Before the Planet of the Apes

So many great dancers have made the journey from Paris to London in search of many different things – whether they sought artistic freedom from the vice-like grip of Gar[1]del at the Opera or simply came for the adulation and (most probably) for the money – London managements were always prepared to pay for the best of whatever was available. Also there were so many French resident in London that it must have seemed almost like home. So it came to pass that Charles-Francois Mazurier accepted the offer to play a season in England’s Capital. He was taking a risk, despite his celeb[1]rity and ‘puffing’ in the press there was some xenophobic hissing during his debut. Today Mazurier makes hardly a footnote in the wider studies of dance – mainly as model for, and teacher of, the young Jules Perrot, but in his lifetime he was as cele[1]brated as any dancer in Europe. Was he giving London anything new? - long before this Master Menage and others had essayed the taxing (and dangerous) simian roles chimpanxsee or Jocko. Just what made the audiences of the Theatres Royal accept from Mazurier what they would have been happy to watch in other performers in performances at the minor theatres or at the circuses? Keith Cavers is an independent curator, scholar and consulting iconographer. He studied Stage Management at RADA and the History of Drawing and Printmaking at Camberwell. His M. Phil thesis at the university of Surrey was on the dancer and choreographer James Harvey D’Egville. This led to a visiting research fellowship at Harvard in 1996 where he re[1]turned to pursue research in both 2015 and 2016. He was Slide Librarian and a Visiting Lec[1]turer at Camberwell for twenty years and Information Officer at the National Gallery for twelve. In 2018 he printed illustrated versions of George Chaffee’s Catalogues of English and American dance prints. During lockdown he assembled a chronological sourcebook of late Georgian published sources now over 450,000 words, with a matching Iconography. He is currently working on an historical study: “Ballet in Late Georgian London 1776 – 1836.” The 24th Oxford Dance Symposium ‘Dancing in Town and Country’ New College, Oxford, 19 & 20 April 2022