The Grotesque Dancer on the Eighteenth-Century Stage

Italian ballet in the eighteenth century was dominated by dancers trained in the virtuoso style that combined French ballet technique with a vigorous athleticism that made Italian dancers in demand all over Europe. Gennaro Magri's Trattato teorico-prattico di ballo, the only work from the eighteenth century that explains the practices of midcentury Italian theatrical dancing, is a starting point for this investigation of an influential type of ballet and its connections to the operatic and theatrical genres of its day. Illustrations, music examples, and dance notations supplement the text.