Letters on Dancing and Ballets

by Jean Georges Noverre

The dancer and choreographer Jean-George Noverre's Letters on Dancing and Ballets were first published in Stuttgart in 1760 and set forth his ideas for the reform of ballet, ideas which were considered revolutionary in their day and indeed anticipated changes to be carried out more than a century later by Laban, Fokine and Jooss. At a time when court ballet had degenerated into a meaningless succession of conventional dances, Noverre advocated a unity of design and a logical progression from introduction to climax in which the whole was not sacrificed to the part and anything unnecessary to the theme was eliminated. Movement was to be defined by the tone and time of the music and choreographers were advised to avoid overcomplicated steps and turn to nature for natural means of expression which could be understood by all. He advocated also the reform of costume and lived to see masks, full-bottomed wigs and cumbersome dresses abandoned in favour of attire better suited to the roles portrayed. Noverre's Letters can be said without exaggeration to be one of the most important dance books ever published and through its influence Noverre can be seen as the grandfather of ballet as we know it. The present translation was made by the great dance historian Cyril W. Beaumont and first published by him in book form in 1930.

208 pages, Paperback

First published December 30, 2004

Reviews

[Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent work from one of the foremost "reformers" of classical dance, when ballet became what we now know it as. Noverre's principles are not entirely followed today, nor should they be, but I found his analysis of the basic skeleton and ligaments of narrative ballets to be very helpful (it is a narrative of passion, the passion contained in the music and communicated in the expressions and actions of the dancers, with the action telling its genesis, development, and conclusion; and the variety of dancers used to explore its range and limits, but not to emptily repeat it again and again).

The importance of ballet lies in "its power of speaking to the heart" and providing an ideal and complete portrait of the heart's own passions to the audience. Noverre holds that dance is superior in the arena of the passions because although "there are ... a great many things which pantomime can only indicate, ... in regard to the passions there is a degree of expression to which words cannot attain or rather there are passions for which no words exist. Then dancing allied with action triumphs." This arena also allows ballet a superiority of universality, insofar as it speaks, or aims to speak, universally in "a living picture of the passions, manners, customs, ceremonies, and customs of all nations of the globe ... [speaking] to the soul through the eyes."

Some parts of the book are tedious technical details or diatribes regarding archaic problems irrelevant to most readers today. These can easily be skimmed for the sake of the rest. Recommended to any wishing to better understand the basic aesthetic language and principles of classical dance.