New quadrilles for the société philarmonique d'Anvers 1813-1818

Commercial ballrooms appear all over Great Britain in the course of the 18th century. They represent a new type of contact zones enhancing the cultural mobility of new urban elites. As such they are a unknown phenomenon for the Southern Netherlands before 1815. Buildings solely dedicated to musical leisure remained scarce until the 1850s. Most cities only disposed of one baroque-style theatre typically seating a few hundred, also used for social dancing during the ball season. In Antwerp, the opera house exploited a monopoly on public balls just like its Parisian counterpart, but not until 1810. As a consequence of this peculiar absence of free entrepreneurship, the first commercial concert room and ballroom was erected in Antwerp only in 1813. The archives of the society have mostly vanished, except for the dance programs for the first few seasons of its existence. Because of the new influx of different social groups in a brand new social club, explanation of every dance movement seemed desirable. It guaranteed that every member could prepare decently and start on an equal footing. These programmes offer a quite unique view on the emergence of a new dance style in a small town in the Southern Netherlands on the eve of Waterloo.