Mime in the Cecchetti ‘method’

Abstract

This article is dedicated to the memory of Laura Wilson, dancer, teacher and lover of the Cecchetti method who died, during the writing of this paper, on 14 May 1999 at the age of 98. In an 1891 letter to the Director of the Imperial Ballet in St. Petersburg, the Italian dance artist Enrico Cecchetti declined the invitation to become repetiteur for the young boys' class, claiming that he was a maestro di perfezionamento, namely a ballet master who coached only professional or semi-professional dancers.' Although at that time Cecchetti had little teaching experience, it is clear that he already saw himself continuing in the tradition of Giovanni Lepri, with whom he had studied in Florence, and Carlo Blasis, who had coached Lepri in Milan. Neither Blasis nor Lepri had ever been in charge of the so-called 'elementary' classes, which focused on the fundamentals of the art of ballet, and both had gained national and international repute as maestri diperfezionamento or 'finishing teachers', to use the English expression adopted by