Terpsichore in the Spotlight of the Lumières: Dance in the Classification of Knowledge During the Age of Reason

Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, Charles-Joseph Panckoucke’s Encyclopédie méthodique, and Charles Compan’s Dictionnaire de la danse constitute a unique corpus with which to study the evolution of dance as a component of knowledge during the Enlightenment. They document profound changes in the classification of knowledge and reforms in theatrical dance. The Encyclopédie’s detailed chart of human knowledge, which aims to show the relationship between all the arts and
sciences, omits dance, giving the impression that dance is not a discipline; but its preliminary discourse draws positive attention to the article on ballet, which continued to be viewed as a component of lyric theater. A few years later, the Encyclopédie méthodique, influenced by Jean-Georges Noverre, validates the development of ballet as an independent theatrical art form. While it elevates dance to a separate discipline, it demonstrates ambivalence between classifying dance among the fine arts or gymnastics. Finally, Compan, who considers dance the oldest of the fine arts, shows himself to be a true encyclopédiste by explicitly classifying dance according to the system mapped in the Encyclopédie.