Apollo’s Angels

by Jennifer Homans

  These maidens in white were the first modern corps de ballet. Before the French Revolution, the corps de ballet generally comprised couples—courtiers, villagers, or perhaps a group of furies or demons. As a group, though, these figures had no particular moral authority or political identity; they were merely characters in a pantomime play. Gardel’s women in Télémaque had been a first glimpse of something new, but they were sensual and erotic, not yet elevated symbolic figures. The Revolution’s pristine women in white would reappear regularly in Gardel’s ballets well into the next century (they were his specialty) and were eventually picked up and transformed in the imaginations of Romantic poets and writers and given canonical form in La Sylphide and Giselle. The corps de ballet as a group of women (never men) in white thus took its cue from the Revolution: they represented the claims of the community (and the nation) over those of the individual. They were everywomen of low breeding but the highest ethical distinction.

  In the festivals of the 1790s, however, these women did not yet dance. They were ceremonial, symbolic, and decorative, a silent chorus. The real dancing was done by the people, who did not perform ballets, of course, but expressed themselves in folk dances and especially the carmagnole. When Gardel staged La rosière républicaine in 1794, he took his brother’s ballet and turned it into an anticlerical screed: the villagers arrived at the local church with the rosière for the traditional festivities, but when the doors were flung open they saw that God’s house had been gutted of altars, crosses, and saints, and that the parish priest—dressed as a sans-culotte—was presiding over a lively festival of Virtue and Reason. Instantly “converted,” they broke into a lively carmagnole.*

  The earthy and joyous carmagnole was not just any folk dance, however. It was a round dance and song named after the red jacket worn by the rebels of Marseille. The song incited the people to rise against Louis XVI and his queen (“Monsieur and Madame Veto”) and was standard revolutionary fare. People sang and danced it around liberty trees, and more ghoulishly around the guillotine, to celebrate the victory of the people over the despised aristocracy. One print depicting the Parisian populace dancing in the streets after the taking of the Bastille made the point definitively: the revelers held up a sign that said “Here We Dance.” And they did not mean the minuet.17

  When the Terror subsided following the fall of Robespierre in July 1794, the Opera resumed its old repertory without missing a beat. For a moment it seemed as if the revolutionary fury against ballet as an aristocratic art had been but a passing storm: Maximilien Gardel’s most sentimental ballets were staged once again alongside Télémaque and Psyché, and they were all as popular as ever. But in fact things were not the same. Many of the old audience had emigrated and the Opera was ragged and on edge. Costumes and sets were depressingly depleted and worn and in the uncertain political and economic climate of the Directory (1795–99) the theater, teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, was forced to close several times for reorganization. The old repertory ran on automatic pilot, like a series of television reruns. After more than a decade of churning out ballets and festivals, Pierre Gardel (still chief ballet master at the theater) fell into a long and depressed silence: he produced nothing new for several years, until Napoleon took power.

  The action was elsewhere: it was now to be found at public balls and in the outrageous sartorial wars that swept Parisian society in the fin de siècle years. Sartorial wars were nothing new in Paris, and as Balzac later observed, even in its earliest stages the Revolution had been “a debate between silk and plain cloth.” But as the Terror drew to a close, antirepublicans started a rage for extravagant fashions and insouciance that took revenge on the unornamented spartan simplicity of black cloth and the rough wear of the sans-culottes. Self-styled incroyables (men) and merveilleuses (women) stalked the streets and public gardens in various states of almost cartoonishly elaborate dress—and undress: the men wore skintight pants, boldly colored short coats, and stiff, wide collars protruding like a ship’s prow and framing a head of long and often artfully disordered hair. They walked with prissy, mincing steps and carried lorgnettes and large sticks, which they provocatively called their “executive power.”18

