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| Classical Greece Flute-player and Dancing-girl 510 BC Attic red-figure-kylix (interior) British Museum |
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| Classical Greece Two Women Dancing 400 BC Attic terracotta statuette British Museum |
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| Greek colonial culture Woman Dancing 200-100 BC Capuan terracotta statuette British Museum |
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| attributed to Pietro Angeletti Ancient Relief of Dancing Warriors in the Vatican Museums ca. 1775-86 drawing (Charles Townley collection) British Museum |
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| Charles Townley (collector) Ancient Intaglio with Maenad and Satyrs Dancing ca. 1768-1805 wash drawing British Museum |
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| Robert Brooke Utting after C.W. King Dancer from Antique Gem ca. 1869 wood-engraving (book illustration) British Museum |
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| Jacques Bellange Dancing Woman before 1616 drawing British Museum |
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| Lambert Lombard Dancing Female Classical Figure before 1566 drawing British Museum |
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| 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)
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| Jean Lepautre Dame en habit de Ballet ca. 1670-82 etching British Museum |
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| Jean Lepautre Homme en habit de Ballet ca. 1670-82 etching British Museum |
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| Gérard Jean-Baptiste Scotin II Mademoiselle Auretti (ballet dancer) ca. 1745-55 etching, engraving British Museum |
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| Christian Benjamin Glassbach Mdlle. Denis (ballet dancer) ca. 1750-60 etching, engraving British Museum |
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| Johann Friedrich Lück Figure of Male Ballet Dancer for Frankenthal Porcelain Factory ca. 1758-64 porcelain British Museum |