Framing Dancers
There was a long tradition of statues coming to life in eighteenth century ballets (Pygmalion being the clearest example), and the dramatic embodiment of a figure apparently coming to life from a portrait, or reacting to a portrait of someone else, may be an extension of that choreographic device. This paper considers three quite different approaches to the subject by eighteenth and early nineteenth century choreographers, all exploring in dance the notion of a portrait and the sentiments it can provoke. The first example is Apelles et Campaspe, ‘an heroic pantomimic ballet’ created in Vienna by Jean-Georges Noverre in 1773 and brought to the King’s Theatre London in 1782 where it was taken over the following year by Charles Le Picq. In this work, Apelles’ attempts to create a portrait of Alexander the Great’s mistress Campaspe influences each sequence of the choreography (the portrait itself is never completed). The second example comes from Auguste Ferrère, who enjoyed a long career on the London stage during the 1780s and 1790s, and whose comic ballet Le Peintre amoureux de son modèle is recorded in his manuscript notebook of 1782; in this ballet the discovery of a framed portrait of the painter’s mistress initiates furious reactions from his wife. The third example is the little-known ballet Le Délire d’un Peintre by Jules Perrot which was given at the King’s Theatre in 1843-44 to showcase the qualities of Fanny Elssler who, as the subject of the painter’s feverish adoration, apparently comes to life and steps out of her portrait to dance with him.
Jennifer Thorp has a long-standing interest in court, ballroom and theatrical dance in England between the late-seventeenth and late-eighteenth centuries, and in the sources which document those activities. She is also gradually straying into the nineteenth century and continues to co-edit collections of essays with Michael Burden of which the most recent was With a Grace not to be Captured: Representing the Georgian Theatrical Dancer, 1760-1830 (Brepols 2020). Her monograph, The Gentleman Dancing-Master; Mr Isaac and the English Royal Court from Charles II to Queen Anne was published by Clemson University Press in 2024, and she is currently working on the teaching career of his successor, Anthony L’Abbé, at the Hanoverian court in London.