The Code of Terpsichore The Dance Theory of Carlo Blasis ... · ture, music and the ﬁne arts, and...

The Code of TerpsichoreThe Dance Theory of Carlo Blasis:Mechanics as the Matrix of Grace* Gabriele Brandstetter

ABSTRACT: The essay examines both the dances and thedance notation of renowned nineteenth century choreographer

Carlo Blasis. It looks in detail at Blasis’ major treatise TheCode of Terpsichore in an effort to evaluate how Blasis linked ascience of movement to a conception of the body oriented

around the prevailing aesthetics informing all of the fine arts.Identifying Blasis as both a philosopher and a mechanist, thisessay analyzes his approach to teaching basic ballet vocabu-

lary, and in particular the arabesque. Whereas Kleist, with hisMarionettentheater, proposes the puppet as a figure of grace,located somewhere between animal and doll, Blasis brings

together the movement science of mechanics and the descrip-tive theory of grace (as mimesis) in a poetics of the arabesque,a synthesis of elevation and evanescence, which we see whenwe conjure up pictures of nineteenth century Romantic ballet.

Im Tanz muß alles Tanz sein,

also keine Schritte im Walzer,so in der Poesie.Jean Paul

At the turn of the nineteenth century a variety of

scientific disciplines, as well as the arts, were preoc-

cupied with the body, or more specifically, with re-

determining the body’s cultural meaning. In the light

of new discoveries in the fields of medicine, psychol-

ogy, physics and chemistry, the body was no longer

primarily a static object, but an object that was both

in motion and conceptualised into motion in many

respects; an object of research. At the same time the

aporia of the eighteenth century’s aesthetics of

expression became obvious: the contradiction be-

tween bodily discipline and freedom of the subject,

the friction between a discourse of authenticity and a

bodily technique considered ‘‘dance master postur-

ing’’, a subject of reflection for Friedrich Schiller and

Heinrich von Kleist, among others.

The result of this cultural and science-historical

discursive turn was a reconfiguring of representations

of the body in overlapping fields of knowledge: in the

movement sciences (physics and mechanics) for one,

as well as in a descriptive theory of the body in

motion -- a theory of dance.

The choreographer and dance theorist Carlo Blasis

assumed an important role in this constellation. He

can be described as the creator of a new theory of the

body in motion, a theory founded on an experimen-

tal, practical science. Blasis can be said to have

invented ballet as a ‘‘poetic science’’.

In dance historiography Blasis is considered the

founder of the system of movement and aesthetic of

classical ballet; he is the creator of The Code of

Terpsichore (this was the title of his main work, pub-

lished in 1828)1, which has influenced the tradition of

stage dance up until the present day. Blasis, born in

1796, came from a Neapolitan family and was trained

inMarseille as a dancer, choreographer and theorist of

dance. It was not his numerous choreographies,

however, which later made him famous. Rather it was

his theoretical writings on dance that established him

as an authority throughout the European dance scene.

He worked in Paris, London, Milan andMoscow2 and

published in three languages: Italian, French and

English. He was a man of universal education,

knowledgeable in both the sciences and the arts. He

studied mathematics and geometry, as well as anat-

omy, the latter with two of the most important anat-

omy teachers of the age: Sabato de Mauro and

Dutrouille.3 Blasis was also well-versed in architec-

ture, music and the fine arts, and a friend of artists

such as Lorenzo Bortolini, Canova and Thorvaldsen.

The dance historian Oskar Bie accurately charac-

terised the classical-humanist model of education

embodied by Carlo Blasis (although one should of

course bear in mind the slightly ironic tone of Bie’s

Topoi (2005) 24:67-79 � Springer 2005DOI 10.1007/s11245-004-4162-x

description: he favoured the modern expressive dance

of the 1900s.)

Blasis, according to Bie, was a

romantic academic [. . .]. His school is properly mechanistic,his logic none too fantastic, his taste clear: antique andrenaissance statues, a little Giovanni da Bologna mixedwith Canova, Thorvaldsen applied to the populist effect of

the Scala style, art historical education placed into a tab-leau, poured into an arabesque.4

Oskar Bie names precisely those paradigms that, in

combination, make Blasis’ Code of Terpsichore a

poetics and a theory of dance: mechanics and the

arabesque. Blasis himself delivered the key formula

for this with his demand that the choreographer must

be both a poet and a scientist of movement: ‘‘In short,

a complete Ballet-Master is at once author and

mechanist.’’5

It is worth examining this combination of

mechanics and poetic inspiration, for it places Blasis --

the only other example is Kleist with his Marionet-

tentheater6 -- in the avant-garde of a change in the

representational theory of the body in motion which

is significant for modernity. Blasis worked on mod-

elling the body according to the ideals of classical

beauty (but after Canova rather than Winckelmann).

