The paradox of techne. Perspectives on the

The paradox of techne. Perspectives on the ballet d’action
Sabine Huschka
In the following I will present aesthetical
considerations of dance theatre of the 18th century
and its reforms in order to discuss the precarious
status of technique. Its precariousity is formulated
intrinsically in the discourses of the 18th century and
their debates over a new and appropriate form of
theatricality in dance. Formative for the 18 th century,
the historical advent of aesthetic disputes between
ballet masters and composers over how to give dance
a dramatic structure and to bring movements into
such, gave rise to characteristics and broader
aesthetic positions towards techne as 1.) the basis
stance of dance as an art form (pedagogical concerns
of methods in learning techniques are part of this);
2.) – as an element of aesthetic judgements to qualify
dancers stylistically; and finally 3.) – as a term of
differentiation in the debates on the beauty and truth
of dance. Since the ballet d’action does not only
draw a line around itself through the appraisal,
description and correct designation of techne as a
structure to be embodied, it uses techne as a term of
differentiation to elaborate divergent positions.
Therefore I will analyze, how techne constitutes an
incident for the aesthetics to shed light onto the
controversial assessments of it as a craft for dancing
bodies.
Questioning the basis of the art of dance
With the beginning of the 18th century and the
aesthetical programme of imitation, the ballet en
action constitutes a broad and effective discourse
against the figuration of the belle danse, as it
appears in the entrées and divertissements of the
opéra ballets. The technical stance of the dance was
identified as a merely mechanical basis, that blurs
the natural beauty of the dancing body. Ballet
masters like Jean Georges Noverre (1727–1810) and
Gasparo Angiolini (1731-1803) deride the noblesse
of belle danse for its geometrical figurations, since
they represent in their eyes an artificiality of
mechanical legwork.
In the 13th letter of his Lettres sur la danse, et
sur les ballets (1760),1 Jean Georges Noverre lays
out a critique of choreography as a medium of
transmission and challenges its usefulness in a
laconic to biting tone. “…convey this construction
one arrives at spelling out dance, one has to make
sure one isn’t holding the book upside down.” His
critique differentiates between “traces and remains
of an action”, which show nothing more than
“a frosty, dumb copy”, and those “non-reproducible
originals” whose truth and life are conserved in other
ways. Noverre sets out his subsequent anti-academic
stance in this dichotomy. Noverre elaborates at
length on the shortcomings of the Parisian dance
academy, which, according to him, was sending the
art of dance to its grave, because the academie de la
danse organized its education according to the
“geometrical plan” of choreography, without being
able to explain its efficacy. Noverre demanded the
engagement of other teachers, who
qu’enfin il eût analysé les pas, leurs
enchaînements successifs ; qu’il eût parlé
des positions du corps, des attitudes, & qu’il
n’ eût rien omis des ce qui peut expliquer &
faire entendre le jeu muet, l’expression
pantomime & les sentiments variés de l’ame
par les caracteres variés de la physiognomie
(1967: 382)
Noverre articulated in a sharp-tongued but at the
same time veiled speech his anti-academic stance.
Gasparo Angiolini counters in a reply (2. Lettera,
1774) that Noverre only wants to teach and demean
the academy. Pantomime dance would have been
completely unknown to the constitution articles and
their rules of 1661. The art of imitation that the
dancers were lacking was not therefore a question of
the correct or false academic education, but rather of
the incorrectly constructed show and its dramaturgy.
The technical basis and the material dance – as
Angiolini called choreography – had meanwhile
made real progress. While Noverre extracts his
concept from an antagonism to technique and
coldness, from which it is important to continually
distance oneself, Angiolini’s reform engenders a
pragmatic-moderate stance, which locates the new
less in a fundamental Other than as a
Supplementary.2
Techne as a criteria of aesthetic judgement
In a historical view on theatrical dance the term
techne motivates highly divisive discourses about
the aesthetic value and judgements of dancers. Out
of these discourses arises the two-folded opposition
between naturalness/expressiveness of the dancing
body on the one and its technical, merely virtuosic
stance on the other hand. “The most magnificent
dancer in Europe”, writes Noverre in the revised and
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expanded version of the Lettres sur les Arts
Imitateurs en générale, et sur La Danse en particulière,
background. Comparing father (Gaetan Vestris) to
son Auguste in his Manuel dramatique Julien-Louis
Geoffroy comes to the conclusion:
Vestris, le fils, élève de son père ; […] Son
début dans le genre sérieux fut un triomphe ;
aplomb, hardiesse, fermeté, brilliant, belle
formation de pas ; oreille sensible et
délicate. […]
[…] et la danse prit une route nouvelle […].
