Rethinking Burlesque Forms in Louis XIII ballets: Dance, Music, and Politics in Burlesque ballets, 1625-1635

Abstract

Influential analyses of the burlesque ballets performed at the court of Louis XIII argue that the ballets functioned as space for expression of noble resistance to the absolutist monarchy of Louis XIII and his prime minister, Cardinal Richelieu. Closer attention to the actual historical contexts and the identities of the noble dancers involved with respect to some of the lavish burlesque ballets performed at court by the king and select group of nobles offers ways of rethinking the politics and meanings of burlesque performance to take into account the ways that the burlesque developed within court and noble cultural institutions and practices. The burlesque register and style in France can be situated within the context of libertine literary culture and its intersection with noblemen who moved between mondain and court circles in the early seventeenth century. The lavish burlesque ballets produced at court between 1625 and 1635 involved carefully chosen members of the nobility who danced alongside the king, each other, and professional dancers. Even a brief examination of three ballets from this period – Fées des forêts de Saint-Germain, Grand bal de la Douairière de Billebahaut, and Ballet des Triomphes – demonstrates that the court ballet organisers for these royal ballets were fully aware of tensions among different political factions; role assignments and ballet texts and para-texts suggest that these ballets provided a space for ongoing subtle, but consistent assertion of royal power and prerogatives, even when cast in the guise of play and recreation.