This ideal owed its aesthetic to the eighteenth cen-

tury7, but its application to motion was new. How

could the sculptural ideal that determined the aes-

thetic of the body in the eighteenth century be applied

to dance? How could one perform its purity of line,

clarity and balance of proportion in each movement,

in the dance dynamic? This problem (the inverse of

the Laocoon situation) was not, historically speaking,

entirely new to an aesthetics of dance. The represen-

tative ballet of the Baroque in particular was founded

on such geometric principles. Whereas there, how-

ever, the Cartesian principles of the division of space

and the requirements of courtly representation placed

ballet in approximately the same category as archi-

tecture, Blasis was faced with the question of how to

combine the achievements of eighteenth century

dance theatre -- the dramatic ‘‘ballet d’action’’8 -- and

the typical nineteenth century concept of a moving

artistic body trained to virtuosity. Jean Georges

Noverre, an advocate of the authenticity of bodily

expression and the dramatic effect of ballet d’action,

had condemned every performance of virtuoso dance

art: ‘‘renounce cabrioles, entrechats and over-compli-

cated steps; abandon grimaces to study sentiments,

artless graces and expression’’.9 Now, some 50 years

later, Carlo Blasis became both systematiser and

historiographer of the dance concepts of earlier

epochs. Large parts of his many writings,10 as well as

his most important work The Code of Terpsichore,

deal with different historical styles of dance and their

practitioners; with the history of ‘‘coreodramma’’, of

the pantomime, of courtly dance and the expressive

genre. The most important part of his work, however,

is best characterized by the title he himself gave to the

text which houses it: ‘‘The Code of Terpsichore’’. And

this code -- even though the figure itself is conceived

of as a body sculpture in motion -- is paradoxically

formulated as a script, but not as a dance script. A

dance script notates the pathways and the shapes of

steps, as Feuillet did in the Baroque period.

Blasis, in contrast, developed a script of figures -- an

ABC of poses -- that inscribed the alphabetic character

of dance, of the moving body itself. The decisive

Figure 1. John Weaver, ‘Orchesography’ (1706). Bibl. de l’

Opera, in: Laurence Louppe (ed.) DANSES TRACEES. Des-sins et Notation des Choreographes. Exhibition catalogue. (DisVoir, Paris 1991), p. 27.

68 GABRIELE BRANDSTETTERGABRIELE BRANDSTETTER

characteristic of this theory is that the concepts of

training the body and of choreography (the composi-

tion of ballets) are defined and systematised as a code.

Blasis collected and classified every pose, every step and

every jump rather like an alphabet or a dictionary. And

he described and illustrated the rules for connecting

these elements of movement in a kind of syntax or

grammar of dance. The ‘‘Code of Terpsichore’’ con-

stitutes the first science of moving figures, and it con-

tains the body not as a bearer of signs but as a figure.

But in order to train the body as an artistic figure, a

grounding in geometry and mechanics, as well as an

extensive education in the arts, is required. In his

‘‘New Method of Instruction’’,11 Blasis recommends

that the dancer should educate his taste via the mas-

terpieces of art and sculpture.

A teacher cannot too strongly recommend his scholars tohave incessantly before them those master-pieces of paint-ing and sculpture, which have been saved from the wreck of

antiquity. Those immortal offsprings of genius, thoseenrapturing examples of the beau ideal of the fine arts willconsiderably assist the cultivation of their taste.12

On the one hand, therefore, the dancer should ‘‘sculpt

his body’’ by finding his models in art (rather than in

nature, as was implied in eighteenth century debates

on mimesis, and also in Noverre). On the other hand,

it was absolutely necessary that the founding princi-

ples of a science of movement be rooted in the study

of geometry and the mechanics of the body; in Blasis’

words, a mathematical task, an effort, ‘‘which I may

venture to term mathematical by reason of its preci-

sion’’.13 Blasis states that the figures in the ‘‘Code of

Terpsichore’’ are drawn after nature, but then styled

on two levels:

In order that [the] execution may be correct, I have drawnlines [. . .] over the principal positions of these figures, whichwill give [them] an idea of the exact form they are to placethemselves in, and to figure the different attitudes ofdancing.14

The dancer, the pupil, was supposed to realise these

lines, to project them, as it were, through an imagi-

nary bodily scaffold onto each of his poses and

movements. Blasis suggests a combination of theo-

retical and practical study for the lesson. The teacher

should first describe the figures -- by drawing the lines

-- then explain their geometry and the principles of

mechanics, then the pupils should copy down the

figures, memorise them and finally -- with this struc-

Figure 3. Carlo Blasis, ‘The Code of Terpsichore’ in: CarloBlasis, The Code of Terpsichore, figures 29-31. (see note 1)

Figure 2. ‘Ferrere manuscript’ (1782) in: Marian HannahWinter, The Pre-Romantic Ballet (Pitman, London 1974), p.182.

THE CODE OF TERPSICHORETHE CODE OF TERPSICHORE 69

tural plan in mind -- embody the principles practically

in their exercise:

These lines and figures, drawn upon a large slate and

exposed to the view of a number of scholars, would be soonunderstood and imitated by them [. . .]. The most diligentmight take copies of those figure on small slates, and carry

them with them to study at home, in the same manner as achild, when he begins to spell, studies his horn-book in theabsence of the master.15

Blasis formalised these foundational lines even fur-

ther.

Dance education (correct ‘‘holding’’) and aesthetic

realisation (‘‘a pure taste’’) are the result of geometric

design, the spatial figure of the body and the con-

structive rather than the mimetic implementation of a

movement configuration:

It is necessary that the pupil should study these geometricallines and all their derivates. If he subjects himself to thistask, which I may venture to call mathematical, on account

of its laboriousness, he is certain of holding himself

correctly afterwards, and will show that he received notionsof a pure taste [. . .].16

This approach is remarkable for tying a science of

movement to a conception of the body oriented

around the aesthetic of the fine arts. The dancer is a

machinist and a sculptor, a poet who performs his

own body, all thanks to the reflexive process of the

power of imag[in]ing: imag[in]ing ballet’s mathemat-

ics of the figure into a genuine performance.

But before I address the question of poetics, of a

poetic science of movement, I would like to return to

the construction of the ‘‘Code’’ and its interface with

mechanics.

‘‘I should compose,’’ writes Blasis,

a sort of alphabet of straight lines, comprising all thepositions of the limbs in dancing, giving these lines andtheir respective combinations, their proper geometrical

appellations, viz: perpendiculars, horizontals, obliques,right, acute, and obtuse angles, etc., a language which Ideem almost indispensable in our lessons.17

Blasis’ ‘‘alphabet’’ of lines, of geometric and stereo-

metric figures and the ways in which they are com-

bined by bodies in motion -- the code of dance -- does

indeed require the movement scientist to be a physi-

cist of movement: in other words, a mechanic.