  As for the women, they were shameless. Madame Tallien, wife of the prominent anti-Jacobin leader Jean-Lambert Tallien and hostess of a chic Parisian salon (her enemies called her “the new Marie Antoinette” for her sartorial excesses), wore flesh-colored tights with gold spangles that shimmered through a transparent negligée; one night she went to the Opera stark naked under a tiger skin nonchalantly pulled around her body. Josephine de Beauharnais (who married Napoleon in 1796) wore a dress sewn of real rose petals (and nothing else), and also had one made entirely of plumes and pearls. White muslin gowns were the rage, and women took to wetting them down (even in winter) or dousing them in scented oils, thus revealing the sensual curves of their bodies. They flocked to public balls in the skimpiest of clothing, one observer noted, with “bare arms, naked breasts, feet shod with sandals, hair turned in tresses around their heads by modish hairdressers who study the antique busts.”19

  And they danced. During the Directory, there were more than six hundred dance halls in Paris, and they were packed day and night. The Paris Opera, languishing theatrically, took full advantage and held lavish masked balls, which drew large crowds from across the social spectrum, right down to prostitutes. At these balls, a new dance—the waltz—was a favorite, and like the tiger skin and wet muslin dresses, it broke all of the rules. In past social (and theatrical) dances such as the minuet, a man and a woman stood side by side and did not touch except to hold hands, and even that was done with formal poise. In the waltz, by contrast, couples embraced. And this was not the formal upright embrace later made famous in the fancy ballrooms of the Vienna Congress in 1815. This waltz had a more relaxed stance, true to its popular origins, and no one doubted its erotic charge: only married women were allowed (at least in theory) to perform a waltz, and descriptions of its vertiginous turning and close hold alternated between heady exultation and indignant denunciation.

  Ballet masters could not afford to ignore the waltz—or the fetish for scanty dress that seemed to accompany it. They absorbed the pulse and romantic embrace of the dance, eventually using it to transform the old side-by-side pas de deux into a fully partnered form with a man and woman moving in and out of embrace. Indeed, the waltz opened a vast new range of compositional possibilities. It was not just its seductive rhythm or the fact that dancers turned their sights away from the king and toward each other; it was also the dance’s erotic freedom and sense of release from old constraints. We can see the change in drawings of dancers during the Directory, which show couples in a fresh repertory of poses: face-to-face, arms draped over shoulders or hooked around the waist, in easy postures, and even with necks flung ecstatically back or hips askew.

  Details from a sketch by the ballet master André Deshayes, reflecting the shift away from side-by-side partnering to dances in which the partners embrace and counterbalance. (3.1)

  It did not take long for these fashions to transfer to the stage. In 1799, to take just one example, the ballet master Louis Milon created Héro et Léandre, a ballet-pantomime in one act performed at the Paris Opera. The plot was the usual medley of gods and love: Léandre loves Héro and with the help of Amour contrives to win her affection. She is chaste and wears (literally) a veil of modesty, which she naturally refuses to part with. Eventually, however, Léandre prevails and at the appointed moment a group of Amours tears away her veil, leaving her elegant figure more fully revealed. Is she ashamed? To the contrary, she feels liberated, and the couple dances a passionate pas de deux. In years to come, ballet masters routinely created excuses for these intimate encounters, and although the dances themselves have been lost, the drawings and sketches that ballet masters made in preparation show a free-form and sensuous dance, with a woman’s body entwined with the man’s in ways that would seem modern even today.20

 
In 1800, soon after Napoleon came to power, Gardel finally broke his silence with a ballet about the vogue for social dance to a score by Étienne Méhul, which he called La Dansomanie. It was an instant sensation and remained a popular staple in the Opera repertory until 1826. Gardel, however, claimed it was not even a ballet. It was only “a lark … a nothing,” made to divert and entertain. He was right—it was not a ballet but a farce, and like the merveilleuses and incroyables, it both mocked and celebrated aristocratic forms. The story recalls Molière’s Le Bourgeois gentilhomme: a wealthy bourgeois, M. Duléger, is a ridiculous and dance-crazed man with a marriageable daughter. To his wife’s consternation, Duléger refuses a well-placed suitor. And why? Because he cannot dance. Duléger’s wife and daughter thus contrive a plot to trick him and set things right, and the performance concludes with a pastiche ballet des nations, in this case with Turks, Basques, and Chinese dancers.21

