Topoi (2005) 24:67-79
DOI 10.1007/s11245-004-4162-x
The Code of Terpsichore
The Dance Theory of Carlo Blasis:
Mechanics as the Matrix of Grace*
ABSTRACT: The essay examines both the dances and the
dance notation of renowned nineteenth century choreographer
Carlo Blasis. It looks in detail at Blasis’ major treatise The
Code of Terpsichore in an effort to evaluate how Blasis linked a
science of movement to a conception of the body oriented
around the prevailing aesthetics informing all of the fine arts.
Identifying Blasis as both a philosopher and a mechanist, this
essay analyzes his approach to teaching basic ballet vocabu-
lary, and in particular the arabesque. Whereas Kleist, with his
Marionettentheater, proposes the puppet as a figure of grace,
located somewhere between animal and doll, Blasis brings
together the movement science of mechanics and the descrip-
tive theory of grace (as mimesis) in a poetics of the arabesque,
a synthesis of elevation and evanescence, which we see when
we conjure up pictures of nineteenth century Romantic ballet.
Im Tanz muß alles Tanz sein,
also keine Schritte im Walzer,
so in der Poesie.
Jean Paul
At the turn of the nineteenth century a variety of
scientific disciplines, as well as the arts, were preoc-
cupied with the body, or more specifically, with re-
determining the body’s cultural meaning. In the light
of new discoveries in the fields of medicine, psychol-
ogy, physics and chemistry, the body was no longer
primarily a static object, but an object that was both
in motion and conceptualised into motion in many
respects; an object of research. At the same time the
aporia of the eighteenth century’s aesthetics of
expression became obvious: the contradiction be-
tween bodily discipline and freedom of the subject,
the friction between a discourse of authenticity and a
bodily technique considered ‘‘dance master postur-
ing’’, a subject of reflection for Friedrich Schiller and
Heinrich von Kleist, among others.
The result of this cultural and science-historical
discursive turn was a reconfiguring of representations

Springer 2005
Gabriele Brandstetter
of the body in overlapping fields of knowledge: in the
movement sciences (physics and mechanics) for one,
as well as in a descriptive theory of the body in
motion -- a theory of dance.
The choreographer and dance theorist Carlo Blasis
assumed an important role in this constellation. He
can be described as the creator of a new theory of the
body in motion, a theory founded on an experimen-
tal, practical science. Blasis can be said to have
invented ballet as a ‘‘poetic science’’.
In dance historiography Blasis is considered the
founder of the system of movement and aesthetic of
classical ballet; he is the creator of The Code of
Terpsichore (this was the title of his main work, pub-
lished in 1828)1, which has influenced the tradition of
stage dance up until the present day. Blasis, born in
1796, came from a Neapolitan family and was trained
in Marseille as a dancer, choreographer and theorist of
dance. It was not his numerous choreographies,
however, which later made him famous. Rather it was
his theoretical writings on dance that established him
as an authority throughout the European dance scene.
He worked in Paris, London, Milan and Moscow2 and
published in three languages: Italian, French and
English. He was a man of universal education,
knowledgeable in both the sciences and the arts. He
studied mathematics and geometry, as well as anat-
omy, the latter with two of the most important anat-
omy teachers of the age: Sabato de Mauro and
Dutrouille.3 Blasis was also well-versed in architec-
ture, music and the fine arts, and a friend of artists
such as Lorenzo Bortolini, Canova and Thorvaldsen.
The dance historian Oskar Bie accurately charac-
terised the classical-humanist model of education
embodied by Carlo Blasis (although one should of
course bear in mind the slightly ironic tone of Bie’s
68 GABRIELE BRANDSTETTER

