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Yearning for the Spiritual Ideal: The Influence of India on Western Dance 1626–2003

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2014

Vincent Warren
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Extract

Europeans have imagined India as a land of fabulous riches and exotic legends since the time of ancient Greece. In Greek mythology Dionysus, the god of passion and wine, was said to have come from India, and Alexander the Great's proudest achievement was arriving at the banks of the Indus. When, after 1498, explorers from Portugal, Holland, England, Denmark, and France began to establish trade links with the subcontinent, it seemed the legends were true; rare spices, silks, gold, and precious stones were transported to Europe and added fuel to already inflamed imaginations. The very name of the city of Golconda became a synonym for unimaginable wealth. There was confusion between all things exotic or “oriental.” Turks, Africans, Persians, American “Indians,” and Caribbeans were all from the same imaginary region, “the Indies,” which existed more in the poetic fantasies of Europeans than on a geographical map.

As early as 1626 at the court of Louis XIII, king of France, the mysterious figure of Asia appeared in the Grand Bal de la Douairière de Billebahaut, a ballet danced by the king and his noble companions. In 1635 The Temple of Love, a court masque (as le ballet du cour was known in England), was presented at Whitehall Palace in London. In this spectacle, Persian youths voyaged to India to encounter Indamora, Queen of Narasinga, danced by Queen Henrietta Maria herself in a costume designed by Inigo Jones. Back in France, a Sanjac Indien represented the continent of Asia in another court ballet, Les Entretiens de la Fontaine de Vaucluse (1649).

Type
Papers Honoring Marcia B. Siegel: 2005 CORD Outstanding Contribution to Dance Research Award Panel
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 38 , Issue 1-2 , Summer/Winter 2006 , pp. 97 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © Congress on Research in Dance 2006

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