'"'Tis not enough that ev'ry Stander-by, No glaring Errors in your Steps can 'spy:" From 'Reading the Page' to 'Reading the Dance''

Performers of La Belle Dance may be considered lucky, since the existence of about 400 extant choreographies in notational form from the 'baroque dance' period enables the reconstruction of these dances, albeit with variation of interpretation. Bus as the quotation from Soame Jenyns (1729) suggests, steps alone (even if the interpretation were 'correct') would not suffice: the performance of a dance needs something more if it is to be satifactorily 'read' by the audience. The suggestion by Jenyns, to complete his quotation, is that it must convey "a nameless Grace... Which words can ne'er express". It is easy to imagine how steps may be turned into a meaningful performance if the dancer portrays 'characters', where for instance large expressive gestures and the use of strong facial emotions might represent say a drunkard or a fury, to further a narrative. This would be helped by the appropriate choice of steps - to quote Dorat (1771), "the dance of a shepherd is not that of a god". I should like to concentrate, however, on the more challenging task or reading and 'bringing alive' the performance of 'pure' dance, dance that tells no story and portrays no characters. This session will illustrate various devices for achieving this: how to use the precepts of rhetoric current in the 18th century to create phrasing, to vary pace and speed, to produce rhythmical variation, to express that "nameless grace" through variations of body position; in sum, how to go from 'reading the steps' to a performance of them that grabs the attention of the audience and wins their hearts!