To browse Academia. In my dissertation, I argue that danceβwhether as practice or performanceβ embodies the ideologies and values of the human communities that creates it.
Specifically, I posit that the contredanse, a French derivative of the English country dance, embodied a mode of sociability, which echoed the social ideals and interactive networks of the French Enlightenment.
In contrast to the precise choreography and performative elitism of court dancing and ballet, the contredanse incorporated many dancers into a lively, ever-changing series of movements that disregarded class or rank. It favored an egalitarian and interactive approach to human sociability rather than a deterministic and hierarchical social order. I explore the historical and ideological communities fashioned by the contredanse from three perspectives. In the first chapter, I consider the process by which the English country dance became the French contredanse, a process evolving over the course of four translative movements: li These dance forms were influential in reshaping not only the French body politic, but also various European and American body politics in nineteenth- and twentieth- century modernity.
The cancan emerged as a variation on the quadrille, a social dance popular in the s in France. With its non-hierarchical arrangement of dancers as a social group, the contredanse revolutionised French court dancing, embodying the de-centralisation of political and social power that was already taking place within the French aristocracy Cohen, In the post-revolutionary period, the accelerating breakdown of class distinctions encouraged the standardisation and simplification of the contredanse, making it accessible to all levels of society.
However, this social situation paradoxically made the construction and display of identity more important than ever, especially for the rising bourgeoisie. Therefore the dance maintained an aesthetic of civilised sociality that made its performance appealing as a signifier of social superiority.
