De stijlvolle verovering van de wereld : de genese, incubatie en disseminatie van nieuwe dansrepertoires (1756 – 1818) : voorbeelden uit de Zuidelijke Nederlanden en Prinsbisdom / Land van Luik in Europese context

Today the waltz and the quadrille are omnipresent in most parts of the world. This wasn’t always so. The waltz originated from the southern part of the German cultural sphere around the middle of the 18th century, the quadrille developed around 1800 in Paris. Hence both dances spread from their local situation, but the pace at and the scale on which this happened increased remarkably between 1800 and 1815. During this years the Napoleonic Wars were fought, leading to a severe economical crisis. Time was apparently not ripe for new dances to gain in popularity. Nevertheless, a dance craze raged in large parts of continental Europe which was, among other things, ostensibly triggered by the presence of the French military. In the Southern Netherlands and the Pays de Liège more balls were organised and the numbers of new ballrooms in the cities soared. More diverse social groups could participate regularly in a public social dance culture. This dissertation wanted to investigate how European armies could actively have contributed to the dissemination of new dancing repertoires. The waltz and the quadrille are investigated as two separate case studies within the geographical confines of the Southern Netherlands and the Pays de Liège

Les Cléfs d'Or: de geschiedenis van een theater- en danszaal te Sint-Niklaas 1782 - 1819

Les Cléfs d'Or archive offers a detailed insight of a working commercial theater- and dancing venue in Sint-Niklaas 1782 - 1819. The bookkeeping was kept so minutely that many facts about the habits and traditions are shown quite clearly

La Ville et la Cour se Mélèrent – Napoleon's Propaganda Quadrilles (1793–1813)

Many eyewitnesses mention the emergence of a new style of ceremonial dances performed at the Napoleonic court between 1802 and 1814. The deliberate mixing of the social classes during these occasio..

Les évènements intitulés 'quadrilles' sous le règne de Napoléon 1er comparés à celles organisés au début du règne de Guillaume 1er d’Orange à Bruxelles (1814 - 1818)

Napoleon’s Qaudrille Events Compared Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the quadrilles organized under Napoleon’s reign between 1801 and 1813, and which are considered belonging to the Divertissements de L’Empereur, is the scant attention they received from academia until now (Masson 1904, Dratwicky & Duflo 2004). More in general, Napoleon’s music court culture was barely discussed in the past and those who did, mentioned dancing only as of little importance (Lecomte 1912, Prod’Homme & Martens 1922, Fleischman 1969). It is therefor not entirely clear just how important these public social dance events where in their day as compared to theatre or concert life initiated by court. But if one would assess the international attention and influence they engendered, this might add some prospective to their valuation. To begin with, these occasions were mostly entitled quadrilles, but they were far more than just the social dance repertoires we would associate with that dance label today. They were rather Quadrille Events, grandiose public celebrations of power instigated by court, in which dancing took centre stage. A typical program would consist of an opening march or parade, followed by a ballet, usually choreographed by Pierre Gardel and executed by the ballet dancers of the Opéra Impérial. Then would follow couple of Quadrilles d’Honneurs in which a selected number of courtiers and aspirational military men, figured together, sometimes helped out by some more professional dancers. The choreography of this part (and the coaching of the non professional dancers) was mostly taken care of by Jean-Étienne Despréaux and his staff. After which la ville et la cour se mélèrent as Madame de Rémusat so eloquently stated – the real ball started, in which also dancers of the public that had witnessed the foregoing, staged dancing acts, were allowed to participate (de Rémusat 1880, Firmin-Didot 1894, Masson 1905, Vanistendael 2020). This mixture of official, staged ballet performance, followed by public social dancing was not novel in itself. Rather the high numbers of spectators and dancers attending these events was unheard of. More importantly, their lustre and prestige continued to resonate long after Napoleon’s reign ceased, perhaps even because of the grand scale and social inclusivity. There is good enough reason to suppose that their principal aim was to achieve the kind of cultural diplomatic leverage his royal predecessors had successfully set in (Woolf 2002, Vanistendael 2020). This becomes even more apparent when one compares the Parisian Quadrille Events with very similar occasions organised in Brussels to honour the freshly crowned William I, King of the Netherlands between 1813 and 1818. For the occasions occurring under Napoleon’s reign, my research has mainly been driven by the question how it was possible that so many Quadrille Events, on such a grand scale could be possibly realised. After the French revolution and its clear cut with al things royal and past, it seems only natural that no institutional backing was mentioned or described by any author in relation to the them. The main line of my inquiries has been to try to understand the institutionalisation of these events and the ways in which the practical, logistical and financial side of their organisation had been developed by Napoleon’s court. I specifically focussed on the presence of the military during these events and the process of selection of military dancers to perform in the Quadrilles d’Honneurs. A second line of inquiry, for Brussels, was based on ar remarkable fund from the Brussels city archives that abundantly documents the organisation of the festivities in support of William I. The main advantage of these papers was that every snippet about their realisation, was neatly residing in the same archive boxes, classified per event. In this way, the main ingredients of the organisation of each (venue, invitations, music, dance, security, catering, public communication etc.) were fundamentally linked. This isn’t always the case for the Napoleonic Quadrille Events for which most paperwork is unevenly spread over many different funds residing in the Archives Nationales de France, the Bibliothèque National de France and other institutions. It is very clear that Brussels had looked to Paris for inspiration after 20 years of French rule. The same programmatic logic was maintained. Again, military men were invited to perform in the same Quadrilles d’Honneurs and again they were coached by professional French dancing masters. Eventually, despite many differences, the better structured Brussels archives helped a great deal to trace different funds that could offer a clearer picture for Paris. During this paper I will explain how comparing these two contexts, offers a way to better understand each of them

