Dance and the French enlightenment

Abstract

The writers and philosophers of the French Enlightenment devoted a surprising amount of attention to dance. They discussed it in a variety of works, including aesthetic treatises, articles in the Encyclopedie, ou Dictionnaire raisonne des sciences, des arts et des metiers, and books on dance and on other performing arts-music, opera, and theatre-that often involve dance. Some of these works are by such familiar figures as Rousseau and Montesquieu, but lesser-known writers, such as Frangois Antoine Chevrier and Toussaint Remond de Saint-Mard, are also important, as their observations can help us understand more fully the reforms that took place in dance during the eighteenth century. These writers often express the view, so central to Enlightenment aesthetics, that art should imitate nature and follow the ideals of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Many of them were excited by the idea of reviving in dance the element of pantomime, which played an important role in Greek and Roman theatre. The views on the arts, including dance, of such philosophers as Plato, Aristotle, and Plutarch were also influential. Along with the other arts, dance was often discussed in the aesthetic treatises that attempted to explain art and beauty by means of scientific principles. Two treatises in particular are notable for