Dance, body, and emotions: Discussing ballet reform in 1600-1780
By: Sergei Kruk
| ARTICLE INFO: Volume: 12 Issue: 01:Summer 2026 ISSN: 2459-2943 DOI: 10.18680/hss.2026.0011 Pages: 207-233 Lic.: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 |
KEYWORDS: Ballet Body Emotion Nonverbal communication Jean-Georges Noverre Gasparo Angiolini Ballet d’action |
ABSTRACT
Τhe brain has several areas responsible for understanding the intentions and inner states of others through the nonverbal information conveyed by the body. This information is processed through either the rational cognitive pathway or the visceral perceptual pathway. For ballet spectators, the former leads to a propositional attitude and the latter to an intuitive emotional attitude toward the character. In the 17th and 18th centuries, intellectuals and professionals developed their ballet reform ideas in the framework of these two paradigms. All reformers advocated a narrative ballet that staged actions and emotions, but defended different forms of bodily motricity that can imitate real life. One group proposed imitating certain aspects of real motricity, describable as discrete signs and notated in the choreographic score. Another group favored holistic bodily expressions of emotional states resistant to any analytical description and notation; the dancer had to find the appropriate bodily signs of emotions by feeling into the role. Embracing differing viewpoints, the two principal ballet reformers, Jean-Georges Noverre and Gasparo Angiolini, were set against each other. Still, their ideas are perfectly compatible in narrative ballet and can be treated as elements of the nascent semiotics of ballet. The paper analyzes the evolution of these ideas for two centuries.
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