Figure 4. Carlo Blasis, ‘The Code of Terpsichore’, ibid., figures32-34.

Figure 5. Carlo Blasis, ‘The Code of Terpsichore’.


Mechanics, a field of physics, deals with the

movement of bodies under the influence of internal or

external forces. The fundamental concepts of physics

-- space, time, body or mass, force, energy or

acceleration -- are also units of key importance for

dance. In classical antiquity, from the time of Aris-

totle, mechanics was understood as the art of out-

witting nature, diverting things (bodies) by human, by

artificial interference in the natural order of things, by

making things behave contrary to their natural

course. This is achieved by constructing devices,

machines and tools. Mechanics, as an artistic practice,

as a science of motion, thus employs a strategy of

artful knowledge. It is no coincidence that Daedalus --

who built Ariadne’s dance space -- is the embodiment

of this tactical, artful relationship between man and

nature in the space between myth and the history of

technology: Daedalus, who invented the labyrinth

(the prototype of a defensive space as well as the

ur-stage of choreography); Daedalus, the inventor of

the first aeroplane, with which he wished to outwit the

gravity of the human body. Nineteenth century

ballet’s dreams of flight reconfigure the idea of

cheating nature, using the mechanics of the body.

This idea was responsible for the machines of military

and technological history, as well as the theatrical and

illusionary machines of the Baroque and the levita-

tion hinted at by the physical technique of dance. The

combination of ‘‘artful technology’’ and the art of

cheating led, following the discoveries made by optics

and the theories of perspective and perception that

accompanied them, to the art of cheating the eye.18

Blasis’ concept of the ‘‘ballet master as mechanic’’

should be read against this background. At stake is a

practice of knowledge that integrates two particular

related areas of mechanics -- dynamics and kinematics

-- into a science of bodies in motion. Drawing on

these concepts already had a certain tradition in the

eighteenth century: in movement pedagogy on the one

hand, as in the educational doctrines of Pestalozzi

and Basedow, for example; and in the theory of

description on the other -- and here there is also a long

tradition of what is termed ‘‘the science of ceremony’’.

This was how Julius von Rohr titled his compendium

on etiquette at court and how citizens should comport

themselves, for example during a dance at a ball.

A good air is of great importance, namely that one forms anorderly positioning of the body and nice steps, that one

knows how to move the arms daintily and accurately inaccordance with the mathematical and musical rules of artafter the Cadance, so that they are not held too stiffly and

inflexibly, but also without too many gestures and unnec-essary fleeting movements, so that the dancers resemblepuppets.19

The model for education of the body and the science

of its representation was still courtly, following the

example of Baldassare Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano. At

the beginning of the eighteenth century these two

conceptions of the body -- the pedagogical one and

that of the courtier -- were still connected. John

Locke, for example, in his treatise of 1705, Some

Thoughts Concerning Education,20 writes of the sci-

ence of movement that there is, in addition to the

knowledge that can be gained from books, another

type, which is, of course, essential for the gentleman.

‘‘Accomplishments necessary for Gentlemen, to be

allowed, and for which Masters must be had’’.21 This

consists of training the body through dance, not

through fencing and riding, which he considers too

one-sided:22 ‘‘Dancing being that which gives graceful

Motions all the life, and above all things Manliness,

and a becoming Confidence to young Children’’.23

The aim of training the body in dance is ‘‘a perfect

graceful Carriage’’.

In the late eighteenth century the concept of grace

was recast.24 Grace was no longer defined as the

posture of the gentleman -- his habitual self-repre-

sentation (the ‘‘sprezzatura’’ that is casually concealed

behind control of one’s body) -- but was now a

property of the beautiful soul, an expression of the

subject’s freedom:25 with Karl Philipp Moritz and

Schiller for example, and subsequently also in the

aesthetics of dance as an expressive theory with Gas-

paro Angiolini and Jean Georges Noverre.26 Peda-

gogical discourse on the education of the body, on the

other hand, advocated a programme of bodily fitness,

an idea which began to receive criticism around 1800.

Pestalozzi’s concept of education was marked by an

‘‘unholy elementarisation’’, according to Karl von

Rauner.27 Fragmenting the body, drilling it, member

by member, would only bestow, after all, the flexibility

of a puppet on a string. Education specialists after

1800, in contrast, propagated a holistic fitness pro-

gramme -- exercise for body and soul, as it were. And it

is no surprise that at this time a national education

programme was announced, in such texts as Johann

Gottlieb Fichte’s Addresses to the German Nation. The


body model propagated was (still) a classical/classicist

one. Exercises, wrote Fichte, should be ‘‘like those of

the Greeks’’.28 On the whole, however, this was of

course a romantic project for the future, for what was

still lacking was an ‘‘ABC of the art of bodily move-

ment’’. This ABC, according to Fichte,

must first be provided, and for this a man is needed who isequally at home in the anatomy of the human body and in

scientific mechanics, who combines this knowledge with ahigh degree of philosophical ability, and who is thuscapable of inventing in all its perfection that machine whichthe human body is designed to be.29

Carlo Blasis was to be the philosopher and machinist,

the body pedagogue and poet, to systematically

extend this programme into a theory and methodol-

ogy. This, admittedly, did not take the form of a

national programme of education involving gymnas-

tics and exercise, but rather of an haute ecole of bodily

representation in dance: an art form.30 The applica-

tion of mechanical discoveries to the theory of bodily

exercise came into fashion at the end of the eighteenth

century. This manifested itself largely in attempts at

analysing the pull and leverage of movement, such as

those of Christian Ernst Wunsch (a teacher of Hein-

rich von Kleist), or at classifying the mechanical

conditions of certain types of sport, such as those of

Gerhard Ulrich Vieth in his Versuch einer Enzy-

klopadie der Leibesubungen [Attempt at an Encyclo-

paedia of Bodily Exercises].31

In this context Blasis’ theory occupies a special

place. The relationships between directions and forces

in the body -- the effect of those forces that belong to

the field of statics -- are what underpin his research into

movement, not the forces that, mechanically, exert

influence from the outside, such as pull and leverage.

