Frederick Naerebout

The joys of interdisciplinary research.

The Hague high society and its amusements in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Naerebout, Frederic: "The joys of interdisciplinary research", 13th International Congress on Dance Research, Athens, 7-11/7, 1999.

In this paper I intend to illustrate in what way the skills of several disciplines can come together in research which centres on the subject of dance [1]. First I should outline my ideas about dance and about dance research. Dance is a particular kind of human movement, as I have earlier defined it [2]. But research into dance should not limit itself to movements. While obviously it always remains important that dance is movement (singular), individual movements (plural) need not be studied - indeed, often they are not even known [3]. In this respect Jean-Claude Serre has distinguished between "recherche en danse" and "recherche sur la danse" [4].

I would like to go one step further and distinguish three levels on which we can study dance:

1) Research into individual dance movements and sequences of movements. This involves analysis of movements observed or reconstructed, in whatever context, to whatever purpose and with whatever tool. The ability to write and read different notations and to interpret different types of imagery is certainly important, as are musicological skills, and more general (art)historical

and/or anthropological skills in order to establish the context when the object is not dance movement only, but dance movement as part of a dance event.

2) Research into the general phenomenon "dance", within or without a particular context. This is research in which the dance movement is still central to the whole story, but is itself not analyzed, as when one looks at how a particular dance functioned in a particular society, without getting into any detail as far as the movements of that dance are concerned. This asks for (art)historical and/or anthropological skills, a general knowledge of dance, and "high kinaesthetic

acuity" [5]. But there is no need for specific technical skills in the field of the recording and "reading" of human movement.

3) Research into related subjects which do not directly touch upon movement. For example the social position of professional dancers, the income of dance teachers or the number of discotheques. Here only general (art)historical and/or anthropological skills are called for. These items can easily, and often more expertly, be researched by those who have no particular knowledge of dance at all.

It is intriguing to see that many of those who think of themselves as dance scholars seldomly or never get down to the first level of enquiry [6]. This is somewhat against expectation: there is a general conviction amongst dance scholars themselves, and amongst their peers, that they primarily deal with actual dances. They do not: usually they deal with dance as a rather abstract category (of course there are exceptions; especially amongst anthropologists, folklorists

and early dance specialists there are several pockets of "hard core" movement analyzers [7].

I personally would like to restrict the expression "dance research" to first level research, i.e. research which centres on the kinetic aspects themselves, on the formal analysis of movement and music [8]. Second level research should then simply be called history, sociology and so on, with the dance as its subject. Third level research has nothing to do with the dance at all, however relevant its results may be. Of course everybody will go on including all three levels of research

in dance research, dance studies or dance scholarship. Because they are of a different opinion; because they do so unthinkingly; worse, because of vested interests. But still I would like to stress that multi- or interdisciplinarity need not result from the creation of a new discipline: indeed, this seems to look back to days of strong boundaries between disciplines, which in many instances

have now become quite permeable. It is the object of study that should bring scholars from a range of backgrounds together.

If I look at the departments of dance studies - always with the exception of the good ones, of course - I am afraid they have taken too much disciplines, or fragments of disciplines, on board, and now do everything by halves. If it is the academic study of the dance that is dear to one's heart, and not the carving out of some academic niche, one had better make do with established disciplines and convince their representatives of the validity and interest of the subject. This said, I can move on to my own research: this definitely is second and third level, and

my purpose is to show, as I said above, what different disciplines have to contribute here. At the same time I want to show how many different kinds of sources can come into play.

The usual sources come to mind. But there is always more, and what seemed to be a trickle of evidence can turn into a flood: sources, archival sources in particular, which do not deal with dance in any technical sense, or even do not mention dance at all, can nonetheless contribute much to our understanding of dance as an integral part of past society. To underline this, the word "dance" has

been left out of the title of this paper, and has been replaced by the much wider concept of "amusements". Dance cannot be seen apart from other kinds of pastimes or relaxations, not merely the physical ones, but also non-athletic games, and indeed diversions not usually included under the heading of recreation. Conversely, when one is speaking of all kinds of amusements in general,

dance cannot properly be left out.

