Journal des sçavans... (1698-...)

Les Oeuvres de M. Bensserade... (1698)

La Vie de Scaramouche... (1699)

An Essay Towards An History of Dancing... (1712)

Histoire générale de la danse... (1724)

La danse ancienne... (1754)

Encyclopédie... (1751-1772)

Critical Observations on the Art of Dancing... (1770)

Lettres et entretiens sur la danse... (1824)

Louis de Cahusac’s La danse ancienne et moderne ou Traité historique de la danse was written in 1754. It consists of three volumes that Cahusac assembled in order to give the reader a practical gui de to dance as it was in ancient times and in Cahusac’s day.

Cahusac offers descriptions of the dance with a precision that no one had really achieved before him. He drew much of his information from Bonnet’s Histoire générale but strove to be more detailed. In his preface, Cahusac describes how he sees his book: “The ideas presented here are not precepts. What I have written are merely reflections, views I recommend, methods I propose. If a conclusive word or a peremptory expression creeps into my style, know that it is only because I wish to be precise.”

The first volume discusses the dances of many ancient civilizations, including the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Hebrews, Christians, and Turks. Cahusac compares the Romans favorably to Greeks and describes Roman pantomime in terms of the importance of its “imitation of nature.”

In the second volume, he discusses dance in France and the modern political and religious judgment of dance as a sin. Volume three treats the story of ballet at Versailles and how Louis XIV influenced dance. Louis XIV was a dancer himself and his master of dance, Pierre Beauchamps, codified the five foot positions in ballet. Cahusac devotes a chapter to the principal actions of dance, one to ballet, and another to the creation of the French opera.

Full Text                By Jordan Smith (MA 2006)