description: he favoured the modern expressive dance cated steps; abandon grimaces to study sentiments,
of the 1900s.) artless graces and expression’’.9 Now, some 50 years
Blasis, according to Bie, was a later, Carlo Blasis became both systematiser and
historiographer of the dance concepts of earlier
romantic academic [. . .]. His school is properly mechanistic, epochs. Large parts of his many writings,10 as well as
his logic none too fantastic, his taste clear: antique and
his most important work The Code of Terpsichore,
renaissance statues, a little Giovanni da Bologna mixed
with Canova, Thorvaldsen applied to the populist effect of deal with different historical styles of dance and their
the Scala style, art historical education placed into a tab- practitioners; with the history of ‘‘coreodramma’’, of
leau, poured into an arabesque.4 the pantomime, of courtly dance and the expressive
genre. The most important part of his work, however,
Oskar Bie names precisely those paradigms that, in is best characterized by the title he himself gave to the
combination, make Blasis’ Code of Terpsichore a text which houses it: ‘‘The Code of Terpsichore’’. And
poetics and a theory of dance: mechanics and the this code -- even though the figure itself is conceived
arabesque. Blasis himself delivered the key formula of as a body sculpture in motion -- is paradoxically
for this with his demand that the choreographer must formulated as a script, but not as a dance script. A
be both a poet and a scientist of movement: ‘‘In short, dance script notates the pathways and the shapes of
a complete Ballet-Master is at once author and steps, as Feuillet did in the Baroque period.
mechanist.’’5 Blasis, in contrast, developed a script of figures -- an
It is worth examining this combination of ABC of poses -- that inscribed the alphabetic character
mechanics and poetic inspiration, for it places Blasis -- of dance, of the moving body itself. The decisive
the only other example is Kleist with his Marionet-
tentheater6 -- in the avant-garde of a change in the
representational theory of the body in motion which
is significant for modernity. Blasis worked on mod-
elling the body according to the ideals of classical
beauty (but after Canova rather than Winckelmann).
This ideal owed its aesthetic to the eighteenth cen-
tury7, but its application to motion was new. How
could the sculptural ideal that determined the aes-
thetic of the body in the eighteenth century be applied
to dance? How could one perform its purity of line,
clarity and balance of proportion in each movement,
in the dance dynamic? This problem (the inverse of
the Laocoön situation) was not, historically speaking,
entirely new to an aesthetics of dance. The represen-
tative ballet of the Baroque in particular was founded
on such geometric principles. Whereas there, how-
ever, the Cartesian principles of the division of space
and the requirements of courtly representation placed
ballet in approximately the same category as archi-
tecture, Blasis was faced with the question of how to
combine the achievements of eighteenth century
dance theatre -- the dramatic ‘‘ballet d’action’’8 -- and
the typical nineteenth century concept of a moving
artistic body trained to virtuosity. Jean Georges
Noverre, an advocate of the authenticity of bodily
Figure 1. John Weaver, ‘Orchesography’ (1706). Bibl. de l’
expression and the dramatic effect of ballet d’action, Opéra, in: Laurence Louppe (ed.) DANSES TRACÉES. Des-
had condemned every performance of virtuoso dance sins et Notation des Chore´ographes. Exhibition catalogue. (Dis
art: ‘‘renounce cabrioles, entrechats and over-compli- Voir, Paris 1991), p. 27.
 THE CODE OF TERPSICHORE 69

A teacher cannot too strongly recommend his scholars to

have incessantly before them those master-pieces of paint-
ing and sculpture, which have been saved from the wreck of
antiquity. Those immortal offsprings of genius, those
enrapturing examples of the beau ide´al of the fine arts will
considerably assist the cultivation of their taste.12

On the one hand, therefore, the dancer should ‘‘sculpt

his body’’ by finding his models in art (rather than in
nature, as was implied in eighteenth century debates
on mimesis, and also in Noverre). On the other hand,
it was absolutely necessary that the founding princi-
ples of a science of movement be rooted in the study
of geometry and the mechanics of the body; in Blasis’
words, a mathematical task, an effort, ‘‘which I may
venture to term mathematical by reason of its preci-
sion’’.13 Blasis states that the figures in the ‘‘Code of
Terpsichore’’ are drawn after nature, but then styled
on two levels:

In order that [the] execution may be correct, I have drawn

lines [. . .] over the principal positions of these figures, which
will give [them] an idea of the exact form they are to place
themselves in, and to figure the different attitudes of
dancing.14

