Contributed by: Seth
The picture depicts a scene from Lully’s opera ‘Amadis de Gaule,’ and right now I’m reconstructing a solo excerpt from that opera choreographed in England by Anthony L’Abbe. It’s called the “Chaconne d’Amadis,” and the notation was published in 1725. The original production of ‘Amadis de Gaule,’ if you believe what the Mercure de France says (and who doesn’t?), was the ‘Oklahoma’ of its day. Its day, or rather its year, being 1684. Supposedly this was the show that finally gave dance an important role in propelling the action of the story, though I guess it didn’t succeed for very long since that’s also what they say about ‘Oklahoma.’ And also what they say about lots of other shows.
If you ask me none of them ever actually succeeded in making a dance help tell the story so compellingly as the critics claim, since dance isn’t really very good at doing that. I mean after all it’s dance.
But the Chaconne d’Amadis is just great, very tough, with lots of intricate jumps and turns. The version I’m doing was performed in London originally by Louis Dupre sometime between 1718 and 1722. Dupre was a hot-shot dancer, much in demand, and here’s an awfully fishy story: he was in Paris in 1718 for the April revival of Lully’s ‘Amadis de Gaule’ and then returned home to England for more shows at John Rich’s theater, Lincoln’s Inn Field. And then a couple of years later out comes L’Abbe’s choreography for the chaconne from Amadis. I don’t know who the Paris choreographer was, but to have a famous soloist from the Paris production return to London and start performing a solo excerpt to music from that show with choreography by someone new….well, that just sounds like there must have been some stealing going on. In other words, Anthony L’Abbe is a big fat phony. Or maybe a fabulous choreographer. Probably both.
I’ll be showing my reconstruction in Wyoming at the Sense of Place Dance Festival and then in New York for a show that Sarah’s curating for early December. Details TBA.
The New York Baroque Dance Co. 
do you think Dupre might have done the original choreography for the solo part?
This made me think of a question– were any of the solos that exist in notation actually choreographed by the dancer? Or were the dances choreographed by the dancers just not recorded in notation? We could drive ourselves crazy over the issues of choreographic thievery– after all, Feulliet practically stole the notation system from Beauchamps, right?Also, I think that dance can tell a story pretty well. It’s true that sometimes dances are made that help the action along or just add some atmosphere (in a play, opera, or musical), but do not tell the whole story by itself. That’s just one way to make a dance. What about classic modern dance, the Romantic story ballets, or our beloved ballet d’action? I would like to site the current modern dance, but most choreographers tell such a fragmented story that it ends up feeling more like the atmosphere without the play…I realize that Seth is probably just making a comment about dance as it usually appeared in operas in the first part of the eighteenth century (along with his inferences from the actual steps of the Chaconne d’Amadis), but I just wanted to put in my two cents.