Dancing: Town and Country Characters in 17th-Century French Court Ballet

This lecture seeks to explore the rich collection of characters who performed in Court Ballet in France in the Early Modern period. It will show how these roles offered significant opportunities for virtuoso performances by major professional dancers who displayed varied and complex steps and movements. A traditional view of the countryside was used to emphasize the value of freedom from want, from toil and from war in contrast to life in the city where multi-layered social groups performed, satirizing both peasant and courtier who, through their dancing simulated disguisings, make-believe, metamorphosis and deception. The role of costume design provides an important contribution to this analysis. Margaret M. McGowan CBE, FBA, Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, is Research Professor at the University of Sussex. Her research interests centre on intellectual, cultural and artistic concerns in Early Modern Europe. Her first publication on dance was L'Art du Ballet de Cour (1964), followed by Ideal Forms in the Age of Ronsard (1985), The Court Ballet of Louis XIII (1986) and Dance in the Renaissance (2008)