To illustrate the coming together of disciplines and the contribution made by all kinds of sources, I have taken an example from my research into Dutch dance history. This is research in progress. I seek to provide some insight into what I am doing and what could be done, but I have as yet no firm conclusions to offer on this particular bit of dance history. Now let us look closer at this example.

Dance in the Netherlands in any century but the present is a neglected subject [9]. There are huge but scattered archival resources which have to be uncovered or looked at anew. Also, some overall framework for the history of Dutch dancing still has to be created. The seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have plenty to offer - but where are the takers? In 1990 I published an article on the dance in seventeenth-century Dutch society, in which I came up with a hypothesis concerning the development of dancing and other amusements in the DutchRepublic during the whole of the Republic's existence [10]. I concentrated on the rejection of dancing and other amusements by certain sections of the church, that is mainly, but not exclusively, the precisians which are commonly labelled "de Nadere Reformatie", that is "further Reformation", those seeking to go on indefinitely reforming the reformed church. These precisians launched a

three-pronged attack: 1) against the profanation of the Sabbath; 2) against popery and heathenism (saints' days, fairs, traditions associated with the Christian calender); 3) against several amusements in general, whether on weekdays or Sundays, whether associated with Catholicism or not. This last category comprised especially those amusements which brought men and women

in close physical contact: dancing, but also skating. Their rejection of such amusements was motivated by reference to the seventh commandment dealing with sexual misconduct. Thus dance came to be included in an extensive list of "ongepaste vermaakneming", that is improper amusements or amusements not befitting a good (reformed) Christian, mentioning amongst others dressing up (and undressing, of course), gambling, the theatre, scurrilous songs, ball games,

and seemingly innocuous acts like the throwing of snowballs.

Then, from the 1670s onwards the synods of the reformed Church started losing interest in the dance and stopped being very specific about other plays and games too. The tract writers never stopped - indeed, the dance is still singled out for condemnation in fundamentalist circles - but there too the real fervour seems to die away. Only the theatre still came in for its share of outright condemnation. This remarkable change of heart as far as dance and games were concerned was not caused by the eradication of any of the amusements which had been so fiercely combatted. It is easily shown that dancing flourished in the late 17th and 18th centuries. So what had happened to put a stop to the crusade? A simple loss of heart? Or had things been subtly changing, for whatever reason, in order to render a further crusade superfluous?

I interpret what happened in the context of a "civilizing offensive", the attack by church and public authorities to effect a further christianizing and disciplining of Europe, what Peter Burke labelled "the reform of popular culture" [11]. I hazard the following hypothesis. The elite who formed the civil government in the Netherlands was rather unwilling to fully cooperate with the church. They generally did not move decisively against dance or other amusements. They

wanted to keep the peace, undoubtedly - which one does not by denying people all of their favourite amusements. But what they certainly did not want to forbid were the dancing lessons where their own children were taught necessary deportment, the balls where they displayed their wealth and refinement, and their theatrical performances. The more traditional recreations of the commoners were not their main concern: there the church might have been allowed to do some "reforming". The precisians, who were actually bent on the total eradication of dance, on the one hand could have been more or less satisfied with the elite's new, refined French manners when dances with more pronounced eroticism and more obvious popish associations were repressed, and on the other hand might have withdrawn in self-chosen isolation because the outside world showed itself stubborn and apparently unafraid of eternal damnation.

But this hypothesis raises many questions. Is there indeed a rise of French dance culture and a decline of "folk culture"? If so, is this not due to some internal dynamics? [12]. Are there any indications that towards the end of the seventeenth century the church allows people of quality what it denies the commoners? My present research aims at gaining a better understanding of developments in the seventeenth century, by filling in some detail, but also by bringing in a

comparison with the eighteenth century. If we think we see things changing in a certain direction during the 17th century, have we got 18th-century evidence which bears this out?