Vestris, plein d’aisance et de facilité, de
vigueur et d’adresse, de souplesse et de
force, de caprice et de fantaisie, et
entreprenant sans réflexions, composa, pour
ainsi dire, un nouveau genre d’architecture
où tous les ordres, toutes les proportions,
furent confondus et exagèrés; il fit
disparoître les trois genres connus et
distincts, il les fondit ensemble et en fit un
de cet amalgame; il se forma une nouvelle
manière qui eut du succès. (1807, II : 126)
Vestris the Younger in fact contributed
nothing to what constitutes the true merit of
dance, in grace, expression, worthiness of
movements, beauty of forms and attitudes;
[…]. He perfected no essential part of the
art, but taking advantage of his extraordinary
strength, he mixed that which is true dance
with tours de force, which smack of the art
of the tumblers, ... . He spurned the earth and
the floor, where the true dancer practices his
talent; he threw himself into the air, and the
boldness of his flight captivated the
spectator. […] What was merely corruption
was regarded as a wonder of the art, and this
mix of jumps and steps, which confound and
alter two very different arts, appeared to be a
bold and sublime novelty. (1822: 301-304;
op cit. Fairfax 2003: 277)
The graceful countenance of Auguste Vestris
steps across the gaze of others and presents itself for
their appraisal. A dance style makes its entry into the
cultural discourse, the description and evaluation of
which represent a central moment in the formation of
the aesthetic theory of dance. The governance of the
body in this dance style not only gives a starting
point to argue about the aesthetic worth of a concrete
performance, but rather also supplies a fundamental
characteristic for dealing with and assessing the art
of dance.
Particularly the idiosyncrasies of the dancer
finally determine the dance style. Historical reports
show that these must still remain within the
formulated code of the art of dance, in order to not
be in danger of simply – as Noverre writes about
Vestris – producing sighs from the educated and
unreflected admiration on the side of the young and
thereby stylistically demolishing the aesthetic canon.
Performances like those of Auguste Vestris (also
known as Vestris the Younger)3 , a dancer educated
in the tradition of ballet d’action at the Paris Opera,
characterized an excess of – shall we say – his own
creative energy, which disturbed their specified
aesthetic representational function. Nevertheless,
Auguste Vestris along with Salvatore Viganò4
entered the stage as the new stars of ballet d’action
and simultaneously pushed the most important
aesthetic doctrines to their threshold. In the eyes of
the reviewers and educated contemporaries, Vestris
embodied in an almost frightening way a brilliant
state of virtuosity, whose aesthetic legitimization had
pushed ballet d’action theoretically into the
2
Vestris’ style of dancing stepped beyond the
roles that had been established since the middle of
the 18th century, which were characterized by clear
dramaturgical, dance technical and finally physical
differences. Discrete in their areas of representation,
specific ways of movement and body structures
belonged to the tragic danse sérieuse, the comical
danse comique and the tragicomic danse demicharactère. In this way Noverre divided dancers into
types according to such things as conspicuous
anatomical qualities of the individual body types.
Comparable to the physiognomic typology of
Lavater (1776, II: 148), Noverre identified the
movement capacity of the individual according to
individual anatomical attributes and defects (among
others knock knees and bow legs). The body type
therefore determined the categorical role of the
dancer.
The movement technical virtuosity of Vestris
amalgamated the sublime and heroic characteristic
style of a danse sérieuse (danse noble) with the offkey, rather more frolicsome movements of a danse
comique as well as with the light characteristic style
of the danse demi-caractère. He formally
outstripped the normative borders of the dance
categories. Vestris’ technical crossing over did not in
fact represent the breaking of a taboo against the
aesthetic grain of dance theatre, for his artistry was
recognizably rooted in the technical code of ballet.
