Tuesday, October 10, 2023

Dance (traditional)

Israhel van Meckenem
Dance of the Daughter of Herodias
ca. 1495-1500
engraving
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

Anonymous Netherlandish Weavers
Shepherds in a Round Dance
ca. 1500
wool and silk tapestry
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Anonymous German Artist
Three Couples in a Circle Dance
ca. 1515
drawing, with watercolor
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Jan Ewoutszoon
Dancers
1541
woodcut
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Jean-Baptiste Leprince
The Russian Dance
1769
aquatint
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Aaron Martinet (publisher)
La Gavotte
ca. 1802
hand-colored etching
British Museum

Philibert-Louis Debucourt
La Manie de la Danse
1809
color aquatint and etching printed à la poupée
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Pierre La Mésangère (publisher)
La Poule
1812
hand-colored etching
British Museum

George Cruikshank
Specimens of Waltzing
1817
hand-colored etching and stipple-engraving
Yale Center for British Art

Thomas Rowlandson
The Last Jig, or, Adieu to Old England
1818
hand-colored etching
British Museum

William Young Ottley
Couple Dancing
1836
drawing
Princeton University Art Museum

Anonymous  Italian Artist
Tarantella Napolitana
19th century
hand-colored etching
British Museum

Narcisse-Virgile Diaz de la Peña
Dance of the Almahs
1864
oil on canvas
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Jules Breton
Feast of St John the Baptist
(dancing around bonfires on the longest day of summer)
ca. 1875
oil on canvas
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Edgar Degas
Russian Dancers
1899
pastel
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Gerhard Marcks
Alpine Dance
1929
woodcut
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Alpine Wedding

All dark morning long the clouds are rising slowly up
beneath us, and we are fast asleep.
The mountains unmove 

intensely. And so de we. Meadows 
look down.

A city there looks up and 
stirs a little. Adrift the rolling tiled roofs of
buildings, the deadly

trains of grinding sand and morning –
a spy unfolds his paper,

the coffee's served.

A bride and groom stand shivering on a tarmac
in the mist, and
they are happy. Each one

and all of us entangled, the room is moist with us,
the house unfinished, windowless,

and we are fast asleep.

The brother of the groom can't get
close enough. He leans against the brightest ridge
and ladder, the sucking

sound of memory
as heaven picks up speed and

hurtles through his burning skin
its frozen blankets
to the sun.

– Ralph Angel (2001)