Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Earlier European Images of Dancers

Classical Greece
Flute-player and Dancing-girl
510 BC
Attic red-figure-kylix (interior)
British Museum

Classical Greece
Two Women Dancing
400 BC
Attic terracotta statuette
British Museum

Greek colonial culture
Woman Dancing
200-100 BC
Capuan terracotta statuette
British Museum

attributed to Pietro Angeletti
Ancient Relief of Dancing Warriors in the Vatican Museums
ca. 1775-86
drawing (Charles Townley collection)
British Museum

Charles Townley (collector)
Ancient Intaglio with Maenad and Satyrs Dancing
ca. 1768-1805
wash drawing
British Museum

Robert Brooke Utting after C.W. King
Dancer from Antique Gem
ca. 1869
wood-engraving (book illustration)
British Museum

Jacques Bellange
Dancing Woman
before 1616
drawing
British Museum

Lambert Lombard
Dancing Female Classical Figure
before 1566
drawing
British Museum

Stefano della Bella
Costume Study for Female Dancer
before 1664
watercolor
British Museum

from The Seasons Change

It is very early.
She was not prepared to make the concessions her métier demanded.
The seasons change,
and with each season
it is the duty of fashion to render the body suppliant,
and to the woman living there
convince her she must spare
nothing: she must warp her anatomy as fashion says
for her own is wrong.

Every day and in every way
breath goes down in fire, long-waisted and vibrantly responsive,
while air carves up ars erotica.
It is the duty of fashion to reinvent fire, irony, stone, and air,
for anatomy is captive.

                          *          *          *

"In thunder, lightning, or in rain,"
fashion charges anatomy to depart its condition, its space.
Why, in this atmosphere,
do we not blame the technologies of the sartorially ingenious?
This in hasty atmosphere.

The seasons went.
The lives in which we live become insolvent.
And they went down slowly, then fast.
Human and restless,
seasons never cease to amaze us for their versatility.

– Marjorie Welish, from The Windows Flew Open (1991)

Jean Lepautre
Dame en habit de Ballet
ca. 1670-82
etching
British Museum

Jean Lepautre
Homme en habit de Ballet
ca. 1670-82
etching
British Museum

Gérard Jean-Baptiste Scotin II
Mademoiselle Auretti (ballet dancer)
ca. 1745-55
etching, engraving
British Museum

Christian Benjamin Glassbach
Mdlle. Denis (ballet dancer)
ca. 1750-60
etching, engraving
British Museum

Johann Friedrich Lück
Figure of Male Ballet Dancer for Frankenthal Porcelain Factory
ca. 1758-64
porcelain
British Museum