The dancer, the pupil, was supposed to realise these

lines, to project them, as it were, through an imagi-
nary bodily scaffold onto each of his poses and
Figure 2. ‘Ferrère manuscript’ (1782) in: Marian Hannah movements. Blasis suggests a combination of theo-
Winter, The Pre-Romantic Ballet (Pitman, London 1974), p. retical and practical study for the lesson. The teacher
182. should first describe the figures -- by drawing the lines
-- then explain their geometry and the principles of
mechanics, then the pupils should copy down the
characteristic of this theory is that the concepts of figures, memorise them and finally -- with this struc-
training the body and of choreography (the composi-
tion of ballets) are defined and systematised as a code.
Blasis collected and classified every pose, every step and
every jump rather like an alphabet or a dictionary. And
he described and illustrated the rules for connecting
these elements of movement in a kind of syntax or
grammar of dance. The ‘‘Code of Terpsichore’’ con-
stitutes the first science of moving figures, and it con-
tains the body not as a bearer of signs but as a figure.
But in order to train the body as an artistic figure, a
grounding in geometry and mechanics, as well as an
extensive education in the arts, is required. In his
‘‘New Method of Instruction’’,11 Blasis recommends
that the dancer should educate his taste via the mas- Figure 3. Carlo Blasis, ‘The Code of Terpsichore’ in: Carlo
terpieces of art and sculpture. Blasis, The Code of Terpsichore, figures 29-31. (see note 1)
70 GABRIELE BRANDSTETTER
Figure 4. Carlo Blasis, ‘The Code of Terpsichore’, ibid., figures
32-34.
tural plan in mind -- embody the principles practically
in their exercise:
These lines and figures, drawn upon a large slate and
exposed to the view of a number of scholars, would be soon
understood and imitated by them [. . .]. The most diligent
might take copies of those figure on small slates, and carry
them with them to study at home, in the same manner as a
child, when he begins to spell, studies his horn-book in the
absence of the master.15
Blasis formalised these foundational lines even fur-
ther.
Dance education (correct ‘‘holding’’) and aesthetic
realisation (‘‘a pure taste’’) are the result of geometric
design, the spatial figure of the body and the con-
structive rather than the mimetic implementation of a
movement configuration:
It is necessary that the pupil should study these geometrical
lines and all their derivates. If he subjects himself to this
task, which I may venture to call mathematical, on account
Figure 5. Carlo Blasis, ‘The Code of Terpsichore’.
of its laboriousness, he is certain of holding himself
correctly afterwards, and will show that he received notions
of a pure taste [. . .].16
This approach is remarkable for tying a science of
movement to a conception of the body oriented
around the aesthetic of the fine arts. The dancer is a
machinist and a sculptor, a poet who performs his
own body, all thanks to the reflexive process of the
power of imag[in]ing: imag[in]ing ballet’s mathemat-
ics of the figure into a genuine performance.
But before I address the question of poetics, of a
poetic science of movement, I would like to return to
the construction of the ‘‘Code’’ and its interface with
mechanics.
‘‘I should compose,’’ writes Blasis,
a sort of alphabet of straight lines, comprising all the
positions of the limbs in dancing, giving these lines and
their respective combinations, their proper geometrical
appellations, viz: perpendiculars, horizontals, obliques,
right, acute, and obtuse angles, etc., a language which I
deem almost indispensable in our lessons.17
Blasis’ ‘‘alphabet’’ of lines, of geometric and stereo-
metric figures and the ways in which they are com-
bined by bodies in motion -- the code of dance -- does
indeed require the movement scientist to be a physi-
cist of movement: in other words, a mechanic.
 THE CODE OF TERPSICHORE
Mechanics, a field of physics, deals with the
movement of bodies under the influence of internal or
external forces. The fundamental concepts of physics
-- space, time, body or mass, force, energy or
acceleration -- are also units of key importance for
dance. In classical antiquity, from the time of Aris-
totle, mechanics was understood as the art of out-
witting nature, diverting things (bodies) by human, by
artificial interference in the natural order of things, by
making things behave contrary to their natural
course. This is achieved by constructing devices,
machines and tools. Mechanics, as an artistic practice,
as a science of motion, thus employs a strategy of
artful knowledge. It is no coincidence that Daedalus --
who built Ariadne’s dance space -- is the embodiment
of this tactical, artful relationship between man and
nature in the space between myth and the history of
technology: Daedalus, who invented the labyrinth
(the prototype of a defensive space as well as the
ur-stage of choreography); Daedalus, the inventor of
the first aeroplane, with which he wished to outwit the
gravity of the human body. Nineteenth century
ballet’s dreams of flight reconfigure the idea of
cheating nature, using the mechanics of the body.
This idea was responsible for the machines of military
and technological history, as well as the theatrical and
illusionary machines of the Baroque and the levita-
tion hinted at by the physical technique of dance. The
combination of ‘‘artful technology’’ and the art of
cheating led, following the discoveries made by optics
and the theories of perspective and perception that
accompanied them, to the art of cheating the eye.18
Blasis’ concept of the ‘‘ballet master as mechanic’’
