Feste, Irène, Hubert Hazebroucq und Gerrit Berenike Heiter. "Tracing Mama mouchij: Multiple Migrations of a Dance and its Tune."

Feste, Irène, Hubert Hazebroucq und Gerrit Berenike Heiter. "Tracing Mama mouchij: Multiple Migrations of a Dance and its Tune." In Music and Mirrored Hybridities: Cultural Communities Converging in French, German, and Turkish Stage Productions (17th–20th Century), edited by Judith I. Haug and Hanna Walsdorf, 37-83. Baden-Baden: Ergon Verlag, 2023.


Abstract:
Mama mouchij is the enigmatic title of the choreography, with its tune, for a male solo dancer written in Beauchamps-Feuillet notation. The name of the dance seems to have been inspired by the original expression coined in Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (1670) by Molière (1622–1673). In the 1671/72 stage adaptation by Edward Ravenscroft (c.1654–1707) it would even become part of the title of the play, which makes this manuscript choreography even more intriguing.
This article investigates the materiality of the manuscript collection, the history of the tune’s migrations as well as the characterisation of the choreography. It further explores to what extent the dance evokes a fictitious ‘Turkish’ character, comparing it to elements and specific features that can be identified as being possibly connected to other imagined ‘Turkish’ stage characters. Can this choreography be linked to a specific performance or play at the Théâtres de la Foire or the Comédie-Italienne?