Choreographic Objects and Kinesis in a Social-Sensual Grand Siècle

Abstract

Ballet training was an essential part of the aristocratic education in the French seventeenth-century; the way one moved served as a visual marker for social triage. As such, Grand Siècle ballet practices were performed both on stage and off, during both formal (balls, spectacle) and informal (quotidian, pedestrian) moments. The thesis begins with the premise that the practice of ballet, by shaping the way one moves, must also shape the way one apprehends the world. The ballet dancer's trained proclivity for spatial awareness and kinesthetic attention enables bodies to circulate in spaces, meaning, and fantasies together - to dance together. Where the dancing body, during the rise of classicism, is often theorized as a site of the performance of the absolute monarchy, a parallel evolution of a courtier culture versed in aesthetic pleasure meant that the classical body also mediated a socially conversant emotional interiority known as the corps sensible. The thesis pays attention to the traces of the choreographic corps sensible beyond formal performance milieux, highlighting an adjacent choreographic legacy embodied among the people and objects who shaped and were shaped by the ballet practices they enjoyed. The thesis convenes an eclectic collection of choreographic objects as the sites of alternative scènes de danse, organized around three exemplary expressions of pleasure. Chapter One explores the pleasure of play through the eclectic and eccentric costume designs by Daniel Rabel (1578-1637), court portraitist to King Louis III. Chapter Two explores the pleasure of the sensual detour in the formal gardens of Versailles. Chapter Three considers the pleasure of surprise through the "light and timely" choreographic impromptu. The collection as a whole highlights a historically specific intermedial social-sensual circulation, at a moment when baroque style and appearance were not simply accessorial embellishments but instead defined the very integrity of one's essence. Moving with the choreographic object importantly allows us to imagine and feel the fluctuating expressions of the social-emotional body in the Grand Siècle, diversifying our understanding of the classical age.