should be read against this background. At stake is a
practice of knowledge that integrates two particular
related areas of mechanics -- dynamics and kinematics
-- into a science of bodies in motion. Drawing on
these concepts already had a certain tradition in the
eighteenth century: in movement pedagogy on the one
hand, as in the educational doctrines of Pestalozzi
and Basedow, for example; and in the theory of
description on the other -- and here there is also a long
tradition of what is termed ‘‘the science of ceremony’’.
This was how Julius von Rohr titled his compendium
on etiquette at court and how citizens should comport
themselves, for example during a dance at a ball.
A good air is of great importance, namely that one forms an
orderly positioning of the body and nice steps, that one
71
knows how to move the arms daintily and accurately in
accordance with the mathematical and musical rules of art
after the Cadance, so that they are not held too stiffly and
inflexibly, but also without too many gestures and unnec-
essary fleeting movements, so that the dancers resemble
puppets.19
The model for education of the body and the science
of its representation was still courtly, following the
example of Baldassare Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano. At
the beginning of the eighteenth century these two
conceptions of the body -- the pedagogical one and
that of the courtier -- were still connected. John
Locke, for example, in his treatise of 1705, Some
Thoughts Concerning Education,20 writes of the sci-
ence of movement that there is, in addition to the
knowledge that can be gained from books, another
type, which is, of course, essential for the gentleman.
‘‘Accomplishments necessary for Gentlemen, to be
allowed, and for which Masters must be had’’.21 This
consists of training the body through dance, not
through fencing and riding, which he considers too
one-sided:22 ‘‘Dancing being that which gives graceful
Motions all the life, and above all things Manliness,
and a becoming Confidence to young Children’’.23
The aim of training the body in dance is ‘‘a perfect
graceful Carriage’’.
In the late eighteenth century the concept of grace
was recast.24 Grace was no longer defined as the
posture of the gentleman -- his habitual self-repre-
sentation (the ‘‘sprezzatura’’ that is casually concealed
behind control of one’s body) -- but was now a
property of the beautiful soul, an expression of the
subject’s freedom:25 with Karl Philipp Moritz and
Schiller for example, and subsequently also in the
aesthetics of dance as an expressive theory with Gas-
paro Angiolini and Jean Georges Noverre.26 Peda-
gogical discourse on the education of the body, on the
other hand, advocated a programme of bodily fitness,
an idea which began to receive criticism around 1800.
Pestalozzi’s concept of education was marked by an
‘‘unholy elementarisation’’, according to Karl von
Rauner.27 Fragmenting the body, drilling it, member
by member, would only bestow, after all, the flexibility
of a puppet on a string. Education specialists after
1800, in contrast, propagated a holistic fitness pro-
gramme -- exercise for body and soul, as it were. And it
is no surprise that at this time a national education
programme was announced, in such texts as Johann
Gottlieb Fichte’s Addresses to the German Nation. The
72 GABRIELE BRANDSTETTER
body model propagated was (still) a classical/classicist
one. Exercises, wrote Fichte, should be ‘‘like those of
the Greeks’’.28 On the whole, however, this was of
course a romantic project for the future, for what was
still lacking was an ‘‘ABC of the art of bodily move-
ment’’. This ABC, according to Fichte,
must first be provided, and for this a man is needed who is
equally at home in the anatomy of the human body and in
scientific mechanics, who combines this knowledge with a
high degree of philosophical ability, and who is thus
capable of inventing in all its perfection that machine which
the human body is designed to be.29
Carlo Blasis was to be the philosopher and machinist,
the body pedagogue and poet, to systematically
extend this programme into a theory and methodol-
ogy. This, admittedly, did not take the form of a
national programme of education involving gymnas-
tics and exercise, but rather of an haute e´cole of bodily
representation in dance: an art form.30 The applica-
tion of mechanical discoveries to the theory of bodily
exercise came into fashion at the end of the eighteenth
century. This manifested itself largely in attempts at
Figure 6. Gerhard Ulrich Anton Vieth, ‘Übungen am Pferd,
Schlittschuhlaufen’ in: Versuch einer Enzyklopädie der Leibes-
übungen. Teil 2: System der Leibesübungen (Hartmann, Berlin
1795), Table I / III. in: Wolf Kittler, Die Geburt des Partisanen
aus dem Geist der Poesie, p. 330. (see note 6).
analysing the pull and leverage of movement, such as
those of Christian Ernst Wünsch (a teacher of Hein-
rich von Kleist), or at classifying the mechanical
conditions of certain types of sport, such as those of
Gerhard Ulrich Vieth in his Versuch einer Enzy-
klopädie der Leibesübungen [Attempt at an Encyclo-
paedia of Bodily Exercises].31
In this context Blasis’ theory occupies a special
place. The relationships between directions and forces
in the body -- the effect of those forces that belong to
the field of statics -- are what underpin his research into
movement, not the forces that, mechanically, exert
influence from the outside, such as pull and leverage.
‘‘Statics’’ can be defined as ‘‘the art of balance’’. It
incorporates the rule of equilibrium and the conditions
of those forces that attack the motionless body. Since
