Women's work : making dance in Europe before 1800 / edited by Lynn Matluck Brooks.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Brooks, Lynn Matluck

Series:

Studies in dance history (Unnumbered)

Studies in dance history

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women dancers--Europe--History.

Dance--Europe--History.

Dance.

Women dancers.

History.

Europe.

Physical Description:

ix, 270 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Madison, Wis. : University of Wisconsin Press, [2007]

Summary:

Like the history of women, dance has been difficult to capture as a historical subject. Yet in bringing together these two areas of study, the nine internationally renowned scholars in this volume shed new and surprising light on women's roles as performers of dance, choreographers, shapers of aesthetic trends, and patrons of dance in Italy, France, England, and Germany before 1800. Through dance, women asserted power in spheres largely dominated by men: the court, the theater, and the church. As women's dance worlds intersected with men's, their lives and visions were supported or opposed, creating a complex politics of creative, spiritual, and political expression. From a women's religious order in the thirteenth-century Low Countries that used dance as a spiritual rite of passage to the salon culture of eighteenth-century France where dance became an integral part of women's cultural influence, the writers in this volume explore the meaning of these women's stories, performances, and dancing bodies, demonstrating that dance is truly a field across which women have moved with finesse and power for many centuries past.

Contents:

The doubly invisible: Dance in history, women in dance history / Lynn Matluck Brooks

Isabella and the dancing Este brides, 1473-1514 / Barbara Sparti

Fabritio Caroso's patronesses / Angene Feves

At the Queen's command : Henrietta Maria and the development of the English masque / Anne Daye

The female ballet troupe of the Paris Opera from 1700 to 1725 / Nathalie Lecomte

Françoise Prévost : the unauthorized biography / Régine Astier

The shaping of Galatea : who controlled the career of Marie Sallé? / Sarah McCleave

In pursuit of the dancer-actress / Moira Goff

Elisabeth of Spalbeek : dancing the passion / Karen Silen

Galanterie and gloire : women's will and the eighteenth-century worldview in Les Indes galantes / Joellen A. Meglin.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0299225305

9780299225308

0299225348

9780299225346

OCLC:

123766673

Online:

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description