Balet de neufs danseurs [transmission 2019]

An extract remodelled by the Atelier de danse en amateur of the Maison de la musique et de la danse, coordinator Danielle Krafft, as part of Danse en amateur et répertoire programme 2018/2019 (a programme created to assist and promote amateur dancing). Transmission by Pierre-François Dollé and Irène Feste. Presented 25 May 2019, Centre national de la danse, Pantin.

The dance work when it was created

Balet de neufs danseurs 

Created 31 January 1679 at the Académie royale de musique in Paris

Choreography: Raoul Auger Feuillet

Music: Bellérophon (1679), lyrical tragedy of Jean-Baptiste Lully (entrée grave et canaries)

Original duration: 5 minutes

The group

Amateur dance workshop at the Maison de la musique et de la danse (Bagneux, Île-de-France)

The group comprises amateur adult and teenager dancers who have been attending dance workshops for several years at the Maison de la musique et de la danse. Every year, they take part in a different project which leads to a production. For them, tackling a historic dance is an opportunity to invite a new style and new ways of approaching choreographic practice into their repertoire. Attracted by Raoul Auger Feuillet’s spatial structures and steps, they chose to take on the Balet de neuf danseurs – a rare choreographic work, as most of Feuillet’s notations is made up of solos and two-person dances.

The project

The Balet de neuf danseurs is the final choreographic work from the Recueil de danses composées par M. Feuillet, whose melody is taken from Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Bellérophon tragedy. This work, created in 1679 at the Royal Academy of Music, builds on technical work focusing on a variety of ornamental steps. The members of the Workshop present their own version of this composition, in the purest “Belle danse” style – today known as Baroque dance.