I have followed a top-down approach, starting on the Royal Archives (with Royal consent, for which I kindly thank Her Majesty [13]). Within the Royal Archives, pride of place should go to the archive of prince William V of Orange, especially the very interesting accounts of his private expenses, which contain many items related to music and dance, but also a wealth of information about the Stadtholder's amusements in general. This source is quite interesting in itself, apart from the ways in which it can be put to use in a comparative exercise trying to illuminate a less well documented 17th century. To the dance at the court in The Hague I will return in a moment. The music is the one element which has been studied in detail [14]. But then there also is overwhelming evidence for that specifically 18th-century pastime: gambling - the Stadtholder incurring large debts playing at cards, as shown by the original bonds signed by him, still present in the archive. There is a lot of theatre-going, mainly to the French Theatre [15]. And then, somewhat unexpectedly, we find shopping as a pastime: 18th-century fun shopping, especially during the The Hague kermis. Then the town was full of booths selling luxury items, jewellery, exotic objects and so on. The Stadtholder buys and buys and buys. This is of course - like the other pastimes of the court - conspicuous spending too [16].

Now for the dance: not only do we find the half-yearly invoices of the court's dancing masters, but also documents which provide particulars of performances that were put on for, and by, the princely children. Best documented is one such "balet" which was put on the 7th of August 1785; several bills of craftsmen and shopkeepers relating to this performance have been preserved. But so are other bills for scenery and decoration, inventories of costumes, and so on. Such

material enables us to establish first of all the costs involved. Outlays towards music and dance should be seen in the context of all private expenses, the private expenses should be seen in the context of all expenses. All expenses should be judged in the light of what we know about prices and incomes. Thus there arises a very interesting pattern of conspicuous consumption, peculiar to the Stadtholder's court, and in which dance and music played an important part. Next, we should scrutinize the sources for what they tell us about the contents of what was going on at court. We are not disappointed. From orders for "choreography books" from Paris and London, down to carpenters fashioning Greek temples or seamstresses making Turkish caps, we get insights into the dances of the court.

But of course the Stadtholder's court should be put in context. The municipal archives in The Hague, especially the archives of the notaries public, provided background information on the court's dancing masters. The family tree of the Gautiers, of whom both father Nicolas and two of his sons, Pieter Nicolaas, or Pierre, and Hermanus Wilhelmus, served the court, has been traced in detail [17]. But of course one should try to go beyond genealogy and look at the economic and social position of these professionals. They appear to have done very well. Amongst the files of the notaries public there are rental agreements for rather grand houses, and contracts concerning the trade in bonds. One of Nicolas Gautier's bills was partly settled by the court by providing him with a hunting licence; the aristocratic overtones of this tell us more about Nicolas Gautier than

would his choreographies, however glad we would be to have some [18].

The Municipal Archives and the large holdings of the Music Library at the Municipal Museum of The Hague were called upon for information on the theatres that existed in the town, and for any scrap of evidence that might tell us something about the dance. Already interesting things have been coming forth about dancing lessons for the children of the elite (some of these provided by the Gautiers, who could obviously advertise themselves as the court's dancing

masters) and about pleasure gardens. Also, published and unpublished letters and diaries have been and are being gone through in the hope of finding relevant information, sometimes on people or events already known in some different context [19].

Interesting is, for example, the diary kept by James Boswell during his stay in Holland in 1763-1764. This can hardly be called an unknown source, but still it is surprisingly little used. I certainly am not aware of anyone collecting what Boswell says about dancing. On the 23rd of December 1763, Boswell was in The Hague: "Good dinner at ordinary. Countess Degenfeld, sweet, handsome, amiable. Comedy, well entertained. Good dance. Home". Six days later, he went to Sir Joseph Yorke, the British Ambassador, and there was seized with sudden religious fervour: "Then Yorke's... Not dance, wrong". Which is to say that he actually did dance, but afterwards concluded that he should not have, as we gather from a poem which he composed the following day:

Last night at eight o'clock to Yorke's I went,

And seven long hours in dissipation spent (...)

And must the bane of manly virtue call

What foolish mortals idly name a ball.