‘‘Statics’’ can be defined as ‘‘the art of balance’’. It

incorporates the rule of equilibrium and the conditions

of those forces that attack the motionless body. Since

Archimedes’ theory of the centre of gravity, statics has

been regarded as a special area of dynamics. Tracing

problems of dynamics back to problems of statics first

became possible with the help of d’Alembert’s princi-

ple (established in 1794 at the Ecole polytechnique in

Paris). This is precisely what happens in Blasis’ theory

of movement. The first textbook to deal systematically

with questions of statics was published in 1824 by

Claude Louis Marie Henri Navier, at approximately

the same time as Blasis’ dance system.

Carlo Blasis’ central reflections on the mechanics

of movement are related to problems of statics. Each

pose, each movement, is constructed with the aim of

establishing perfect control of balance. The lines that

Blasis draws onto the figures in his code are, above

all, perpendicular lines. And thus the sentence that

Blasis quotes at the very beginning of his ‘‘New

Method of Instruction’’, which functions as the motto

of his theory and aesthetics -- ‘‘Nulla dies sine linea’’32

-- takes on a double meaning. In a painterly sense it

implies the sculptural line of the figure, but also the

perpendicular line of the centre of gravity. ‘‘Endeav-

our to hold your body in perfect equilibrium’’, he

instructs, ‘‘never let it depart from the perpendicular

line […]’’.33 It is this kinetic theme, the question of the

centre of gravity and the perpendicular line, that

connects Blasis’ theory and practice of dance move-

ment with Heinrich von Kleist’s model of grace,

moving between human performance of the body and

the mechanics of marionette movement. The vis

motrix follows the principle of gravity -- in the

movement of the pendulum: ‘‘Each movement, he

said, had its center of gravity; it sufficed to control

Figure 6. Gerhard Ulrich Anton Vieth, ‘Ubungen am Pferd,Schlittschuhlaufen’ in: Versuch einer Enzyklopadie der Leibes-

ubungen. Teil 2: System der Leibesubungen (Hartmann, Berlin1795), Table I / III. in: Wolf Kittler, Die Geburt des Partisanenaus dem Geist der Poesie, p. 330. (see note 6).


this point within the interior of the figure; the limbs,

which were nothing but pendula, followed by them-

selves in a mechanical way without any further

assistance’’.34 All of the movements which follow this

principle are graceful, they ‘‘are accomplished with an

ease, lightness and grace that astonish every sensitive

mind’’.35 This ‘‘simple figure’’, which becomes reali-

sable via mastery of gravity and adjustment of the

perpendicular line, follows Blasis’ above-mentioned

principle of mathematical-geometric reflection and its

embodiment by the dancer.

Blasis’ concept -- a mechanics and poetics of the

figure -- is exemplified (and this is the more complex

aesthetic model)36 by two poses: by the ‘‘arabesque’’

and by the ‘‘pirouette’’.

The arabesque is one of Blasis’ preferred poses.

Work on the centre of gravity, the problem of where

to place weight and of harmonious balance are

extremely difficult here: ‘‘Let your body be, in gen-

eral, erect and perpendicular on your legs, except in

certain attitudes, and especially in arabesques, when it

must lean forwards or backwards according to the

position you adopt’’.37 The arabesque is an extremely

unstable pose. From a static point of view the body is

in an unstable balance, which means that the centre of

gravity is located in the highest possible position. This

also means that the body ‘‘carries’’ the greatest pos-

sible energy. If one is deflected from this position --

for example by losing one’s balance, in a pose that

borders on instability -- the kinetic moment occurs

when the body displaces itself far from its location.

This is the moment when weight and weight place-

ment have to move in perfect harmony: ‘‘weight’’,

‘‘centre of gravity’’ and ‘‘counterpoise’’.38

Of the Centre of Gravity in a Dancer: The weight of a manstanding upon one leg is divided in an equal manner on thepoint that sustains the whole, (see fig. 1, plate X) and as he

moves, the central line of gravity passes exactly through themiddle of the leg that rests wholly on the ground.39

Mastering this complicated equilibrium, channelling

the nature of the body into a sovereignty that rules over

the centre of gravity, brings about precisely that plea-

sure in the fragile body sculpture of the arabesque

which defines the moment of grace. Blasis maintains

that hewas the first to discover that the perfect example

of the levitating dance pose of the attitude was the

sculpture ‘‘Mercury’’ by Giovanni da Bologna.40

From an art historical point of view this statue is

considered one of the most important examples of

Mannerism. With it, Giovanni da Bologna is said to

have found one of the most beautiful resolutions

of a figure levitating upwards -- the ‘‘linea serpenti-

nata’’.

