Dance in Venice

Before and After the Fall of the Republic According to the dance scholar José Sasportes, in the 18th century, more ballets were performed in Venice than in any other city. Unlike Naples or Milan, for ex ample, Venice did not become a stronghold either of Noverre’s French or Angio lini’s Italian style. Venetian theatres showed works by both masters and their fol lowers, including Charles LePicq, Louis Henry, Francesco Clerico, and, in the 19th century, Gaetano Gioia, Salvatore Viganó and Filippo Taglioni. Which subjects did they choose for their ballets, how did they treat them, and what contribution did these works make to European ballet history and the cultural history of Venice? In my paper, I will provide some answers to these questions by analysing a num ber of literature-inspired ballets created in Venice in the late 18th and early 19th century. I will situate them in the context of Venetian cultural history, especially by establishing links between developments in ballet, opera and theatre, and as sess their contribution to the development of the ballet d’action. I. Julia Bührle (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3/ German Centre for Venetian Studies) studied Comparative Literature, History of Art, and International Relations in Stuttgart, Paris, and Oxford. In 2014, she completed her Franco-German PhD entitled Lit erature and Dance: the Choreographic Adaptation of Works of Literature in Germany and France from the Eighteenth Century to the Present Day (published in 2014). She also authored a bi ography of the dancer Robert Tewsley (Robert Tewsley: Dancing beyond Borders / Tanz über alle Grenzen, bilingual English-German, 2011). Besides, she has worked for UNESCO, the Munich Ballet and the Paris Opera, and she took part in the BBC documentary The King Who Invented Ballet: Louis XIV and the Noble Art of Dance (2015). Following a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at New College, Oxford, she is currently writing the first global history of ballet adaptations of Shakespeare’s works. The 24th Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dancing in Town and Country’ New College, Oxford, 19 & 20 April 2022