On the 7th of May 1764 Boswell was again in The Hague: "Yorke's ball, all fine, impossible to resist it". Yorke's was again the venue on the 4th of June: "At night I went to the ball given by Yorke. It was splendid... I danced one country-dance with a Mademoiselle Wassenaer", and on the 7th of June: "Sir Joseph Yorke gave a superb ball... everything was gay and brilliant". Somewhat less refined was Boswell's adventure in Amsterdam on the 26th of May of that same year: "I

resolved to go to a speelhuis but had no guide. I therefore very madly sought for one myself and strolled up and down the Amsterdam streets, which are by all accounts very dangerous at night... At last I came to a speelhuis, where I entered boldly. I danced with a fine lady in laced riding-clothes, a true blackguard minuet. I had my pipe in my mouth and performed like any common sailor. I had near quarrelled with one of the musicians. But I was told to take care, which

I wisely did" [20].

As I said, this is research in progress. Dance and high society is fine for a start, but my hypothesis outlined above of course implies that it is impossible to look at the upper layers of society in isolation. When there is high society, there is its counterpart too, and the different sections of society are no watertight compartments. But when we move down the social scale, relevant information becomes progressively more difficult to find. But one should not despair too

quickly: as we have just seen, even one regularly attending balls where the beau monde of The Hague was invited, can suddenly illuminate for us quite another, darker corner where also a lot of dancing is going on.

As also stated above, this is second and third level research: there is no information on the actual dances danced. Not even Gautier's "choreography books" appear to have survived. Of course it is possible to say something in general about the nature of the dances in vogue at the time, and to study the performance of, say, a minuet in an abstract sense. Because we still have

a technical literature, including notations, and a lot of imagery, we can actually be very precise about 18th-century dance movements, although I do not deny that the reconstruction of dance and music allows for a lot of controversy [21]. We should not neglect what there is to know about 18th-century dance movements. It is this kind of knowledge which allows us to integrate a dance tradition with a period's bodily language or non-verbal communication in general [22]. But this does not usually add up to the ability to visualize a particular dance event

in a particular historical context. But it is those events and their protagonists that I, as a historian, am most interested in. Even if we have got a minuet, we do not know about Boswell's minuet. Because it is the 18th century we are talking of, we can speculate about Boswell's minuet. But that is speculation, and no more.

I come back to my hypothesis. It has been established beyond doubt that the court and courtiers, and the elite of The Hague in general were enjoying the dance, unhindered by preachers. The repertoire of their balls was an international one. They saw a lot of dance on stage. "Folk dance" has not been traced yet (we decided on a top-down approach so the hardest work is still to come), except that "folk dance", or what was supposed to be so, enjoyed considerable popularity on stage. This actually might indicate that such dances were ceasing to be a part of

living tradition. Outside interest gets stronger as a tradition weakens: the dance is entering its so-called second existence [23]. Boswell, in the Amsterdam speelhuis, dances a minuet, even if he adapts his style to the occasion. I think we have begun to narrow down the number of possible outcomes, but I have no answers yet. But we now have clear indications of what can be done. There is a lot of material waiting for a lot of people, all with their particular skills: we need the genealogist as much as the palaeographer and the musicologist.

This brings me back to the more methodological questions with which I opened this paper. Let us have a look at what sources we have met with and what skills are asked for in dealing with them. I arrange this under three heads.

1) Asking questions. When we have mastered enough technical skills and acquired enough knowledge, by our own efforts or by cultivating contacts with scholars from other disciplines, to find and interpret all kinds of source material, we should not plunder libraries, archives and museums at random. Of course when someone else simply amasses data, I will use them. But without a procedure more rigorous than "butterfly collecting" or "paste and scissors" we will never progress beyond the usual teleological histories of national, European, western or whatever dance traditions [24]. That implies that we should be after something in particular instead of everything in general. We need a hypothesis, a model, or whatever you want to call explicit guidance of the whole process of research which will give it a sense of direction and purpose [25]. This also forces

us to think about the theoretical orientation of our research. What perspective will inform our work? Functionalism, structuralism, poststructuralism, semiotics or communication studies? One has to give this some thought, unless one feels quite comfortable as a simple antiquarian. But antiquarianism is not the same, at least not nowadays, as writing history. There is no need to limit oneself to a particular -ism or even to some scholar's version of it. One can be eclectic. I personally work from the perspective of communication studies and dance anthropology focusing

on the surface levels and the overt, stressing symbolization and meaning. Which is the reason that I have been writing the above the way it is - but that is another story.

