Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T22:21:43.389Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Madame Mariquita, Greek Dance, and French Ballet Modernism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 February 2022

Sarah Gutsche-Miller
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article seeks to correct prevailing narratives of French ballet modernism, which exclude one of its earliest and most significant choreographers, Madame Mariquita. Although long overshadowed by the Diaghilev enterprise and by dancers such as Isadora Duncan, Mariquita's experiments with creating dances that drew on ancient Greek imagery while ballet mistress at the Paris Opéra-Comique in the early 1900s were central to ballet culture in France at a pivotal moment in dance history. This article discusses Mariquita's nascent ballet modernism through her choreography of Greek dances as well as her engagement with early twentieth-century French dance and broader cultural trends.

Keywords

Fin-de-Siècle ParisFrench Ballet ModernismGreek DanceMadame MariquitaOpéra-Comique
Type
Article
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 53 , Issue 3 , December 2021 , pp. 46 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Dance Studies Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

My thanks to Hanna Järvinen, Patty Argyrides, and Samuel Dorf for their comments on earlier versions of this article, and to Stephanie Frakes for helping collect reviews and discussing what we found.

References

Works Cited

Blay, Phillippe. 2001. “‘Un théâtre français, tout à fait français,’ ou un débat fin-de-siècle sur l'Opéra-Comique.” Revue de Musicologie 87 (1): 105–144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Branger, Jean-Christophe, ed. 2008. Figures de l'Antiquité dans l'opéra français: des Troyens de Berlioz à Œdipe d'Enesco. Saint-Étienne, FR: Publications de l'Université de Saint-Étienne.Google Scholar
Conyers, Claude. 2003. “Courtesans in Dance History: Les Belles de la Belle Époque.” Dance Chronicle 26 (3): 236–238.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daly, Ann. 1994. “Isadora Duncan's Dance Theory.” Dance Research Journal 26 (2): 24–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daly, Ann. 1995. Done into Dance: Isadora Duncan. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Décoret-Ahiha, Anne. 2004. Les danses exotiques en France, 1880–1940. Paris: Centre national de la danse.Google Scholar
Dickinson, Edward Ross. 2017. Dancing in the Blood: Modern Dance and European Culture on the Eve of the First World War. New York, USA: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dorf, Samuel. 2009. “Listening between the Classical and the Sensual: Neoclassicism in Parisian Music and Dance Culture, 1870–1935.” PhD diss., Northwestern University: Evanston, IL.Google Scholar
Dorf, Samuel. 2012. “Dancing Greek Antiquity in Private and Public: Isadora Duncan's Early Patronage in Paris.” Dance Research Journal 44 (1): 3–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dorf, Samuel. 2015. “Eroticizing Antiquity: Madame Mariquita, Régina Badet and the Dance of the Exotic Greeks from Stage to Popular Press.” In Opera, Exoticism, and Visual Culture, edited by Lee, Hyunseon and Segal, Naomi, 73–92. Oxford: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Dorf, Samuel. 2019. Performing Antiquity: Ancient Greek Music and Dance from Paris to Delphi, 1890–1930. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eidenbenz, Céline. 2011. “Hypnosis at the Parthenon.” Études Photographiques [Online]. http://journals.openedition.org/etudesphotographiques/3473.Google Scholar
Fauser, Annegret. 2005. “Opera, Ballet, and the Politics of French Identity.” In Musical Encounters at the 1889 Paris World's Fair, 65–73. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garafola, Lynn. 2005a. “Choreography by Nijinska.” In Legacies of Twentieth-Century Dance, 194–204. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Garafola, Lynn. 2005b. “Forgotten Interlude: Eurhythmic Dancers at the Paris Opéra.” In Legacies of Twentieth-Century Dance, 85–106. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Garafola, Lynn. 2005c. “Where Are Ballet's Women Choreographers?” In Legacies of Twentieth-Century Dance, 215–228. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Geary, Jason. 2014. The Politics of Appropriation: German Romantic Music and the Ancient Greek Legacy. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibbons, William. 2006. “Iphigénie à Paris: Positioning Gluck Historically in Early Twentieth-Century France.” Intersections 27 (1): 3–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibbons, William. 2013. Building the Operatic Museum: Eighteenth-Century Opera in Fin-de-Siècle France. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.Google Scholar
Girard, Pauline. 2015. “Massenet, vingt ans de danse à l'Opéra-Comique, 1884–1904.” In Massenet et l'Opéra-Comique, edited by Branger, Jean-Christophe and Terrier, Agnès, 67–94. Saint-Étienne, FR: Publications de l'Université de Saint-Étienne.Google Scholar
