4 - The Viennese Contredanse

Summary

As a dance form, the contredanse is ostensibly anti-hierarchical, since its figures require cooperation between all participants and remove the hierarchical distinctions that were present in eighteenth-century society. While this would seem to make the dance suited for the mixed-class environment of the public ballroom, in Viennese dance culture figure dances such as the contredanse and the ecossaise were primarily danced in private settings. In the larger public dancing venues such as the imperial ballrooms, the contredanse tended to feature mainly as a presentational dance, in which a group of elite dancers performed to a public spectatorship. This performing context enforced social hierarchies rather than removing them, which has implications for the social connotations of the contredanse as a dance topic in the Viennese Classical style