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)

John Weaver is perhaps best known as the translator of Raoul-Auger Feuillet’s seminal treatise on dance, Chorégraphie, which appeared under the title, Orchesography,Or the Art of Dancing. But his equally important An Essay Towards an History of Dancing is generally regarded as the first history of dance written in English.

It marks a profound shift in the prior histories of dance. Weaver is concerned with tracing dance from antiquity to modern times not in order to provide an objective and genealogical history but rather to theorize and elevate dance as an art which perfects humanity. Like the arts of rhetoric, theater, music composition and poetry, the art of dance should reflect nature, imitate nature and simultaneously improve mankind. For this reason, Weaver chooses not to address the “mechanical aspects” of dance such as choreography or orchesography. Rather, he focuses on the metaphysical aspects of dance.

Weaver stresses the importance of virtue, knowledge and decorum of worthy dancers. Mimes and pantomimes and antique dance hold such a prominent space in the Essay because they allow him to show that dance in these times was much more than a form of diversion. Whether dance was used for religious worship, the telling of history or mythology or the expressing of decency and artful gestures, it was always connected to the spiritual, social and intellectual bettering of humanity. While approaching dance then, from a more theoretical perspective, John Weaver also theorizes a new relationship between dance and the body. Through regulated and measured motion, the dancer should communicate with his spectator first by pleasing him visually and second by influencing him and instructing him.

Full Text                By Audrey Magré (MA 2006)