  Gardel was not aiming to rival Molière, but the differences between La Dansomanie and Le Bourgeois gentilhomme are nonetheless telling. Molière’s Jourdain vainly aspires to noble status, and the story of his clumsy ineptitude satirizes bourgeois pretensions and the mannered arrogance of the aristocracy in a single deft blow. Gardel’s M. Duléger, by contrast, has no social aspirations: he is obsessed with dancing for the pure and simple reason that he enjoys it. Dance is no longer an etiquette, it is just a bunch of outlandish dance steps. And so, whereas M. Jourdain’s dancing master teaches him how to bow to a marquise, Duléger’s teacher (a certain M. Flicflac) shows him the moves of the waltz and the complicated “doubled, tripled, and quadrupled” steps of other newfangled dances. And whereas M. Jourdain wants his daughter to marry a nobleman, Duléger doesn’t care: his daughter will marry the best dancer.22

  But Gardel was also playing with his audience. Which dancer does Duléger seek to emulate? That old paragon of the high noble style, Gaetan Vestris. Which step does he most aspire to master? The still vaunted and elevated gavotte de Vestris. The conservative, royalist-leaning Journal des Débats accused Gardel of mocking these old dance forms, but other sources suggest that the dancers performed the dances of the ancien régime aristocracy with great aplomb right alongside the popular and electrifying waltz. Indeed, Dansomanie worked because it was an exuberant showcase of dance, but also because it constantly referred back to established standards of social etiquette and grace and juxtaposed them to new styles and modish dances—which were in effect undermining the old art. Gardel knew that ballet no longer carried the aura and authority of the court, and he was painting with the broad strokes of burlesque rather than the fine lines of satire. This was not a comédie-ballet but “a nothing,” another sign that the era that had begun with Louis XIV, Molière, and Lully was finally coming to an end. The Revolution, which had already done so much to change the look of ballet, pushed Gardel—and classical ballet—into the arms of farce.23

  When Napoleon was crowned (or rather, crowned himself) hereditary emperor of the French, he seemed to be turning back the clock. First, he restored the court and—playing on the enduring fascination with status, hierarchy, and what Stendhal called the “vanity” of the French elite—took up the most sumptuous and cultish monarchical rituals, enacting them with a panache to rival any king. In 1804 he staged a coronation to end all coronations; in 1810 he would even marry a Habsburg princess. His courtiers lined up to reenact old rites such as the grand couvert, in which invited guests moved in a silent procession around the seated person of the king as he dined. To suit such occasions, Napoleon often donned the formal habit à la française typical of the court of Louis XVI: silk stockings with a high-collared coat, buckled shoes, and dress sword. The sartorial requirements for women were no less formal, and the Duchesse d’Angoulême even tried to bring back the widest hoopskirts, although the outcry against this uncomfortable and awkward costume was so great that she eventually gave up.

  The requirements of court etiquette, however, were meticulously observed, and after years of unemployment dancing masters suddenly found themselves with a surfeit of work instructing aspiring young ladies for their debuts at court and composing dances for state events. The ballet master Jean-Étienne Despréaux, who had been trained by Gaetan Vestris in the noble style and had performed at the Opera for some sixteen years under the ancien régime, was hired to instruct Josephine and Napoleon (whom he found brusque and poorly informed in matters of etiquette). Despréaux staged festivities at court in a magnificent royal style but with a revealing populist twist. A production entitled Allegorical Ballet on the subject of the alliance between Rome and France, for example, included formal minuets and quadrilles performed in rank order, but these were set to popular airs such as “Arm yourself with a noble courage” and “Rest assured beautiful princess.”

