Court dances of louis xiv biography
Home / Historical Figures / Court dances of louis xiv biography
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. 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.
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. Have a listen to this beautiful chaconne (a stately dance in triple meter) from the opera Phaëton (1683), danced to by Carlos Fittante.
Dances of the Baroque Era
King Louis XIV of France was an enthusiastic dancer and had a great influence on the development of a new form of dance. He was known as "The Sun King" because of a ballet role he performed at the age of 14, where he represented the rising sun. During Louis' reign, two kinds of dance developed: social dances for the ballroom and theatrical dances for court entertainments. The two forms shared similar steps and styles, and both were practiced by the nobility. The highest status for a dancer or musician was that of the amateurs (derived from amas, to love) — those who loved their art for the purest reasons, as opposed to paid technicians. The amateurs were indeed the finest dancers and musicians in the early Baroque courts. Balls would feature elaborate entertainments created and performed by fellow members of the aristocracy.
Louis XIV formed the Academie Royale de Danse in 1661 for the creation, refinement and standardization of the new style of dance. It is believed that the Academie required such precision and detail in the new French dances in order to make other dancers dependent on court academicians for further developments in the art.
The few weeks before Lent were especially busy with dancing. Court balls were held every night, often lasting until dawn. No one was allowed to leave the dancing before the King or Duchesse. A formal ball would open with a branle, where couples joined the linked line in an exact social hierarchy that would establish the dancing order for the evening. The most important dances of the ball were next: the many danses à deux, performed by one couple at a time, beginning with those of the highest social rank. These dances included the Menuet, Passepied, Sarabande, Gigue, Bourrée, Gavotte, Allemande, Forlane, Hornpipe, Chaconne, Tarantelle, Rigaudon, Loure and Courante. Following the couple dances, the balls would conclude with the increasingly popular English country dances (Contredanses), brought back to France by Andre Lorin and other dance masters.
French fashions and taste dominated most of European society in the Baroque era. Courts of other countries generally preferred the French dances, and often employed French dance masters. The complex dances were recorded and disseminated through a new system of symbolic dance notation devised by Pierre Beauchamp and/or Raoul Feuillet (there was a court battle over the true authorship of the system, which Feuillet won). The first dance manual in Feuillet notation was published around 1700, followed by many collections of notated dances issued for each social season of the early 18th century.
King Louis XIV died, at 77, in 1715. The dances he helped create lived on through most of the eighteenth century. Aristocrats continued to dance in court entertainments, but there was an increasing trend toward the performance of noble dances by companies of professional dancers. Theatrical dance developed into one of the most refined arts of the 18th century, a tradition that continues today in ballet.
The French Revolution destroyed most of the Baroque high arts in 1789, including the court dances. The removal of the French aristocratic strata uncovered a dance that had been quietly developing in the countryside — a dance that would take the ballrooms by storm in the next century: the waltz.
— Richard Powers
Stanford Home Accessibility
.
These works, performed between 1661 and 1671 (the most important date to 1669 – 1671), had a largely professional cast.Louis XIV. 1661. 9). Apart from the King himself, one of the most important dancers in the court ballets was a professional – Pierre Beauchamps, his dancing master, who performed several roles in nearly every ballet de cour. Beauchamps must surely have developed this and other ideas in the course of his work in the ballets de cour.
The ballets de cour also saw the emergence of the ballerina – the leading female dancer in ballets – and laid the foundation of a repertoire of stories and characters that have not entirely been relinquished by theatre dance even today.
I will also return to these themes.
Related
Among the most significant works for the creation of modern ballet were the ballets de cour of Louis XIV.
Louis succeeded to the throne of France in 1643, before he had reached the age of five. 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. This was only possible once turn-out of the legs and feet had become the norm.
Between 1648 and 1669, some 26 ballets de cour were performed. © Trustees of the British Museum
The ballets de cour ultimately gave way to the comèdies-ballets created by the actor and dramatist Molière and the court composer and dancer Lully. 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.
Louis XIV made his dancing debut at the age of twelve in 1651, in the Ballet de Cassandre. 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. 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.
I will return to the dancers and dancing in these.
Louis XIV’s ballets de cour have been studied in some detail, although little attention has been paid to the development of the style and technique, and the conventions, of the dancing we now call ballet. These high-ranking amateurs were trained and supported by skilled professional dancers, who must have created the choreographic content of these hybrid works.
Nicolas de Larmessin.
A turn of the hand; the position of the feet; a bend in the knee—these gestures could easily affect how you were perceived. Paris, 1725, p.