Dear all,
I’m currently working on a PhD-project about Belgian dance history between 1890 and 1960 (I’m based at University of Leuven) and would be glad if you could help me.
I have a question about the origins of the ‘ballet recital’ as a concert form. Is solo ballet performance, without assistance from other dancers, a 20th-century invention?
With ‘ballet recital’ I mean a full-evening program dedicated to one dancer, in a small venue (salon, society house) or in a larger theatre.
Was Anna Pavlova the first ballet dancer to dance and tour in this way? (I understand that she also had a troupe for at least part of her career). If so, was she inspired by early modern dancers such as Loïe Fuller, Isadora Duncan, Maud Allan, who, I imagine, pioneered the idea of dance recital? (I know Pavlova incorporated many Duncanisms in her performance). Did music halls, for their part, have solo ballet dancers, or was the backing by the corps de ballet central to the concept of spectacle?
Or is this assumption wrong and was the ballet recital not a typically 20th-century art form, but already present in 19th-century ballet (not in the opera house, but perhaps in the margins of cultural life, e.g. for charity performances, …)? I think Cléo de Mérode gave many recitals at the beginning of the 20th-century … but who was the first to launch the genre?
I ask this because I am writing a piece about Belgian dancer Félyne Verbist, who toured the World during the First World War with an eclectic program (Dying Swan, Vision of Salome, Waltz of Coppélia) and who was i.a. preferred to Pavlova by a critic in the Dancing Times. In 1920, the idea of a ‘ballet recital’ seems to have been new to the Brussels audiences seeing Verbist perform. They experienced many ‘dance recitals’ before, however. Maud Allan and Isadora Duncan, amongst others, were enthusiastically received in Antwerp an Brussels in 1905 and 1907, as were the Ballets Russes in 1910 (i’m not talking about the twenties now). They only saw Pavlova later.
Thanks for your help!
Staf
Leuven, Belgium