The politics of ballet

Abstract

The attention of musicologists and dance historians who study the artistic life of Florence at the turn of the 17th century has focused predominantly on the operatic and theatrical spectacles sponsored by the Medici family and other Florentine patricians. The performance in France of court ballets and masques during the reign of Henry IV and his wife Marie de Medici has attracted less attention. Indeed the political influence of female rulers on the production of this genre of royal entertainment remains particularly shady. Melinda J. Gough’s monograph aims to fill this lacuna. It stands out as an original examination of Queen Marie de Medici’s political and cultural role in the ballets she danced and sponsored (1602, 1605 and 1609), together with other spectacles promoted by prominent members of the French nobility who were close to the queen. As the author argues, ‘the ballets that Marie orchestrated and danced prior to her husband’s death promoted the queen’s incipient political authority on a number of intersecting levels’ (p.3). Gough’s methodological approach is therefore deeply interdisciplinary. Her analysis of manuscripts and archival documents is not restricted to the intellectual confines of dance and theatre history; instead, it is based on theories derived from various academic fields, including literary studies, sociology, anthropology, gender studies and musicology.