cosmological system of the Shuar of the Ecuadorian Amazon with whom I lived for 5 months between July and November 2018, and thereby elucidate the spiritual relations that this society has with the metaphysical domain of nature.


2020 ◽  
pp. 12-15
Author(s):  
Marushka M.M.

Мета статті – визначити соціально-культурні передумовипопулярності та масовості шкіл товарись-ких танців як осередків хореографічного навчання; проаналізувати діяльність шкіл товариських танців у Галичині в міжвоєнне двадцятиліття. Методи. Для досягнення поставленої мети було використано комплекс дослідницьких методів – конкретно-пошуковий, системний метод, метод логіко-історичного аналізу. Конкретно-пошуковий метод застосовувався у роботі з архівними документами та матеріалами періодичних видань із досліджуваної проблематики. Системний метод дав змогу всебічно та комплек-сно розглянути діяльність шкіл товариських танців у Галичині міжвоєнного періоду. Метод логіко-істо-ричного аналізу дозволив систематизувати, проаналізувати дані та інформацію, що стосуються предме-та дослідження. Результати. На основі аналізу архівних матеріалів, публікацій у періодичних виданнях розкрито особливості організації шкіл товариських танців у Галичині 1919–1939 років, систематизова-но інформацію про власників та вчителів шкіл товариських танців, досліджено діяльність професійного зв’язку вчителів товариських танців. Висновки. Встановлено, що популярність та масовість шкіл това-риських танців у Галичині визначали розвиток бальної хореографії, а також роль, яку відігравали танці у тогочасному соціально-культурному житті галичан. Дуже поширеними були дансинґи – громадські зали для танців, у кав’ярнях та рестораціях також біли місця для танців. Часто різноманітні товариства організовували танцювальні вечори, особливо у карнавальний сезон. Репертуар бальної хореографії 20–30-х рр. ХХ ст. включав вальс, тустеп, уанстеп, блюз, фокстрот, квік-степ, чарльстон, танго, свінг, твіст, шіммі, каріоку тощо. Ці танці вивчали у школах товариських танців. Школи танців були у бага-тьох містах Галичини, а саме у Бережанах, Бориславі, Бродах, Дрогобичі, Золочеві, Коломиї, Надвірній, Самборі, Старому Самборі, Станіславові, Стрию, Трускавці. Зміст та методика навчання товариських танців залежали виключно від рівня підготовки педагогів танцювальних шкіл. Учителі танців об’єдну-вались у професійні зв’язки. Протягом 1919–1939 років у Львові діяло кілька таких зв’язків, які об’єд-нували фахових та ліцензованих учителів танців з усієї Східної Галичини. The purpose – to determine the cultural prerequisites for the popularity of social dance schools as centers of choreographic learning; to analyze the activities of social dance schools in Galicia in the interwar twenty years. Methods. To achieve this goal, a set of research methods was used specific search, system method, method of logical-historical analysis. Specific search methods were used when working with documents and materials of periodicals on the researched issues. The systematic method allowed to comprehensively consider the activities of social dance schools in Galicia in the interwar period. The method of logical-historical analysis allowed to systematize, analyze data and information related to the subject of research. Results. Based on the analysis of archival materials, publications in periodicals, the peculiarities of the organization of social dance schools in Galicia in 1919–1939 are revealed, information about the owners and teachers of social dance schools is systematized, the professional communication of social dance teachers is investigated. Conclusions.It is established that the popularity of social dance schools in Galicia determined the development of ballroom choreography, as well as the role played by the dance in the then socio-cultural life of Galicians. Dance halls were widespread, and there were also dance halls in cafes and restaurants. Often various societies organized dance evenings, especially during the carnival season. Repertoire of ballroom choreography of the 20–30s of the XX century included waltz, twostep, onestep, blues, foxtrot, quickstep, charleston, tango, swing, twist, shimmy, karioka, and more. These dances were studied in social dance schools. Dance schools were held in many cities of Galicia, namely in Berezhany, Boryslav, Brody, Drohobych, Zolochiv, Kolomyia, Nadvirna, Sambir, Staryi Sambir, Stanislaviv, Stryi, and Truskavets. The content and methods of teaching social dances depended solely on the professionalism of dance school teachers. Dance teachers formed professional relationships. During 1919–1939, there were several such associations in Lviv, uniting professional and licensed dance teachers from all over Eastern Galicia.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erica Buurman

The repertoire of the early Viennese ballroom was highly influential in the broader histories of both social dance and music in nineteenth-century Europe. Yet music scholarship has traditionally paid little attention to ballroom dance music before the era of the Strauss dynasty, with the exception of a handful of dances by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. This book positions Viennese social dances in their specific performing contexts and investigates the wider repertoire of the Viennese ballroom in the decades around 1800, most of which stems from dozens of non-canonical composers. Close examination of this material yields new insights into the social contexts associated with familiar dance types, and reveals that the ballroom repertoire of this period connected with virtually every aspect of Viennese musical life, from opera and concert music to the emerging category of entertainment music that was later exemplified by the waltzes of Lanner and Strauss.


