Brigands in Pointe Shoes and Selfless Spirits: Salvage and Salvation in Nineteenth-Century Ballets

Abstract

This paper deals with scenes of salvage and salvation in a number of nineteenth-century ballets which were mostly inspired by works of literature, and their afterlives. The term ‘salvage’ will be used in several metaphorical senses here. By tracing back ‘salvage’ to its wider etymological origins in the Latin word ‘saluus’, which refers to both physical and spiritual salvation, I will employ this term to describe the saving of the bodies and souls of ballet protagonists. I will argue that the evolution of ballet costumes and technique was linked to the appearance of a number of unconventional salvage scenes in which traditional gender roles were reversed and women saved men. Several examples will be used to demonstrate how ballet librettists changed the literary sources when they transposed them into libretti in order to add these scenes. The term ‘salvage’ can also refer to ‘the saving and collection of waste material […] for recycling’. 1 Now, in this sense ballet libretti ‘recycled’ literary source texts, and so enact salvage through adaptation. What is more, elements from previous libretti were recycled in nineteenth-century ballets, through the re-enactment of certain archetypal situations, including rescue scenes and acts of spiritual salvation.