The 1st of September turned a date of 300th death anniversary of Louis Quatorze, a person whose impact in arts was as large as one of few greatest artists. His figure played key role in ideology and aesthetics of Baroque. His nickname the Sun King traces back to the name of the character he acted with his court ballet in his youth. Furthermore, the king himself was an excellent dancer. The tradition any kind of contemporary ballet theatre follows (including Russian ballet) goes from Louis XIV’s court ballet where buffoonery of Italian commedia dell’arte and French noble style lived in harmony.
Louis XIV has never visited Russia but his heritage beginning with his idea of state, up to the ways he planned his parks or celebrations, was learned and mastered in XVIII Century St. Petersburg. Peter the Great, tsarinas Anna, Elizabeth, Catherine II knew it naturally well. Dance and music of Russian court carried on the traditions from Jean Baptiste Lully and Pierre Beauchamp who were chief personalities of Louis XIV’s court. Moreover, a dance school known presently as Vaganova Ballet Academy was established by Jean Baptiste Landé, a French, in 1738 in Peter I’s Winter Palace where Hermitage Theatre actually is situated.
A show memorizing Louis XIV gives us reconstructions of baroque dance prepared by remarkable expert in Baroque dance Klaus Abromeit, Germany. The program stars a “guide-book” of Italian ballet tradition following The New and Curious School of Theatrical Dancing written by Gregorio Lambranzi, another ballet based on Russian court music written by Domenico Dall’Oglio, a suite of French noble dance after notations written by Raoul Feuillet. This shall be Russia’s first experience in authentic reconstruction of ballet.
Duration 1h30, no intermission