Author(s):  
Gregory S. Jay

Liberal race fiction originates in the novels of moral sentiment and philosophies of sympathy in the 18th century. The chapter establishes the principal components of those traditions. It then conducts readings of Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to show how the education of the heart works in their literary forms and arguments. Stowe’s depictions of both white and black characters are found to be influenced by “racialist” theories of her time that have both progressive and harmful effects. Her fiction relies on traditions from eighteenth-century moral philosophy as well as emergent feminist analyses of patriarchal power. Like Stowe, Twain draws on the devices of sentimental fiction in creating the relation of Huck and Jim as emotional rather than political. The didactic scene of Huck’s epiphany becomes central to the teaching of the book in the twentieth century.


2007 ◽  
Vol 39 (S1) ◽  
pp. 106-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Jacotot

This paper explores the field of choreographic transfers between Europe and America at the turn of the twentieth century. Focusing on the tremendous dynamism of social dance practice in Interwar France (1919–1939), it examines the context of this new type of migration, from North and South America to Europe. It also studies how the assimilation of social dances from the “New World” in the French dancing repertoire profoundly transformed body practices of the French society.


Author(s):  
Anastasia Zhuravleva

The purpose of the article is to identify the genre, stylistic and rhythmic specifics of the social dance Brazilian Sound, as well as to theorize the artistic and aesthetic features of the new dance backgrounds developed on its basis. Methodology. A typological method was applied, thanks to which the main characteristics of the social dance Brazilian Zuk were determined; figurative-stylistic and formal-stylistic method, which helped to identify a system of typical forms and lexical features inherent in the dance and developed on its basis substrates; the method of comparative analysis, which revealed the common and distinctive features of the traditional social dance Brazilian Sound and innovative backgrounds created on its basis; method of theoretical generalization, which helped to summarize the results of the study. Scientific novelty. The process of origin and development of one of the most popular social dances of the XXI century is studied. Brazilian Zuk; the compositional features of the Brazilian Sound were identified and analyzed; For the first time in domestic art history the genre-stylistic and rhythmic features of the main sub-styles (Rio-zouk style, Porto-Seguro style, M-zouk, Neo-zouk) and sub-styles (Modern zouk, Soulzouk R&B zouk) of the Brazilian Zuk are considered and the specificity of their art is revealed. aesthetic variability. Conclusions. The study found that the Brazilian Sound is an independent style of modern dance art, which is characterized by a number of features: the atmosphere of performance (platforms for social dances, dance conferences, seminars, etc.); creating a composition of the Brazilian Sound is usually a collective process - the authorship of style and background belongs to talented dancers, who are endowed with the gift of improvisation and specific temperament; special individual type of dance movement: the basic sequence of steps is connected with metrorhythmic features of musical accompaniment; a specific combination of plasticity, flexibility, and rotations creates individual dance backgrounds: acrobatic Acro Zouk, smooth Flow Zuk, contrast Zuk Revolution, improvisational M-zuk, inflammatory Lambazuk, philosophical-hypnotic Neo-zuk, and others. Prospects for innovative research in the field of genre-style interaction of the Brazilian Sound and modern dance trends are the unique basis of dance, which is positioned as the initial impetus for further lexical and rhythmic-intonational choreographic experiments and depends on the peculiarities of musical material. Keywords: Brazilian Zuk, social dance, artistic and aesthetic features, M-zuk, Neo-zuk, Lambazuk.


2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-121
Author(s):  
Sean M. Parr

Abstract A vogue for coloratura dance arias began in the 1850s. This emerging genre combined melismatic singing with two hugely popular social dance genres: the bolero and the waltz. Scholars have observed an association between these social dances and a certain euphoric feminine sensuality, but the connection between this youthful ebullience in dance and virtuosic female vocality has been largely ignored. Dancing was notorious in the nineteenth century because of its dangerously arousing and vertiginous effects. As dances increased in speed and difficulty, so too did the singing of sopranos in midcentury Paris. In exploring relationships between dance, femininity, and singing, this article situates coloratura dance arias in the Paris of Napoléon III's Second Empire, a city sometimes condemned for its decadent materialism or dismissed because of its political impotence, in spite of its cultural, architectural, and technological importance. I argue for a connection between coloratura and the female body in precisely the era when the venerable singing style became the almost exclusive domain of the female singer and, simultaneously, reached its apogee in a Paris devoted to all the joy and glamour it could afford. Specific performers such as Marie Cabel and Caroline Carvalho were key to the success and even creation of these dance arias. These sopranos were certainly objectified in a problematic manner, but they were also “envoiced” (Carolyn Abbate's term) as wielders of a compelling musical power: coloratura. In providing virtuosic and luxurious expressions of femininity, these coloratura dance arias established a new sense of female vocality in the aural imagination of the Second Empire.


2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (9-10) ◽  
pp. 1058-1068
Author(s):  
David Rasmussen

Beginning with a reference to the concept of the political and the idea of stability, the essay turns to an examination of populism from an historical and a normative point of view. While historically populism can be traced to its Roman origins, from a normative perspective, populism rests on a binary opposition between ‘elites’ and the ‘people’. As such, it undercuts its moral claim to universal representation by taking the part for the whole. In the end, this essay argues that populism cannot provide a moral justification for political stability.


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