2) Finding the material. First of all one needs broad-mindedness - that is, after questions have been formulated. As I hope to have somewhat illustrated above, a wide range of textual material can be relevant. There are of course the dances and music themselves: notated, depicted, reconstructed. But there are also dance and dance events as mentioned in whatever source: literary works, documents, imagery. We are talking about the fall-out of (re)performances of

dances with all attendant events, what has once been observable reality. But also about normative writings or images which sought to prescribe such performances and may or may not actually have succeeded in doing so. And also about dance and dance events as perceived, as imagined, as fantasized, that is, dance as it lived in the mind. All contribute to our image of what dance was and meant at a particular moment in a particular place, but they contribute in very different ways.

Next one needs to know where to look. With printed material all old and new ways for retrieving printed sources should be put into play, from the oldest bibliography to the newest on-line catalogue on the World Wide Web. You have to know what the tools are. With manuscript material tools are often lacking; hardly any relevant source collections or indexes exist, so one has to find one's own way. This asks for an intimate knowledge of archival resources. Thirdly, one

should not limit oneself to libraries or archives: artefacts, both accoutrements of the dance, and whatever objects of relevance to the dance, such as articles of dress, are important. So are historic dance venues which are still in existence and unchanged or "readable".

3) Interpreting the material. I take for granted basic interpretative skills: after finding a text or a notation one has to read it, imagery should be decoded, a stage measured, and so on. Then trouble starts: we have to establish the context of production, that is where a particular item was written, drawn, painted, printed, and so on, and why. We have to ask about tradition, that is whether a particular item is identical, similar or dissimilar to comparable items from elsewhere

and/or an earlier date. We have to look into the vicissitudes of preservation, that is what collection or archive a particular item is in and how it got there. And worse is till to come: we have to make sense of every individual item and of all items as a whole in context [26]. You must become both a specialist and a generalist, at home with Feuillet-notation or the ancient music debate, as with

current research into 18th-century culture, politics or economics at large. This may be asking too much - which implies that we need a multidisciplinary joint effort. Which can be a joyful experience too. And thus I have come full circle.

Notes

1. This paper is partly based on my unpublished contribution to the international congress "Games and play in the 16th and 17th centuries" held at the ErasmusUniversity in Rotterdam, August 27-28, 1998. It takes up some themes which I first discussed in a published conference paper, "6 harte met sprinveere. 6 dito van koperdraait met 12 lampies". Dance and high society in The Hague during the second half of the 18th century: an interim report", in: Anna Aalten et al. (edd), Dance in the Netherlands 1600-2000. New directions in historical and methodological research. Research papers (Amsterdam 1998) 7-21.

2. See my "Attractive performances. Ancient Greek dance: three preliminary studies" (Amsterdam 1997) 165-166: dance is human movement, involving the whole body, which travels, usually within a relatively circumscribed space. Dance is a communal activity, with any number of participants, either performers or audience. In dance movement is intentional, rhythmized and patterned, with some patterned sound as cue. The movement should be in some way distinguishable from everyday movement, and the performers themselves should consider the movement to be so. Please note that this definition does not claim to be universally valid (there is no such definition of dance and there cannot be;

see J.A.M. Snoek, Initiations. A methodological approach to the application of classification and definition theory in the study of rituals, Pijnacker 1987).

3. As I have contested for Antiquity (in "Attractive performances" and elsewhere); but this holds good for almost all of dance history, especially if we look at the level of individual dance events - a fact very little appreciated.

4. J.-C. Serre, "Les études et la recherche en danse à l'Université de Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV)`, Recherche en Danse 1 (1982) 5-20.

