Character and action

Abstract

The term ‘ballet d'action’ was the most widely used generic term in the eighteenth century, as indeed it is now among modern critics, but it obscures one of the most important matters of principle at the heart of the genre: was it a dramatic or an oratical art? Was ‘action’ meant in the sense of ‘actio’, typically the fifth part of rhetoric which concerns the physical delivery of a speech, or was it used in the sense of its Greek synonym, ‘drama’? Was the ballet d'action a hybrid of dance and oratory, or of dance and drama? Although some modern critics have argued the former, a close examination of the practice and theory of the genre strongly suggests the latter.