Dancing ‘sur les décombres de la bastille’: The Federative Balls held in Paris in mid-July 1790

On the evening of 18 July 1790, as Antoine-Joseph Gorsas noted in Le Courrier, ‘tout Paris est illuminé’ with spectacles held in commemoration of the previous year’s tumultuous events. These festivities, among others, included several balls: one held on the ruins of the Bastille, the other at the Champs-Élysées. However, if the context and symbolic meaning of these events have been explored by historians such as Rolf Reichardt, Mona Ozouf and Marie-Louise Biver, they have hitherto attracted less attention from musicologists and dance scholars. The unique circumstances within which these balls occurred nevertheless raise interesting questions about their staging and realisation. For instance, what impact did the location, time of day, and symbolic meanings have on them compared to what was customarily done in such events? What effect (if any) did this have on both the music performed or the composition of the musical ensembles involved? Using a wide range of sources – iconographical ones, printed accounts (like the Chronique de Paris) and music scores – this paper seeks to explore such issues in more depth. In so doing, it aims to further our knowledge not only about these specific balls but also about dance culture more generally in France at the close of the eighteenth century.

Alexander Robinson studied musicology at Oxford University, King’s College London, and the Paris-Sorbonne University, where he completed a doctorate on music at the court of Henri IV (1589–1610) in 2015. From 2022 to 2024, he was a Marie-Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow at the CESR in Tours, France, and he is currently a Research Associate (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) at the University of Basel, Switzerland. His publications include articles in Musica Disciplina, French History, JRMA, Revue de musicologie, and Musical Quarterly, as well as chapter contributions to various volumes. He is a co-editor of History as Fantasy in Music, Sound, Image, and Media (Routledge, 2024) and Marginalized Voices and Figures in French Festival Culture, c.1550-c.1850 (Brepols, scheduled for 2026), as well as editor of the forthcoming volume Vie musicale et identité urbaine dans la France de la Renaissance (ca1500–ca1650) (Classiques Garnier, scheduled for 2026).