So Revealing: Ballerinas on Antebellum U.S. Stages
From the 1820s through the 1840s, romantic ballet swept over U.S. stages, most often presented by European ballerinas who revealed a new movement world, new theatrical expressivity, and their bodies to viewers curious, shocked, inspired, and moved by their performances. These dancers were subject to visual, aesthetic, and moral scrutiny - notable in both graphic and text descriptions emerging from U.S. presses. Three ballerinas are the subject of this presentation, based on their depictions in American visual images and textual commentary. This paper investigates the corporeal and costume allusions in these depictions, as they reveal the technical and expressive choices of performers, and - perhaps more so - both the aesthetic exaltation and moral scruples expressed by viewers of those performances.
The three subjects of discussion will be:
- Francisque Hutin (1828, Philadelphia - E. W. Clay, "Chestnut Street Theatre, Pas de deux" in Lessons in Dancing).
- Mme. Celeste (as the Wild Arab Boy in The French Spy - 1834, New York; 1839, New York, N. Currier).
- Eugenie Lexompte (1837, New York - E. W. Clay, nuns' scene, Robert le diable).
Lynn Matluck Brooks is Arthur and Katherine Shadek Humanities Professor Emerita at Franklin & Marshall College, where she founded the Dance Program in 1984. At F&M, she was awarded the Bradley R. Dewey Award for Outstanding Scholarship and the Christian Wisconsin and Temple University and is a and is a Certified Movement Analyst. Her dance history research has earned grants from the Fulbright/Hayes Commissions, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Brooks has authored books and scholarly articles and has served as performance reviewer for Dance Magazine, editor of Dance Research Journal and Dance Chronicle, and writer and editor-in-chief for thINKingDance in Philadelphia. Her current research focuses on antebellum Philadelphia/U.S. and on interconnections of dance, science, and cultural discourse.