Archimedes’ theory of the centre of gravity, statics has
been regarded as a special area of dynamics. Tracing
problems of dynamics back to problems of statics first
became possible with the help of d’Alembert’s princi-
ple (established in 1794 at the École polytechnique in
Paris). This is precisely what happens in Blasis’ theory
of movement. The first textbook to deal systematically
with questions of statics was published in 1824 by
Claude Louis Marie Henri Navier, at approximately
the same time as Blasis’ dance system.
Carlo Blasis’ central reflections on the mechanics
of movement are related to problems of statics. Each
pose, each movement, is constructed with the aim of
establishing perfect control of balance. The lines that
Blasis draws onto the figures in his code are, above
all, perpendicular lines. And thus the sentence that
Blasis quotes at the very beginning of his ‘‘New
Method of Instruction’’, which functions as the motto
of his theory and aesthetics -- ‘‘Nulla dies sine linea’’32
-- takes on a double meaning. In a painterly sense it
implies the sculptural line of the figure, but also the
perpendicular line of the centre of gravity. ‘‘Endeav-
our to hold your body in perfect equilibrium’’, he
instructs, ‘‘never let it depart from the perpendicular
line […]’’.33 It is this kinetic theme, the question of the
centre of gravity and the perpendicular line, that
connects Blasis’ theory and practice of dance move-
ment with Heinrich von Kleist’s model of grace,
moving between human performance of the body and
the mechanics of marionette movement. The vis
motrix follows the principle of gravity -- in the
movement of the pendulum: ‘‘Each movement, he
said, had its center of gravity; it sufficed to control
 THE CODE OF TERPSICHORE
this point within the interior of the figure; the limbs,
which were nothing but pendula, followed by them-
selves in a mechanical way without any further
assistance’’.34 All of the movements which follow this
principle are graceful, they ‘‘are accomplished with an
ease, lightness and grace that astonish every sensitive
mind’’.35 This ‘‘simple figure’’, which becomes reali-
sable via mastery of gravity and adjustment of the
perpendicular line, follows Blasis’ above-mentioned
principle of mathematical-geometric reflection and its
embodiment by the dancer.
Blasis’ concept -- a mechanics and poetics of the
figure -- is exemplified (and this is the more complex
aesthetic model)36 by two poses: by the ‘‘arabesque’’
and by the ‘‘pirouette’’.
The arabesque is one of Blasis’ preferred poses.
Work on the centre of gravity, the problem of where
to place weight and of harmonious balance are
extremely difficult here: ‘‘Let your body be, in gen-
eral, erect and perpendicular on your legs, except in
certain attitudes, and especially in arabesques, when it
must lean forwards or backwards according to the
position you adopt’’.37 The arabesque is an extremely
unstable pose. From a static point of view the body is
in an unstable balance, which means that the centre of
gravity is located in the highest possible position. This
Figure 7. Carlo Blasis, ‘The Code of Terpsichore’ in: Carlo
Blasis, The Code of Terpsichore, figure 32. (see note 1).
73
also means that the body ‘‘carries’’ the greatest pos-
sible energy. If one is deflected from this position --
for example by losing one’s balance, in a pose that
borders on instability -- the kinetic moment occurs
when the body displaces itself far from its location.
This is the moment when weight and weight place-
ment have to move in perfect harmony: ‘‘weight’’,
‘‘centre of gravity’’ and ‘‘counterpoise’’.38
Of the Centre of Gravity in a Dancer: The weight of a man
standing upon one leg is divided in an equal manner on the
point that sustains the whole, (see fig. 1, plate X) and as he
moves, the central line of gravity passes exactly through the
middle of the leg that rests wholly on the ground.39
Mastering this complicated equilibrium, channelling
the nature of the body into a sovereignty that rules over
the centre of gravity, brings about precisely that plea-
sure in the fragile body sculpture of the arabesque
which defines the moment of grace. Blasis maintains
that he was the first to discover that the perfect example
of the levitating dance pose of the attitude was the
sculpture ‘‘Mercury’’ by Giovanni da Bologna.40
From an art historical point of view this statue is
considered one of the most important examples of
Mannerism. With it, Giovanni da Bologna is said to
have found one of the most beautiful resolutions
of a figure levitating upwards -- the ‘‘linea serpenti-
nata’’.
The second example of a theory and methodology
of mechanics in dance is the pirouette. According to
Blasis, the pirouette was only really acquired by dance
in the nineteenth century. Earlier, in Noverre’s time,
these wonderful and extraordinarily perfect, quick
turns were unknown. The great contemporary danc-
ers Dauberval, Gardel and Vestris were the true
inventors of the pirouette and therefore also of vir-
tuosity in dance: ‘‘Among our ancient artists those
beautiful tems (sic!) of perpendicularity and equilib-
rium, those elegant attitudes and enchanting arabes-
ques were unknown. That energetic execution, that
multiplicity of steps [. . .] and pirouettes were not then
in practice’’.41 As these figures, these various ways of
turning, are extremely complicated and demand
‘‘steady uprightness and unshaken equilibrium’’,
Blasis gives an extensive treatment of the turn and its
three phases: the preparation, the turn itself and the
various ways of bringing it to an end.42 Here too the
perpendicular line and centre of gravity have to be
74 GABRIELE BRANDSTETTER