Yet he provoked an apparent discomfort over the
question of what defined a dance presentation in the
sense of the ballet d’action.
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A formative ideal: Marie Sallé
Similarly to the theatre of the time, the aesthetic
of dance theatre of the 18th century was more and
more clearly assessed according to the performance
ability of the individual dancers. The perceptive
form most importantly marked its elaborate techne.
In his ample descriptions of contemporary dancers,
Noverre esteemed exactly those shows “free from all
straining for emotional effect”. He saw this dance
style theoretically embodied in Marie Sallé (17071756), a dancer of danse sérieuse at the Paris Opera
in the 1730s:
Mlle. Sallé, a most graceful and expressive
dancer, delighted the public. […] I was
enchanted with her dancing. She was
possessed of neither the brilliancy nor the
technique common to dancing nowadays,
but she replaced that showiness by simple
and touching graces; free from affection, her
features were refined, expressive and
intelligent. Her voluptuous dancing displaced both delicacy and lightness; she did
not stir the heart by leaps and bounds. (1807,
II: 103; op cit. Fairfax 2003: 90)
please a sculptor,” Salle achieved an expressive
shaping of the events. (op cit. Beaumont 1934: 22)
Techne as a concept of differentiation: Dance as
the art of painterly movements
Noverre esteemed Sallé because of her
appearance to pantomimically present single short
moments of narrative. Noverre considered her selfassured way of converting clear and meaningful
moments of narrative into dance as a model of a
pantomimic total conception of ballet. The serious
and heroic dance, a danse noble belonging to
tragedy, should take over the genre of that theatrical
conception. And thus Noverre confirmed
qu’on ait comme ignoré jusqu’à présent que
le genre le plus propre à l’expression de la
Danse et est le genre tragique ; il fournit de
grands Tableaux, des situations nobles & des
coups de théatre heureux ; d’ailleurs, les
passions étant plus fortes & plus décidées
dans les Héros que dans les Hommes
ordinaires, l’imitation en devient plus facile,
& l’action du Pantomime plus chaude, plus
vraie & plus intelligible. (1760: 30)
Sallé’s dance seems to be aesthetic through a
especially sensitive characteristic style whose
facility was not irritated by technical refinement, as
the dancing style of Marie Carmago, a dancer of the
demi-sérieuse category, was rumoured to be.
Carmago stood out with elaborate step combinations
and jumps that radiated facility, such as jétés, battus
and entrechats and has gone down in history as a
rival of Sallé. Marie Sallé meanwhile showed her
contemporaries a qualitative physical form of her
body and its movements, which according to
Noverre left behind naïvely expressed an appearance
of grace and inscribed itself in memory.
[...] ses graces sont toujours présentes, & la
minauderie des Danseuses de ce genre n’a
pu éclipser cette noblesse & cette simplicité
harmonique des mouvements tendres, volupteux, mais toujours décents de cette aimable
Danseuse. (1967: 165)
With performances that were mostly restricted to
entrées and divertissements from opera ballets such
as Les Indes galantes (1735), L’Europe galante
(1736) or Les Fetes d’Hebe (1739), Sallé represented
an expressive uniqueness, as may be gleaned from
an anonymously composed report in the Mercure de
France on a premiere of her Pygmalion on the 14 th
of February 1734. With “successful poses that would
3
Through plot driven ballets – the choreographies
of which exhibited bodily actions as gestural and
mimetic terrain for expression –dance theatre
developed during the 18 th century into a theatrical
genre, in order to literally surmount the in-between
position, where dance was only valid in entrées and
divertissements of opulent opera productions.
Dramatic material, a plotline structured in acts and
scenes as well as an aesthetic of the body committed
to expression formed the reformatory cornerstone of
this ‘theatralization’. Most importantly, this body
compelled to express an imitatio of the passions, a
body compelled to represent fire, truth and
understanding signified in the eyes of composers
such as Noverre – as well as his detractor Angiolini
– the artistic strength of dance. A firey, true and
understandable miming canonized dance as an art
form:
Il n’est pas douteux que les Ballets auront la
préférence sur la Peinture, lorsque ceux qui
les exécutent seront moins automates, & que
ceux qui les composent seront mieux
organisés.
