Danza e pantomima: modelli interpretativi e chiavi di lettura

Abstract

One of the most ambiguous question in the studying of pantomime ballet is its staging. The combination between dance and pantomime, true novelty of theatrical dance reform, is for us an enigma difficult to solve.

The aim of this paper is to outline how dance and pantomime can combine in the eighteenth Century ballet. We will examine, among others, the following sources: the John Weaver’s libretto of The Loves of Mars and Venus (1717), the report of the Mercure de France on the staging of Maria Sallé’s Pygmalion (1734), Gennaro Magri’s Trattato teorico-prattico (1779) and Ferrère manuscript (written in the 1782). These documents are a sort of “interpretative models” and allow to identify an international common stage practice which, most likely, regards also choreographers active in Italy in the second half of Eighteenth Century.