The second example of a theory and methodology

of mechanics in dance is the pirouette. According to

Blasis, the pirouette was only really acquired by dance

in the nineteenth century. Earlier, in Noverre’s time,

these wonderful and extraordinarily perfect, quick

turns were unknown. The great contemporary danc-

ers Dauberval, Gardel and Vestris were the true

inventors of the pirouette and therefore also of vir-

tuosity in dance: ‘‘Among our ancient artists those

beautiful tems (sic!) of perpendicularity and equilib-

rium, those elegant attitudes and enchanting arabes-

ques were unknown. That energetic execution, that

multiplicity of steps [. . .] and pirouettes were not then

in practice’’.41 As these figures, these various ways of

turning, are extremely complicated and demand

‘‘steady uprightness and unshaken equilibrium’’,

Blasis gives an extensive treatment of the turn and its

three phases: the preparation, the turn itself and the

various ways of bringing it to an end.42 Here too the

perpendicular line and centre of gravity have to beFigure 7. Carlo Blasis, ‘The Code of Terpsichore’ in: Carlo

Blasis, The Code of Terpsichore, figure 32. (see note 1).


under precise control. There are additional elements,

however, which include the dynamics of the turn and

the regulation of centrifugal force through the arms

and legs -- bordering on eccentricity, almost falling

out of the ‘‘line of gravity’’.

This pirouette has something in it of a magical appearance,for as the body leans so much over, and seems on the pointof falling at each turn of the pirouette, one might think

there was an invisible power that supported the dancer,who counterbalances his eccentricity from the line ofgravity by the positions of his arms and legs, and the greatrapidity of his motions.43

With this extensive discussion of the mechanics of the

turn in the human body, Blasis placed himself at the

intersection of the movement sciences and the tech-

nological concepts of his time. These processes had

long been familiar to both a theoretical and practical

history of mechanics. Only at the end of the eighteenth

century, however, were these mechanical investiga-

tions applied to the movement of human and animal

bodies and to conceptions of their function: at work,

in dance, in the military and during sport, for example.

Around this time the technology of the steam

engine -- with flywheel and centrifugal force regulator

-- also found wider application. The first steam

engines had in fact been built at the end of the eigh-

teenth century already, in the wake of Watt’s

revolutionary discovery.44 But it was only in the 1820s

and 1830s that this engine technology came into its

own. It is also striking that the industrial application

of this technology was accompanied by a discursive

turn: on the one hand in the aestheticisation of engine

technology and on the other in its anthropomorphi-

sation -- it was conceived of and metaphorised as

analogous to the movement of the human body. This

can be seen in nineteenth century concepts of labour,

in questions of self-steering and in the debates on

tiredness that are connected with them.45

A picture by Jean Ignace Grandville from 1834

depicting moving figures is characteristic of the con-

text in which this anthropomorphising application

took place.

Figure 8. Giovanni da Bologna (1528-1608), ‘Mercurio’,Museo Nazionale, Florence, in: Gerhard Zacharias, Ballett --Gestalt und Wesen. Die Symbolsprache im europaischen Schau-

tanz der Neuzeit (DuMont, Cologne 1962), plate 16.

Figure 9. Jean Ignace Grandville, ‘Bewegungsfiguren’ (1834)in: Jan Pieper, ‘Die Maschine im Interieur. Ludwig Persuis’

Dampfmaschinenhaus im Babelsberger Park’, Daidalos 53 (15September 1994), pp. 104--115 (p. 113).


The mechanical theatre opens up a strange, almost

grotesque stage of movement, framed by the obliga-

tory curtain, with seats for spectators and applauding

hands. In the swing of the turn, in the distorting

dynamics of centrifugal force, disparate things and

forms proceed from one other and into one other with

no division: a transformation in a continuous flow of

movement. At the centre, however, the Sylphide bal-

lerina of Romantic ballet whirls around en pointe in a

pirouette. She is the flywheel of this great, general

rotation. To her left, legs in grotesque-arabesque

poses are moving -- having gained their independence

as a particularised bodily series. To her right, the

human body is transformed into a doll and finally

into a spinning top by the speedy mechanics of the

turn. This scenario pushes the theatricity of move-

ment as a figure of virtuoso mechanics, in the sense of

Blasis’ body code, to the extreme -- into the grotesque.

It stages a fascination with a uniform, inexhaustible

and self-regulating mechanics of movement, and

reveals the new world of energy and of nature cheated

by technology on the threshold of the industrial age.46

This is the point at which mechanics and poetry

interface, literally: in the ‘‘turn-moment’’ of the pir-

ouette, in its giddiness, in the giddiness of a new,

hybrid concept of the figure. In Grandville’s picture,

the game of the aesthetic attraction of the nineteenth

century’s newmoving pictures can already be observed

-- as embodied in the dance of a Maria Taglioni, a

Fanny Elssler or Fanny Cerrito: as a transitory scene

of virtuoso body art, fought for in the fleeting balance

act of the arabesque and pirouette en pointe.

The rapidly-turning wheels, the rushing handles and

connecting rods give rise to fleeting rotating figures

where individual forms, the (bodily) elements ob-

servable in a state of calm, can no longer be identified.

Dynamic forms emerge, blurred sculptures that flow

together to form new figures made of electricity and

rays. Here the horizon widens towards modernity’s

aesthetics of perception: the art of the fleeting, as

Baudelaire goes on to describe it shortly afterwards in

Le peintre de la vie moderne. The art of the ‘‘fugitive’’, of

the ‘‘transitory’’,47 where dance takes up a key position

in the fields of movement art and movement sciences.

Finally, I would like to return to Blasis and the

achievements of his Code of Terpsichore, which stands

at the beginningofmodernity’s great project ofmotion.

In this groundbreaking work the mechanics of body

movement and apoetics of bodily representationmeet in

theory and practice. Together, in my opinion, they

form a new theory of the figure. The epitome of this

theory, the figure of the figure as it were -- in keeping

withRomantic reflexivity -- is characterised (how could

it be otherwise) by the arabesque. Inballet ‘‘arabesque’’

delimits a particular group of poses.