long been familiar to both a theoretical and practical

history of mechanics. Only at the end of the eighteenth
century, however, were these mechanical investiga-
tions applied to the movement of human and animal
bodies and to conceptions of their function: at work,
in dance, in the military and during sport, for example.
Around this time the technology of the steam
engine -- with flywheel and centrifugal force regulator
-- also found wider application. The first steam
engines had in fact been built at the end of the eigh-
teenth century already, in the wake of Watt’s
revolutionary discovery.44 But it was only in the 1820s
and 1830s that this engine technology came into its
own. It is also striking that the industrial application
of this technology was accompanied by a discursive
turn: on the one hand in the aestheticisation of engine
technology and on the other in its anthropomorphi-
sation -- it was conceived of and metaphorised as
analogous to the movement of the human body. This
can be seen in nineteenth century concepts of labour,
in questions of self-steering and in the debates on
tiredness that are connected with them.45
A picture by Jean Ignace Grandville from 1834
depicting moving figures is characteristic of the con-
text in which this anthropomorphising application
took place.

Figure 8. Giovanni da Bologna (1528-1608), ‘Mercurio’,

Museo Nazionale, Florence, in: Gerhard Zacharias, Ballett --
Gestalt und Wesen. Die Symbolsprache im europäischen Schau-
tanz der Neuzeit (DuMont, Cologne 1962), plate 16.

under precise control. There are additional elements,

however, which include the dynamics of the turn and
the regulation of centrifugal force through the arms
and legs -- bordering on eccentricity, almost falling
out of the ‘‘line of gravity’’.

This pirouette has something in it of a magical appearance,

for as the body leans so much over, and seems on the point
of falling at each turn of the pirouette, one might think
there was an invisible power that supported the dancer,
who counterbalances his eccentricity from the line of
gravity by the positions of his arms and legs, and the great
rapidity of his motions.43

With this extensive discussion of the mechanics of the

Figure 9. Jean Ignace Grandville, ‘Bewegungsfiguren’ (1834)
turn in the human body, Blasis placed himself at the in: Jan Pieper, ‘Die Maschine im Interieur. Ludwig Persuis’
intersection of the movement sciences and the tech- Dampfmaschinenhaus im Babelsberger Park’, Daidalos 53 (15
nological concepts of his time. These processes had September 1994), pp. 104--115 (p. 113).
 THE CODE OF TERPSICHORE 75

