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Le Ballet de l'Opéra: Trois Siècles de Suprématie Depuis Louis XIV

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 June 2014

Emmanuelle Delattre-Destemberg ,
Marie Glon  and
Vannina Olivesi
Emmanuelle Delattre-Destemberg
Affiliation:
Centre d'Histoire Culturelle des Sociétés Contemporaines, Université Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines
Marie Glon
Affiliation:
Centre Edgar-Morin, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales
Vannina Olivesi
Affiliation:
Centre de recherches sur les Arts et le Langage, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales
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Extract

As authors who contributed to an edited volume, we were startled to learn that editors added a subtitle that broadly declared French balletic supremacy. This text, entitled The Opera Ballet: Three Centuries of Supremacy Beginning with Louis XIV [Le Ballet de l'Opéra: Trois siècles de suprématie depuis Louis XIV] (Auclair and Ghristi 2013), presents the notion of “supremacy” as a seductive value, and it is disturbing, to say the least. It is first and foremost a false assertion. The editors cannot seriously suppose that the Paris Opera Ballet, during the course of three centuries, occupied a position of dominance; and such a notion requires, in any case, detailed discussion establishing the criteria that are considered to define and delimit said domination. Such a title participates in a type of competition better identified with nation states, capitals, or European theaters after the seventeenth century. To suggest that the Paris Opera Ballet has always existed as a place of cultural “supremacy” is first of all to ignore the question of métissage, and to overlook how the institution adopted exogenous knowledge and savoir-faire; it is a rejection of dance history that occurred elsewhere, entirely separate or sometimes in opposition to the productions of this single cultural institution. Most disturbing of all is the highlighting of the notion of “supremacy,” or a superiority and power over others. By valuing the notion of domination, the editors encourage readers to envision dance and the broader world in terms of inferiority and superiority (between classes, genders, nations, and cultures). The Paris Opera Ballet may have acted in the service of such an ideology in the past, and may do so again in the future; however, the role of a scholarly publication should be to analyze discourses of propaganda, not to reproduce them.

Type
Review Essays
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , April 2014 , pp. 104 - 113
Copyright
Copyright © Congress on Research in Dance 2014 

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