  Napoleon also paid close attention to the Paris Opera, which he placed under the direct authority of the Prefecture of Police with the express order that each and every ballet be personally approved by his trusted deputy (and former architect of the Terror) Joseph Fouché. And if, as one official duly noted, the Revolution had given artists the false illusion that they might in some measure rule themselves (it had), they would soon be disabused of any such notion. The Opera, he insisted, would be run from above: “unity of leadership, strength, will, and direction: obedience, obedience, and ever more obedience.” The theater and its performers were kept under the “vigilant eye” of the police, who busily generated reports detailing their misdeeds.24

  Control of the artists, however, was nothing compared to the problem of controlling their art. During the Revolution and the relaxation of royal controls, the number of theaters in the capital had exploded. Napoleon, who wanted to restore ballet and opera to their former grandeur, swiftly shut down all but eight theaters; the four subsidized (formerly royal) houses were among the eight saved. By 1811 he had fully reestablished the Opera’s traditional stranglehold on the most elevated genres of opera and ballet. The Paris Opera was now the only theater in the city allowed to mount ballets in the noble style, with gods, kings, and heroes. It could also stage dances representing the “ordinary actions of life,” but other theaters were given this privilege as well, and the message was clear: the Opera, as the Mercure de France put it, was a “constitutional theater” that represented the glory of the French nation. Pomp and magnificence were its essential tools of trade, and censors routinely rejected ballets on light themes that lacked sufficient pageantry.25

  Notwithstanding its magnificence and grandeur, Napoleon’s court was not a return to the past, nor did it necessarily restore confidence in old aristocratic forms. It rested upon a new social base: merit and wealth mattered more than birth and ancestry, and military heroes and men of the French campaigns along with wealthy bourgeois families crowded into the new ruling class. Against this changed social landscape, and drawing on his own revolutionary beliefs and experience, Napoleon’s political and cultural tastes in fact departed sharply from those of the monarchs and aristocrats he ostensibly sought to emulate. Indeed, a driving ambition to rationalize public and administrative life on the basis of strict civic equality and service open to talent set his regime apart from any in the French past. A stringent meritocracy combined with an authoritarian style and heavy overlay of imperial pomp gave Napoleon’s rule its distinctive aura. As the Princesse Dolgorouki pointedly noted in the early days of his reign, Napoleon was “not a court, but a power.”26

  What did this mean for dancers? First, a series of battles with headstrong ministers. Partly this was old news, for as we have seen, artists had always tried to control as many aspects of their lives as possible, but now there were vital artistic matters at stake as well. In the past, dancers had routinely changed steps to suit their own talents, lifted favorite passages from one ballet and inserted them into another, and altered costumes to suit their tastes (or those of a wealthy protector). To Napoleon, however, demands that had once seemed merely impertinent were increasingly perceived as an intolerable sign of egoism�
��the behavior of children spoiled by past kings, an irritating remnant and reminder of the arbitrary privileges and petty vanities that had so characterized and scarred the ancien régime.

  Thus there was a strong push under Napoleon to rationalize artistic practices on the basis of merit. Officials began from the bottom up: the Paris Opera school had fallen into disarray and the theater’s own dancers were being trained privately by an array of teachers in drawing rooms across Paris. This haphazard and unregulated situation would no longer do, and the school was fully reorganized with clear guidelines for advancement. In addition, a new “perfection class” was instituted, designed to hone the technique of the theater’s most advanced pupils, who then fed directly into the ranks of the Opera itself. And in keeping with Napoleon’s preference for military etiquette, uniform dress was mandated, especially for boys: tight pants, vests, and white stockings.27

  The idea was to take full control of the artistic machinery so as to ensure a smooth and professional product. To this end, officials entreated and cajoled, levied fines, and signed decrees demanding that roles and promotions be awarded according to talent rather than other dubious criteria (powerful connections, protectors, sexual favors). They established juries and committees to protect artists from favoritism and to ensure a level playing field. Dancers were reined in: no, Vestris and Duport would not be allowed to insert steps at will into the ballet Anécreon; and yes, Antoine would be punished (four days under arrest) for taking the liberty to transpose a dance from the opera Abencérages into the ballet Les Noces de Gamache.28