Shaping Europe’s first dance craze : the role of Napoleon's grande armée in the dissemination of the Quadrille (1800–1814) : case studies in cultural mobility from the Southern Netherlands

The first decade-and-a-half of the nineteenth century witnessed the unusually-speedy dissemination of a new dance, the quadrille, over a vast territory. The traditional channels of dissemination cannot account for this astonishing process. The circumstances of the Napoleonic wars disrupted the functioning of institutions, publishing and networks of patronage. This article proposes an alternative explanation for the rapid rise of the quadrille. It explores aspects of the military culture of Napoleon's army to account for the veritable dance 'craze' associated with the quadrille. During winter campaigns, French forces organized dance lessons on a massive scale. They encouraged peer-to-peer tutoring. Moreover, the organisation of Napoleon's army allowed the formation of networks that were unaffected by the social constraints acting on appropriation processes in civil society. The process is a fine demonstration of the concept of cultural mobility. Although the question of the dissemination of the waltz is of equal importance during the era under study, it will not be addressed here. The origins of the waltz lie in a more distant past and concern a different cultural sphere. The case of the quadrille is a broad European phenomenon. To get a hold on it, this article focuses on case studies from the Southern Netherlands and the principality of Liege, a territory which approximates to contemporary Belgium

Staf Vos, Dans in België (1890 - 1914)

Review of Staf Vos' Dans in België (1890 - 1914), Leuven 201

New quadrilles for the société philharmonique d'Anvers 1813 - 1818

Commercial ballrooms appear all over Great Britain in the course of the 18th century. They represent a new type of contact zones enhancing the cultural mobility of new urban elites. As such they are a unknown phenomenon for the Southern Netherlands before 1815. Buildings solely dedicated to musical leisure remained scarce until the 1850ies. Most cities only disposed of one baroque style theater typically seating a few hundred, also used for social dancing during the ball season. In Antwerp, the opera house exploited a monopoly on public balls just like it's Parisian counterpart, but until 1810. As a consequence of this peculiar absence of free enterpreneurship, the first commercial concert- and ballroom was erected in Antwerp only in 1813. The archives of the society have mostly vanished, except for the dance programms for the first few seasons of its existence. Because of the new influx of different social groups in a brand new social club, explanation of every dance movement seemed desirable. It guaranteed that every member could prepare decently and start on equal foot. These programms offer a quite unique view on the emergence of a new dance style in a small town in the Southern Netherlands on the even of Waterloo