Un beau Tableau n’est qu’une copie de la
nature, un beau Ballet est la nature même,
embellie tous les charmes de l’Art. (Noverre
1760: 52)
Huschka
With the beginning of the 18th century the
impact of the body in its movements was questioned
in its impacts and residuals to imitate and
communicate the actions and story of the ballet.
Thereby it was about a forceful objective that
Noverre conceived of:
of movement, in which the passions acted as
“incitement” (1769: 200)
and unfurling their
somewhat inciting force from which the
choreographed actions jumped over into the eyes of
the beholders.
[…]: quels que soient les mouvements qui
en résultent, ils ne peuvent manquer d’être
vrais. Il faut conclure d’près cela que les
préceptes stériles de l’Ecole doivent
disparoître dans la Danse en action pour
faire place à la nature. (1760: 266)
Il faut un temps pour articuler la pensée, il
n’en faut point à la physiognomie pour la
rendre avec énergie ; c’est un éclair qui part
du cœur, qui brille dans les yeux, &
répandant la lumiere sur sur tous les traits
annonce le bruit des passions, & laisse voir
pour ainsi dire l’ame à nu. (1760: 195)
This power is constituted as an absolute, which
brings the body to the point where:
Closer to nature and livelier even than painting
and more immediate in expression than poetry, the
art of dance was seen as capable of communicating
and making visible actions and moods immediately.
The aesthetic potential lay in its sensual forcefulness,
in an evidentia of direct viewing. The historical
expression of this communicative act of immediacy
was the overflowing tears of the public gushing forth
emotion.
The body grew in the meantime to become the
bearer of the signs of this passionate emotion. To
achieve this theatrical artifice, the ballet masters took
mimes – who knew how to effectively represent
passion – as a model. Miming as an art of imitation,
an imitatio conveyed in nature, became the primary
aesthetic reference. Through a gestural-mimetic
aesthetic of representation, plots were to be
represented with great emotion. To put these
objectives into concrete terms, Noverre referred back
to the Roman pantomimes and the two pantomimes
handed down from Roman times, Bathyllus and
Pylades, in order to connect to a forgotten historical
tradition of dance – as had Louis Cahusac before
him.
Interestingly, the tradition of ballet d’action
conceives of itself in contrast to all those
meaningless, simply skillful “artificial steps” of
court dance. Dedicated to pure presentation, this
dance had – according to Noverre – “no character
and no determined plot, represented no coherent and
accomplished intrigue, in short, … [did] not belong
to drama.” (1769: 98) This “simple dance diversion”
displayed “nothing more than complexly calculated
mechanical movements”. (1769: 98) This skilful
“cavorting about” with hands and feet, as Noverre
called it, would from then on experience a leap in
quality. Because all “… the exhausting attempts to
jump around like a madman, or to show a soul that
one does not have” (1769: 197), remained empty of
expression. The goal marked an evidential verbalis
4
Tout parlera,…chaque geste dévoilera une
pensée, chaque regard annoncera un
nouveau sentiment, tout sera séduisant parce
que tout sera vrai & que l’imitation sera
prise dans la nature. (1760: 122)
The tradition of ballet d’action agrees
fundamentally with proposing expression as a term
of differentiation from the artificial, pure technical.
For it is nature itself that would speak in movements
from then on. Noverre always situated the perceptive
and expressive dance movement as separate from the
technique, without denying the physical technical
basis of ballet itself.
Les pas, l’aifance & le brillant de leur
enchaîntement, l’a-plomb, la fermeté, la
vîtesse, la légéreté, la précision, les
oppositions des bras avec jambes, voilà ce
que j’appelle le méchanisme de la Danse.
