Burgess, Geoffrey. "From dance to poem: Jean-Féry Rebel, Françoise Prévost and the character of dance in early 18th-century France."

Burgess, Geoffrey. "From dance to poem: Jean-Féry Rebel, Françoise Prévost and the character of dance in early 18th-century France." Early Music 46, no. 1 (February 2018): 103-122.


Abstract:
Jean-Féry Rebel’s Caractères de la Danse (c.1715) has played a prominent role in the revival of French Baroque dance; a contemporaneous poetic parody supplements the work’s potential value as a guide to understanding 18th-century choreography. Presenting new evidence on the identity of the poet and the parody’s purpose, this article proposes that, rather describing the original choreography, the poem tells another story: that of the character of Françoise Prévost, the dancer who premiered the work. This in turn has important implications for the incorporation of pantomime in Baroque choreography.