‘‘Nothing can be more agreeable to the eye,’’ writes

Blasis, ‘‘than those charming positions which we call

arabesques’’.48 Blasis himself traces the form of the

arabesque back to ‘‘the paintings in fresco at the

Vatican, executed after the beautiful designs of

Raphael’’.49 And he identifies the term ‘‘arabesque’’

as being of Moorish origin.

Arabica ornamenta, as a term in painting, mean thoseornaments, composed of plants, light branches and flowers,with which the artist adorns pictures, compartiments, frises,

panels [. . .] the taste for this sort of ornaments was broughtto us by the Moors and Arabs, from whom they have takentheir name.50

This figure, with its ‘‘aerial lightness, its variety, its

liveliness’’,51 was introduced into dance in various

forms and groupings, as a ‘‘sculptural figure’’. Blasis

was the first to define the term for dance. And he

Figure 10. ‘Fanny Cerrito’ (Turin 1835). Lithograph by Ajelloand Doyen from a drawing by Battaglia. Raccolta di Stampa,Castello Sforzesco, Milan, in: Ivor Guest, Fanny Cerrito. The

Life of a Romantic Ballerina, 2nd revised edition (DanceBooks, London 1974), figure Ib.


reconfigured, to a certain extent, those arabesque

ornaments that were still surface and line figures and

floor patterns in the Baroque and inMannerism, into a

spatial figure. As only Heinrich von Kleist with his

Marionettentheater did otherwise, Blasis’ theory trans-

formed the mechanics of bodily movement and bodily

representation into a figure of grace: the arabesque.

And he did so in a new configuration of painting,

sculpture and mechanics. A model of representation of

the body emerges from this meeting between science

and the arts, a model that reflects the conditions of its

constitution. The ‘‘Code of Terpsichore’’ is therefore a

language of movement as well as a configuration of the

‘‘muse of dance’’: mechanics as the matrix of grace.

Whereas Kleist, with his Marionettentheater, pro-

poses a figure of thought of grace of a second order,

somewhere between animal and doll, Blasis brings to-

gether the movement science of mechanics and the

descriptive theory of grace (as mimesis) into a poetics

of the arabesque; the arabesque as a figure of that

aesthetic of the fleeting, of elevation and evanescence,

which we see when we conjure up pictures of nine-

teenth century Romantic ballet.Figure 11. ‘Ten; Maria Taglioni als Schatten, Antonio Guerra

als Loredan’. Lithograph after Joseph Bouvier (London 1804)in: Carl Dahlhaus und das Forschungsinstitut fur Musikthe-ater der Universiat Bayreuth (eds.), unter Leitung von Sieghart

Dohring, Pipers Enzyklopadie des Musiktheaters. Oper --Operette -- Musical -- Ballett, in 6 volumes and with an index(Piper, Munich 1997), Volume 6 (Spontini to Zumsteeg), p.233.

Figure 12. Paul Renouard, ‘Exercises de danse a l’opera’ in:Oscar Bie, Der Tanz. Mit Buchschmuck von Karl Walser und

hundert Kunstbeilagen (Bard, Marquardt & Co., Berlin 1906),illustration between p. 308 and 309.

Figure 13. ‘Eva Evdokimova’ in: Max Niehaus, Ballett Faszi-nation. Vom Studio zur Buhne (Nymphenburger, Munich1972), illustration 28.


The arabesque in ballet also represents a figure of

femininity, just as Kleist’s figure of grace represents

the figure of the male hero, but that is another issue

altogether.

Notes

* Translated from the German by Chantal Wright.1 Cited throughout this paper in the 1830 edition, see Blasis

1830.2 Cf. Souritz 1990.3 Blasis 1968 includes a biographical sketch and foreword by

Mary Stewart Evans. See the introduction on p.VIII. The factthat, even today, ballet teachers study the fundamentals ofanatomy as part of their training can also be traced back toBlasis.4 Bie 1906, p. 301.5 Cf. Blasis 1830, p. 95, see note 1.6 Kleist’s puppet, as a ‘‘machinist’’, similarly embodies both

the mechanist and the inspiration behind the finding/discoveryof movement (as one who imagines himself into the figure). Cf.on the ‘question of movement’ and the subject of grace: Kittler

1987; Kleiner 1994 ; Knab 1996. In contrast, Christian PaulBerger’s study of Kleist Bewegungsbilder. Kleists Marionetten-theater zwischen Poesie und Physik, (Berger 2000), does not,even though the title would suggest otherwise, investigate the

aesthetics and mechanics of movement, but rather gives a(philosophical--anthropological) interpretation of integral‘‘moving pictures’’ in Kleist -- an approach which in my

opinion is too holistic for a theory and description ofmovement and which does not differentiate between thecomplex tangle of discourses which developed in the eighteenth

century prior to Kleist and Blasis.7 Blasis never tires of promoting study of the fine arts as asource of influence on a dancer’s powers of imagination:

‘‘While upon the stage, the dancer should never cease to be apotential model to a painter or sculptor’’; and he thereforeadvises the student ‘‘to study both drawing and music, as thesewill be of the greatest value to them in their art.’’ (Blasis 1968,

p. 8 and p. 10, see note 3).8 On Noverre’s foundation of this as an independent dramaticart form, cf. Noverre 1930.9 Noverre 1930, Letter 4, p. 29. Also cf. Brandstetter 1990.10 The first version of his ‘‘treatise’’ was published in Milanin 1820. Blasis published a study in Paris that makes

reference to the ‘‘querelle des anciennes et des modernes’’,from the perspective of an aesthetics oriented aroundmovement, the body and dance: De l’Origine et des Progresde la Danse Ancienne et Moderne. Following his main work

The Code of Terpsichore, which was revised many times andtranslated into many European languages, Blasis wrote a lateanthropological tract: L’uomo fisico, intellettuale e morale,

Blasis 1857.11 Cf. Blasis 1830, Part 2: Theory of Theatrical Dancing, p.93ff.12 Ibid., p. 97f.

