[Women, dancing bodies throughout history] (lecture demonstration - 2004)

What femininity do women's dancing bodies radiate from the Renaissance to the Baroque period? What norms shaped the posture, the gestures, the looks, the strategies for concealing the female body whether at a ball or on stage? Do the constraints of clothing discipline the body, or is this suggestion amplified in the very stuff of dance: muscle tone, the positions, steps, figures, how one relates to one's partner, the style, the expression?

Béatrice Massin and Marina Nordera's dialogue attempts to find answers to these questions by using period choreographies performed by three dancers from the company Fêtes Galantes.

Works presented in this lecture demonstration :
- Bassa danza Lauro by Laurent de Médicis - Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro, De practica seu arte tripudii vulgare opusculum, XVe siècle, Florence, Bibliothèque Laurenziana
- Passo e mezzo by Fabritio Caroso, Nobiltà di dame, Venise, 1600
- Saltarello, choreography by Marina Nordera after a musical popular theme edited by Gasparo Zanetti in 1645
- La Matelotte, choreography by Feuillet, 1706, Marin Marais
- Chaconne de Phaëton pour homme - Choreography by Pécour edited by Feuillet in 1704, Lully
- Chaconne de Phaëton pour femme - Choreography by Pécour edited by Feuillet in 1704, Lully
- Passacaille d'Armide - Choreography by Pécour, edited by Gaudrau in 1713, Lully
- Musette de Callirhoé - Choreography by Pécour, edited by Gaudrau in 1713, Destouches
- Musette d'Alcina, choreography Béatrice Massin, Haendel

Credits

lecturers Béatrice Massin, Marina Nordera
with Compagnie Fêtes Galantes Béatrice Aubert, Laura Brembilla, Jean-Marc Piquemal
costume design Marie-Claude Garcin
a film by Centre national de la danse

running time 98 minutes

Last update : March 2010

After dancing for several contemporary companies, including that of Susan Buirge, Béatrice Massin was engaged by Ris et Danceries in 1983, where for the next ten years she mixed performing with repertoire research, assistantship and choreography. She choreographed “Water Music” by Handel at the Metz Arsenal (1990), “Bastien et Bastienne” (1991), Mozart's “Les Petits Riens” (1991) for the Tourcoing opera workshop and also devised the choreography for “Medée”, set to music by Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1983).

In late 1993, Béatrice Massin founded her own company, Fêtes Galantes, for whom she devises one show each year. These are reconstructions of pieces from the baroque repertoire, but, above all, creations using the choreographic vocabulary of the seventeenth century: "Charpentier des ténèbres”, “Carte du tender, “Pipinone”, “Trio triptyque” and most recently, “Que ma joie demeure”. From December 1999 to July 2000, Béatrice Massin devised and directed the choreography for Gérard Corbiau's film “Le roi danse”. In September 2001, Béatrice Massin was invited by the Ballet de Lorraine to devise three baroque choreographies, which include "Noir, du côté de Callot” inspired by Callot's etchings.

Alongside her research and choreographic work, she presents educational programmes at Opéra Bastille, the Cité de la Musique and CND (National Dance Centre) in the form of danced lecture-recitals, courses and workshops. She offers the opportunity to discover baroque court dance as well as reconstructions of pieces from the baroque repertoire.

Source : Website of the Compagnie Fetes galantes

Further information : Company Website

Digital Resource by the Médiathèque du Centre national de la danse

http://mediatheque.cnd.fr/spip.php?page=mediatheque-numerique-ressource&id=PHO00003922

Marina Nordera is a teacher, responsible for the Master's course at the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis Department of Dance, and director of the RITM research laboratory. She teaches the history of dance and the practice of historical dance. While studying the history of performing arts at the University of Venice, she also pursued her career as a performer and teacher in the field of Renaissance and Baroque dance. She went on to prepare her doctorate at the European University Institute in Florence, where she was a researcher on projects concerned with European cultural identity until 2002. In 2001 she founded AIRDanza (Associazione Italiana per la Ricerca sulla Danza) with a group of other researchers, and was its president until 2004. She has collaborated on publications about dance from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries in Italy. She was the scientific advisor for the exhibition “La construction de la féminité dans la danse" held at the Centre National de la Danse, Pantin from 4th November 2004 to 21st January 2005.

Last update : October  2010