Revolutionary Monsters: Provocations of the Hypermobile Other in La Sylphide (1832)
2016; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 39; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/01472526.2016.1228915
ISSN1532-4257
Autores Tópico(s)Historical Art and Culture Studies
ResumoDance historians frequently cite the spectacular display of creaturely flight in the 1832 production of La Sylphide as one of the hallmarks of ballet Romanticism. Drawing evidence from archival sources, I argue that the ballet's staged flight of monsters—sylphs and witches—vivified a preoccupation with feminine transgression during the period known as the July Monarchy. Interpreting the witch/sylphide dyad as a response to gendered French Revolutionary discourses in politics, philosophy, literature, and medicine circulating between 1794 and 1835, I show how alterity in La Sylphide targeted the mobility of women in the public sphere as contentious and undesirable.
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