Lorsque toutes ces parties sont pas mises en
œuvre par l’esprit, lorsque le génie ne dirige
pas tous ces mouvemens, & que le sentiment
& les expression ne leur prêtent pas des
forces capables de m’émouvoir & de
m’intéresser ; j’applaudis alors à l’adresse,
j’admire l’homme machine, je rends justice
à la force, à son agilité, mais il ne me fait
aucune agitation ; il ne m’attendrit pas, & ne
me cause pas plus de sensation que
l’arrangement des mots suivants. (1760: 27)
Noverre’s dance theoretical essay can be read as
an attempt to conceive of theatrical dance – in terms
of aesthetic effectiveness – as a process of
perception and sensation. Its craftsmanship is
situated beyond the standards of technique of
movement and is mediated by another. This Other is
designated by Noverre as spiritual. “For the gestures
Huschka
must only be the work of the soul, and the immediate
inspiration of their emotions” (1769: 13), which,
according to Horace’s principle ut pictura poesis,
generates in the body a visibility.
With that ballet and its theory take on a
direction, which will be empathetic with media
interface. In the meantime, one encounters explicit
virtuosity with scepticism. Virtuosic dancers like
Auguste Vestris were vexing due to the dominance
of the technical know-how they exhibited, which
unreservedly crossed over into all areas of dance and
perceptively disturbed the topos of the “painterly
movement” as a harmonious scene. Vestris’ performativity transgressed thereby the aesthetics of
movement of the norms of pantomime theatricality,
without meanwhile opposing it entirely. Vestris’
reception rather is most noticeable for those who
oppose impassioned expression to the emptiness
implicit in ballet d’action, in order to claim an
aesthetic surplus.
Constituted is therefore a first binary theoretical
stance between expressive fullness and formal
emptiness. Techne becomes a craft, that has to be
inclusive excluded or exclusive included, thereby
demanding highly repressive practical approaches.
Within this paradoxical position techne grows to a
provocative issue in theory, i.e. for the discourses
and their programmatic reflections on the aesthetics
of dance.
Copyright 2007, Sabine Huschka
Endnotes
1
2
3
Noverre published his Lettres sur la danse, et sur les ballets
first 1770 in Lyon and Stuttgart, in honoration to Herzog
Karl Eugen von Württemberg. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
translated these all together 15 Lettres together with J.J.C.
Bode 1769 in German, published: Hamburg/Bremen. This
version was new edited by Kurt Petermann 1977.
As a student of Franz Hilverding (1710-1768), Gasparo
Angiolini developed a ballet aesthetic committed to a
gestural-narrative poetics, whose aims stood in opposition
to Noverre in almost every way. The two composers and
ballet masters were engaged in a dispute drawn out over
many years, the letters of which are some of the only
textual sources by Angiolini to give an idea of his
conception of ballet d’action. In contrast to Noverre,
Angiolini did not write a text explaining his objectives.
This is one of the reasons why Noverre – ambitious theorist
of his ballets and author of Lettres sur la danse, et sur les
ballets (Lyon/Stuttgart 1770) – grew as the main figure
identified with ballet d’action. The Lettres have been
handed down as the central writings on the reform of ballet
d’action.
Auguste Vestris (born 1760) was honored greatly in his
time. He was teached by his father Gaetan Vestris and was
5
4
allowed, as Levinson (1923, S. 213) says, to hold the name
of his father even as an unmarried son of him. Gaetan
Vestris was seen as „Le Dieu de la Danse“, as it was
written in hte Correspondance littéraire of Grimm in Sept.
1772 (Diderot 1812, II: 316).
Salvatore Viganò (1769-1821) was engaged at the Vienna
Opera as a dancer and composer (1793-1795; 1799-1803).
In 1813 he became ballettmaster and composer at the Scala
in Milano, Italie. His dance style was rooted in the Noverre
tradition. Explanations to his concept of Coreodramma see
Woitas 2004.
Bibliography
Angiolini, Gasparo (1774) Due Lettere scritte a diversi sogetti
l'anno.
Beaumont, Cyril William (1934) Three French dancers of the
18th century. Carmago - Sallé - Guimard, London:
Fakenham and Reading.
Diderot, Denis: Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et
critique, adressée à un souverain d'Allemagne. Par le
baron de Grimm et par Diderot. 1812-1814.
Fairfax, Edmund (2003) The styles of eighteenth-century ballet,
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Geoffroy, Julien-Louis (1822) Manuel dramatique, Paris:
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___________ (1977/1769) Briefe über die Tanzkunst und über
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__________ (1807) Lettres sur les Arts Imitateurs en générale,
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