13 Ibid., p. 96.14 Ibid.15 Ibid., p. 97.16 Ibid.17 Ibid., p. 96f.18 The relationship between the concept of the body described

here and a history of perception, of perspective, of the‘‘showroom’’ of the body (as theatricity) requires moreextensive research. Cf. on the horizons of a cultural-historicaltheory of perception, Crary 1990 and Crary 1999.19 Julius Bernhard von Rohr, as cited in Fruhsorge 1990, p. 48.20 Locke ([1705]1968).21 Ibid., p. 310.22 Ibid.23 Ibid.24 The treatise Essai sur la Beaute by Antoine de Marcenay de

Ghuy takes up an interesting position in the matter ofrepresentation of the body and the concepts of beauty and ofgrace, because he situates his concept of (movement and)

beauty between sculpture, mechanics and physiology: ‘‘c’estque la grace est independante des belles proportions; [. . .] cerapport exact entre la pensee & les signes representatifs qu’ilauroit du caracteriser, a neglige maladroitement la partie la

plus essentielle de son art’’ (de Marcenay de Ghuy [1770]1972, p. 30f).25 In German, this is signalled by a change in expression from

Grazie [grace] to Anmut [charm, loveliness, elegance]; cf. Knab,1996 and Kleiner 1994.26 See Brandstetter 1990.27 As cited in Kittler 1987, p. 343.28 Cf. ibid., p. 333.29 The aim here is that ‘‘every step [of this human machine]

occurs in the only possible correct order, each one preparesand facilitates all future ones, and the health and beauty of thebody are not only not endangered but strengthened’’, as citedin Kittler 1987, p. 33.30 The complexity of bodily discipline and its discourses ran ontwo different levels in the nineteenth century. On the one hand itran in the direction of a gymnastics (and later exercise)

movement, which also fulfilled a labour-market function andwas promoted as a fitness programme for the military. On theother hand it operated on an aesthetically coded level: in dance

(stage dance as well as social dance), a direction it tookseemingly independently of the gymnastics movement’s advo-cacy of bodily fitness, but which turned up numerous linksbetween body culture and ‘‘free dance’’ around 1900, as part of

a wide-reaching reform movement which extended to the‘‘social body’’ as well as the artistic body of the dancer. It isstill striking that discursive-analytic research into nineteenth

century concepts of the body does not take up this proximityand the specific difference between economic/hygienic discourseof the body and an aesthetic discourse of the body (which is

nonetheless arranged around the knowledge dispositives of theage). Cf., for example, Sarasin 2001.31 Kittler 1987, p. 330.32 Blasis 1830, Part 2: Theory of Theatrical Dancing, p. 93ff.33 Ibid., p. 72.


34 von Kleist 1990, p. 415.35 Ibid., p. 417.36 If one wanted to make a further link to Kleist’s Marion-

ettentheater, then one could analyse the figure of the ellipse(with an eye to the figure of the arabesque, see the conclusionof this paper), with respect to both its mathematical and its

tropical ‘‘incarnation’’. Cf., on the ellipse as trope, de Man1984, p. 286.37 Blasis 1830, Part 2: Theory of Theatrical Dancing, p. 65.38 It should at least be noted here that one of Blasis’ many

important innovations in dance technique was the discovery of‘‘counterpoise’’ for a theory and practice of movement.39 Blasis 1830, p. 73.40 Ibid., p. 74. ‘‘It is, in my opinion, a kind of imitation of theattitude so much admired in the Mercury of J. Bologne.’’41 Ibid., p. 82.42 Blasis clearly describes the physical conditions necessaryfor a stable starting point for a pirouette (feet, toes, contactwith the floor): ‘‘Let your body be steadily fixed on your legs

before you begin to do your pirouettes, and place your armsin such a position as to give additional force to the impulsethat sends you round, as also to act as a balance tocounterpoise every part of your body as it revolves on your

toes’’ (Blasis, 1830, p. 85).43 Ibid., p. 86.44 On the relationship between the body-machine and the

steam engine in the context of nineteenth century physiology,cf. Osietzki 1998.45 On the relationship between mechanics and tiredness, cf.,

for example, Koschorke 2000, as well as Rabinbach 1998. Onthe history and anthropology of the machine, see alsoBurckhardt 1999.46 Cf. Feldman 2000, pp. 224-260.47 Cf. Brandstetter 1995.48 Blasis 1830, p. 74.49 Ibid.; on the arabesque cf. the seminal studies of Oesterle

(2000a), as well as Oesterle (2000b).50 Blasis 1830, p. 74.51 Ibid., p. 75.

References

Berger, C. P.: 2000, Bewegungsbilder. Kleists Marionettenthe-ater zwischen Poesie und Physik, Paderborn, Munchen,

Wien, Zurich: Schoningh.Bie, O.: 1906, Der Tanz. Mit Buchschmuck von Karl Walser

und hundert Kunstbeilagen, Berlin: Bard, Marquardt & Co.Blasis, C.: 1830, The Code of Terpsichore. The Art of Dancing:

Comprising its Theory and Practice, and A History of itsRise and Progress from the Earliest Times, London: Bull.

Blasis, C.: 1857, L’uomo fisico, intellettuale e morale, Milan:

Tipografa Gugliemini.Blasis, C.: 1968, An Elementary Treatise upon the Theory and

Practice of the Art of Dancing, translated and with a bio-

graphical sketch and foreword by Mary Stewart Evans,New York: Dover Publ.