5. In the words of Cyril Burt as quoted by B. Quirey, “The crucial gap”, Dance Research 1,1 (1983) 50-55. The concept can be found in regular use in developmental medicine and child psychology: it is, however, quite useful in the more generalized way in which it is used here.

6. To take one very recent example: in D. Tércio (ed), Continents in movement. Proceedings of the International Conference "The meeting of cultures in dance history" October 15/18, 1998 Oeiras / Continentes em movimento. Actas da Conferncia Internacional "O encontro de culturas na història da dança" 15/18 Outubro 1998 Oeiras, Cruz Quebrada 1999, a huge collection of conference papers, about 5 percent of the contents is actual movement analysis of some sort, what I call first level research. The other 95 percent are a mix of second and third level research.

7. There appears to be no recent overview of work in dance studies to refer to; for anthropology there is S.A. Reed, “The politics and poetics of dance”, Annual Review of Anthropology 27 (1998) 503-532.

8. Partly based on my articles “Danswetenschap: een discipline of een kruispunt van disciplines?”, in: Bulletin van de Vereniging voor dansonderzoek 2 (1993) 113-117, Dance research in Holland: from a premodern past to a

postmodern future?,' ibid. 3 (1994) 87-92, and F.G. Naerebout & O. Stokvis, Danswetenschap in Nederland,' in: I. Austen, O. Stokvis & J. Verweij (edd), Dansjaarboek 92/93 (Amsterdam 1993) 26-29, but now modified.

9. A rough count of Dutch monographs, M.A. papers and Ph.Ds in the field of dance history published in the past half century reveals that some 95 percent deal exclusively with the 20th century, often with the most recent past. No articles

were included in this count: if they had been, the situation would be even more imbalanced.

10. See my “Another battle fought and lost: seventeenth century Dutch predikanten and the dance”, Laban Centre Working Papers in Dance Studies 2 (London 1989) 18-43, revised and augmented as “Snoode exercitien. Het

zeventiende-eeuwse Nederlandse protestantisme en de dans”, Volkskundig Bulletin 16 (1990) 125-155. Cf. A. Arcangeli, Dance under trial: the moral debate 1200-1600”, Dance Research 12.2 (1994) 127-155.

11. P. Burke, Popular culture in early modern Europe, London 1978 (latest revised reprint Aldershot 1994), and the refinements in idem, “Popular culture between history and ethnology”, Ethnologia Europaea 14 (1984) 5-13, and idem,

Varieties of cultural history, Cambridge 1997. Many relevant titles could be listed here. W. Frijhoff, “Publieke beschavingsoffensieven in de vroegmoderne tijd”, Volkskundig Bulletin 11 (1985) 93-101, is still an excellent status quaestionis. For references to the debate on the related concept of “the civilizing process” as formulated by Norbert Elias, see S. Mennell & J. Goudsblom, “Civilizing processes - myth or reality? A comment on Duerr’s critique of Elias”, Comparative Studies in Society and History 39 (1997) 729-733 (referring to the work of Hans Peter Duerr).

12. Some references on the instability of dance traditions in my “Whose dance? Questions of authenticity and ethnicity, of preservation and renewal”, in: A. Raftis (ed), Dance beyond frontiers. Proceedings of the 8th international conference on dance research, Drama, 13-17 July 1994 (Athens 1994) 77-86 (also in Greek in: A. Raftis (ed), “O choros pera apo synora” (Athens 1994) 95-105).

13. In my work in the The Hague archives I was much assisted by my student Miss Clasien Vonk, who has died suddenly and unexpectedly in January 1997. Her work is now carried on, along different lines, by Mr Enno Piet who is preparing a Ph.D. on 18th-century theatrical dance in the Netherlands.

14. M. de Smet, “La musique à la cour de Guillaume V, prince d’Orange (1748-1806) d’après les archives de la Maison Royale des Pays-Bas”, Utrecht 1973.

