Abstract
This article mines newly discovered letters from a Sienese family archive to give insight into the artistic, economic, and psychological parameters that influenced the hiring of freelance ballerini to form a ballet troupe for an operatic production in Siena (Italy) in 1750, a period for which such information is scarce. By focusing on the contract negotiations and bargaining tactics between dancers and agents, the article confirms the importance of family and professional connections and reveals the ways in which dancers viewed themselves in relation to their peers by laying bare the hierarchies of the mid-eighteenth-century Tuscan professional dance environment.
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