Brandstetter, G.: 1990, ‘Die Bilderschrift der Empfindungen’,Jean Georges Noverre’s ‘Lettres sur la Danse, et sur lesBallets’ and Friedrich Schiller’s treatise ‘Uber Anmut und

Wurde’, in A. Aurnhammer, K. Manger, F. Strack (eds.),Schiller und die hofische Welt, pp. 77--93, Tubingen: Nie-meyer.

Brandstetter, G.: 1995, Tanz-Lekturen. Korperbilder derAvantgarde, Frankfurt a.M: Fischer-Taschenbuch.

Burckhardt, M.: 1999, Vom Geist der Maschine. Eine Ges-chichte kultureller Umbruche, Frankfurt a.M./New York

Campus.Crary, J.: 1990, Techniques of the Observer, Camb., Mass: MIT

Press.

Crary, J.: 1999, Suspensions of perception: Attention, Spectacle,and Modern Culture, Camb., Mass./London: MIT Press.

Feldman, A.: 2000, ‘Der menschliche Touch. Zu einer histor-

ischen Anthropologie und Traumanalyse von selbsttatigenInstrumenten’, in G. Brandstetter and H. Volckers (eds.),ReMembering the Body, pp. 224--260, Ostfildern-Ruit:Hatje Cantz.

Fruhsorge, G.: 1990, (ed.), Einleitung zur Ceremoniel-Wis-senschaft der Privatpersonen [Berlin 1728], Edition Leipzig:Leipzig: VHC, Acta humaniora.

Kittler, W.: 1987, Die Geburt des Partisanen aus dem Geist derPoesie. Heinrich von Kleist und die Strategie der Be-freiungskriege, Freiburg i.Br.: Rombach.

Kleiner, G.: 1994, Die verschwundene Anmut, Frankfurt a.M.:Lang.

von Kleist, H.: 1990, tr. Roman Paska, ‘On the Marionette

Theater’, in M. Feher (ed.), Fragments for a Historyof the Human Body, Part I, pp. 415--421, New York:Urzone.

Knab, J.: 1996, Asthetik der Anmut. Studien zur ‘‘Schonheit der

Bewegung’’ im 18. Jahrhundert, Frankfurt a.M.: Lang.Koschorke, A.: 2000, ‘Selbststeuerung. David Hartleys Assoz-

iationstheorie, Adam Smiths Sympathielehre und die

Dampfmaschine von JamesWatt’, in I. Baxmann,M. Franz,W. Schaffner (eds.), Das Laokoon-Paradigma. Zeichenre-gime im 20. Jahrhundert, pp. 179--190, Berlin: Akademie.

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by Cyril W. Beaumont, London: Beaumont.Oesterle, G.: 2000a, ‘Asthetische Figurationen im Klassizismus

und in der Romantik. Der ‘‘fruchtbare Augenblick’’ und die

Arabeske’ in P. Wiesinger (ed.), Akten des X. Internation-alen Germanistenkongresses Wien 2000. ‘‘Zeitenwende’’ --Die Germanistik auf dem Weg vom 20. ins 21. Jahrhundert,vol. 6, pp. 73--78. Bern, Berlin, Brussels, Frankfurt a.M.,

New York, Oxford, Vienna: Lang.


Oesterle, G.: 2000b, ‘Arabeske’, in K. Barck et al. (eds.), As-thetische Grundbegriffe. Historisches Worterbuch in siebenBanden, vol. 1, pp. 27--286. Frankfurt a.M.: Metzler.

Osietzki, M.: 1998, ‘Korpermaschinen und Dampfmaschinen.Vom Wandel der Physiologie und des Korpers unter demEinfluß von Industrialisierung und Thermodynamik’ in P.

Sarasin and J. Tanner (eds.), Physiologie und industrielleGesellschaft. Studien zur Verwissenschaftlichung des Korpersim 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, pp. 313--346. Frankfurt a.M.:Suhrkamp.

Rabinbach, A.: 1998, ‘Ermudung, Energie und der menschli-che Motor’ in P. Sarasin and J. Tanner (eds.), Physiologieund industrielle Gesellschaft. Studien zur Verwissenschaftli-

chung des Korpers im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, pp. 286--312.Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.

Sarasin, P.: 2001, Reizbare Maschinen. Eine Geschichte des

Korpers 1765--1914, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.Souritz, E.: 1990, ‘Carlo Blasis a Mosca,’ in J. Sasportes (ed.),

Il ballo romantico in Italia, pp. 137--156 (La Danza Italiana,nos. 8--9), Rome: Edizioni del Centro documentazione

danza.

Institut fur Theaterwissenschaft

Freie Universitat Berlin

Grunewaldstrasse 35

12165 Berlin

Germany

E-mail: [email protected]

Gabriele Brandstetter (1997--2003), Professor of ModernGerman Literature Studies at the University of Basel, since2003 Professor of Theater Studies at the Free University of

Berlin. Her research focus is on: performance theories; con-cepts of body and movement in notation, image and perfor-mance; dance, theatricality and gender differences. Selected

publications: Loie Fuller. Tanz - Licht-Spiel - Art Nouveau1989, (with co-Author B. Ochaim); Tanz-Lekturen. Korper-bilder und Raumfiguren der Avantgarde (1995); ReMemberingthe Body. Korperbilder in Bewegung (2000, with co-editor

Sibylle Peters); Erzahlen und Wissen. Paradigmen und Aporienihrer Inszenierungen in Goethes ’Wahlverwandschaften’ (Ed.,2003).


The Code of Terpsichore The Dance Theory of Carlo Blasis ... · ture, music and the ﬁne arts, and...

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