Ritual Design for the Ballet Stage: Constructions of Popular Culture in European Theatrical Dance, 1650-1760

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Hanna Walsdorf
• Subject Area: Theatre and Media Studies ; Art History ; Musicology
• Term: from 2014 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 250241419

Shepherds, savages and guardian gods: From 1650 to 1760, various types of figures from well beyond the borders of the largely courtly social class that spawned them danced on the ballet stages of Europe: constructed (bucolic) characters, nations and provinces, complete with their own deliberately crafted attributes and narratives. Music, choreography and costumes combined to form a style of theatrical dance that thrived on the interplay between apparitions from their own local and foreign cultures: social and national borders manifested not only in its conception and execution, but also and above all in its materiality. The ritual connection is self-evident: when the Other was portrayed in dance, be it in the form of peasant festivals, noble savages or ancient ceremonies, patterns of space and motion were generously applied in order to provide the audience with a clear ritual framework for the actions on stage. Working on the basis of a broad range of materials, this finding will be systematically researched and analyzed in case studies from Paris, London, Milan and Stuttgart in four sub-projects.The overall project s first objective is to utilize a socio- and intellectual-historical contextualization of theatrical dance in order to determine its transcultural efficacy for the respective cultures that created it. In this context, transculturalism will be subdivided into three variants, differentiating between examples of intrinsic (subcultures within a society), extrinsic (transnational cultural encounters) and temporal transculturalism (an imagined form of the Antiquity), respecting literary adaptations in the bucolic tradition in between. Accordingly, the ballet stage will be understood as a mirror and locus of crystallization for societal paradigms; in this regard, not only should contemporary interpretations be reflected, but the latest cultural studies approaches should and will be employed. The second objective is to confirm the assumption that the ballet stage may be seen as a resonator for political developments: did the ritual behavioral patterns integrated into the events on stage have a quasi-prismatic function, reflecting social conditions and relations? By directly comparing the case studies and determining the frequency of use for the various types of rituals, the project will reveal the connections made to political events and intellectual developments. Consequently, the project s interest extends beyond the central musicological, dance- and costume-based questions it addresses, as the exploration of sociohistorical relations is equally relevant for a comprehensive grasp of the theatrical dance genre. The project s third and final objective is to clarify the provenance of the ritual behavioral patterns used in 17th- and 18th-century ballet, to determine their original performative character, and to make a distinction between diegetic and non-diegetic ritual dance in ballet.

• DFG Programme: Independent Junior Research Groups