Grayson, David. 2001. “Bilitis and Tanagra: Afternoons with Nude Women.” In Debussy and His World, edited by Fulcher, Jane, 117–139. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. 2015. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871–1913. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. 2020. “The Limitations of the Archive: Lost Ballet Histories and the Case of Madame Mariquita.” Dance Research 38 (2): 296–310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. 2021. “Ballet Fit for a National Theater? Carré, the Critics, and Le Cygne at the Opéra-Comique.” Journal of Musicology 38 (2): 183–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howe, Russell Warren. 1986. Mata Hari: The True Story. New York: Dodd, Mead.Google Scholar
Huebner, Steven. 1999. French Opera at the Fin-de-Siècle: Wagnerism, Nationalism, Style. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Järvinen, Hanna. 2005. “Performance and Historiography: The Problem of History in Dance Studies.” In History in Words and Images, edited by Salmi, Hannu, 139–148. Turku, FI: University of Turku.Google Scholar
Järvinen, Hanna. 2008. “‘The Russian Barnum:’ Russian Opinions on Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, 1909–1914.” Dance Research 36 (1): 18–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Järvinen, Hanna. 2009. “Dancing without Space—On Nijinsky's ‘L'Après-midi d'un faune’ (1912).” Dance Research 27 (1): 28–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Järvinen, Hanna. 2014. Dancing Genius: The Stardom of Vaslav Nijinsky. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jowitt, Deborah. 1987. “The Impact of Greek Art on the Style and Persona of Isadora Duncan.” In Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Conference of the Society of Dance History Scholars, 195–201. Irvine: University of California. https://dancestudiesassociation.org/publications/conference-proceedings/1987-conference-proceedings.Google Scholar
Kelly, Barbara. 2008. French Music, Culture, and National Identity, 1870–1939. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.Google Scholar
Kerley, Lela F. 2017. Uncovering Paris: Scandals and Nude Spectacles in the Belle Époque. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.Google Scholar
Klaniczay, Gábor, Werner, Michael, and Gecser, Ottó, eds. 2011. Multiple Antiquities, Multiple Modernities: Ancient Histories in Nineteenth Century European Cultures. Frankfurt: Campus Verlag.Google Scholar
Kolb, Alexandra. 2009. “Mata Hari's Dance in the Context of Femininity and Exoticism.” Mandrágora 15 (15): 58–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kurth, Peter. 2001. Isadora: A Sensational Life. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Laplace-Claverie, Hélène. 2001. Écrire pour la danse: Les livrets de ballet de Théophile Gautier à Jean Cocteau (1870-1914). Paris: Honoré Champion.Google Scholar
Leoussi, Athena. 1998. Nationalism and Classicism: The Classical Body as National Symbol in Nineteenth-Century England and France. New York: St. Martin's Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macdonald, Hugh. 2019. Saint-Saëns and the Stage: Operas, Plays, Pageants, a Ballet and a Film. New York, USA: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Magnin, Émile. 1906. L'Art et l'hypnose: Interprétation plastique d’œuvres littéraires et musicales. Geneva: Atar.Google Scholar
Malandain, Thierry, and Marquié, Hélène. 2015. “Dans les pas de Mariquita: Entretien.” Recherches en danse, 3. https://doi.org/10.4000/danse.922.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marquié, Hélène. 2015. “Enquête en cours sur Madame Stichel (1856 – ap. 1933): Quelques pistes de réflexion.” Recherches en danse, 2: 1–20.Google Scholar
Marquié, Hélène. 2017. “‘D'excellentes personnes assez obscures:’ Lecture critique de l'histoire et de l'historiographie de la danse à la fin du XIXe siècle.” Horizons/Théâtre 10 (11): 280–294.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McQuinn, Julie. 2003. “Unofficial Discourses of Gender and Sexuality at the Opéra-Comique during the Belle Époque.” PhD diss., Northwestern University: Evanston, IL.Google Scholar
Olin, Elinor Nichols. 1991. “Le ton et la parole: Melodrama in France, 1871–1913.” PhD diss., Northwestern University: Evanston, IL.Google Scholar
Simonson, Mary. 2012. “Dancing the Future, Performing the Past: Isadora Duncan and Wagnerism in the American Imagination.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 65 (2): 511–555.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, Lesley. 2008. “Aphrodite (1906) et Camille Erlanger: Antiquité, Imagination, et Volupté.” In Figures de l'Antiquité dans l'opéra français: des Troyens de Berlioz à Œdipe d'Enesco, edited by Branger, Jean-Christophe, translated by Giroud, Vincent, 259–294. Saint-Étienne, FR: Publications de l'Université de Saint-Étienne.Google Scholar