15. See J. Fransen, “Les comédiens français en Hollande au 17e et au 18e siècles”, Paris 1925.

16. About conspicuous spending it is quite illuminating to compare the inventories of the palaces, especially the lists of “objets d’art” and of clothing: S.W.A. Drossaers & Th.W. Lunsingh Scheurleer (edd), “Inventarissen van de inboedels in de verblijven van de Oranjes en daarmede gelijk te stellen stukken 1567-1795, derde deel: inventarissen Nassau-Oranje 1763-1795, Den Haag 1976.

17. In my "6 harte met sprinveere. 6 dito van koperdraait met 12 lampies". Dance and high society in The Hague during the second half of the 18th century: an interim report”, in: Anna Aalten et al. (edd), Dance in the Netherlands

1600-2000. New directions in historical and methodological research. Research papers (Amsterdam 1998) 7-21, esp. note 27, is some information on the Gautiers. A full family tree will be published elsewhere.

18. Archief Prins Willem V, Afd. Financiën, B. Boekhouding van de kassier van de priv‚-kas, quitancies en verdere bijlagen behorende tot de halfjaarlijkse rekening, nr. 62, 1785, 2de helft.

19. Valuable guidance is provided by R. Lindeman, Y. Scherf & R. Dekker, Egodocumenten van Noord-Nederlanders uit de zestiende tot begin negentiende eeuw. Een chronologische lijst, Rotterdam 1993.

20. All quotes are taken from James Boswell, Boswell in Holland, 1763-1764, including his correspondence with Belle de Zuylen, London 1952 (Trade edition vol.2, Journal vol.2, edited by F.A. Pottle).

21. On the perils of movement reconstruction in general, see my “Attractive performances”, passim, with a summary on 269-273. For Baroque dances, see the perceptive remarks by M. McGowan in a review in Dance Research 6.1 (1988)

72. R. Taruskin, speaking of the reconstruction of ancient music, argues convincingly for the spuriousness of every claim to authenticity: “The pastness of the present and the presence of the past”, in: N. Kenyon (ed), Authenticity and

early music. A symposium (Oxford 1989) 137-207.

22. On 18th-century bodily language see A. M. Annas, “The elegant art of movement”, in: E. Maeder (ed), An elegant art. Fashion and fantasy in the 18th century (Los Angeles 1983) 35-58, and more specifically on the

Netherlands: H. Roodenburg, De "hand van vriendschap". Over het handen schudden en andere gebaren in de republiek der Zeven Verenigde Provinciën”, in: J.N. Bremmer & H. Roodenburg (edd), Gebaren en lichaamshouding van de

Oudheid tot heden (Nijmegen 1993) 171-211 (the volume is also available in an English translation as A cultural history of gestures from Antiquity to the present day, London 1991); idem, "Welstand" en "wellevendheid". Over houdingen, gebaren en gelaatsuitdrukkingen in de schilderkunst, de toneelkunst en de rhetorica: de inbreng van het classicisme,' Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 46 (1995) 416ff. Many references on nonverbal communication can be found in my “Attractive performances”, 383-394.

23. See F. Hoerburger, “Once again: on the concept of "folk dance"', Journal of the International Folk Music Council 20 (1968) 30-32, who contrasts first and second existence: during first existence dance is an integral part of community

life, part and parcel of living culture, learned by participation, steadily changing; during second existence a dance is artificially kept alive or revived, its forms tending to become fixed.

24. For a forceful critique of teleological dance history: S. Youngerman, Curt Sachs and his heritage: a critical review of World History of the Dance with a survey of recent studies that perpetuate his ideas”, CORD News 6(2) (1974) 6-19.

25. The most persuasive advocate of looking before leaping I still find M. I. Finley, especially his “Ancient history. Evidence and models”, London, 1985.

26. Making sense does not mean fitting everything in: a past without inconsistencies is hardly to be trusted. For an eloquent defence of inconsistencies, see the first chapter of H. S. Versnel, Ter Unus. Isis, Dionysos, Hermes: three

studies in henotheism. Inconsistencies in Greek and Roman religion 1, Leiden 1990 Brill (Studies in Greek & Roman Religion 6.1).

Frederick Naerebout