The mechanical theatre opens up a strange, almost

grotesque stage of movement, framed by the obliga-
tory curtain, with seats for spectators and applauding
hands. In the swing of the turn, in the distorting
dynamics of centrifugal force, disparate things and
forms proceed from one other and into one other with
no division: a transformation in a continuous flow of
movement. At the centre, however, the Sylphide bal-
lerina of Romantic ballet whirls around en pointe in a
pirouette. She is the flywheel of this great, general
rotation. To her left, legs in grotesque-arabesque
poses are moving -- having gained their independence
as a particularised bodily series. To her right, the
human body is transformed into a doll and finally
into a spinning top by the speedy mechanics of the
turn. This scenario pushes the theatricity of move-
ment as a figure of virtuoso mechanics, in the sense of
Blasis’ body code, to the extreme -- into the grotesque.
It stages a fascination with a uniform, inexhaustible
and self-regulating mechanics of movement, and Figure 10. ‘Fanny Cerrito’ (Turin 1835). Lithograph by Ajello
reveals the new world of energy and of nature cheated and Doyen from a drawing by Battaglia. Raccolta di Stampa,
by technology on the threshold of the industrial age.46 Castello Sforzesco, Milan, in: Ivor Guest, Fanny Cerrito. The
This is the point at which mechanics and poetry Life of a Romantic Ballerina, 2nd revised edition (Dance
Books, London 1974), figure Ib.
interface, literally: in the ‘‘turn-moment’’ of the pir-
ouette, in its giddiness, in the giddiness of a new,
hybrid concept of the figure. In Grandville’s picture, theory and practice. Together, in my opinion, they
the game of the aesthetic attraction of the nineteenth form a new theory of the figure. The epitome of this
century’s new moving pictures can already be observed theory, the figure of the figure as it were -- in keeping
-- as embodied in the dance of a Maria Taglioni, a with Romantic reflexivity -- is characterised (how could
Fanny Elssler or Fanny Cerrito: as a transitory scene it be otherwise) by the arabesque. In ballet ‘‘arabesque’’
of virtuoso body art, fought for in the fleeting balance delimits a particular group of poses.
act of the arabesque and pirouette en pointe. ‘‘Nothing can be more agreeable to the eye,’’ writes
The rapidly-turning wheels, the rushing handles and Blasis, ‘‘than those charming positions which we call
connecting rods give rise to fleeting rotating figures arabesques’’.48 Blasis himself traces the form of the
where individual forms, the (bodily) elements ob- arabesque back to ‘‘the paintings in fresco at the
servable in a state of calm, can no longer be identified. Vatican, executed after the beautiful designs of
Dynamic forms emerge, blurred sculptures that flow Raphael’’.49 And he identifies the term ‘‘arabesque’’
together to form new figures made of electricity and as being of Moorish origin.
rays. Here the horizon widens towards modernity’s
aesthetics of perception: the art of the fleeting, as Arabica ornamenta, as a term in painting, mean those
ornaments, composed of plants, light branches and flowers,
Baudelaire goes on to describe it shortly afterwards in with which the artist adorns pictures, compartiments, frises,
Le peintre de la vie moderne. The art of the ‘‘fugitive’’, of panels [. . .] the taste for this sort of ornaments was brought
the ‘‘transitory’’,47 where dance takes up a key position to us by the Moors and Arabs, from whom they have taken
in the fields of movement art and movement sciences. their name.50
Finally, I would like to return to Blasis and the
achievements of his Code of Terpsichore, which stands This figure, with its ‘‘aerial lightness, its variety, its
at the beginning of modernity’s great project of motion. liveliness’’,51 was introduced into dance in various
In this groundbreaking work the mechanics of body forms and groupings, as a ‘‘sculptural figure’’. Blasis
movement and a poetics of bodily representation meet in was the first to define the term for dance. And he
76 GABRIELE BRANDSTETTER
Figure 11. ‘Ten; Maria Taglioni als Schatten, Antonio Guerra
als Loredan’. Lithograph after Joseph Bouvier (London 1804)
in: Carl Dahlhaus und das Forschungsinstitut für Musikthe-
ater der Universiät Bayreuth (eds.), unter Leitung von Sieghart
Döhring, Pipers Enzyklopädie des Musiktheaters. Oper --
Operette -- Musical -- Ballett, in 6 volumes and with an index
(Piper, Munich 1997), Volume 6 (Spontini to Zumsteeg), p.
233.
Figure 12. Paul Renouard, ‘Exercises de danse à l’opéra’ in:
Oscar Bie, Der Tanz. Mit Buchschmuck von Karl Walser und
hundert Kunstbeilagen (Bard, Marquardt & Co., Berlin 1906),
illustration between p. 308 and 309.
reconfigured, to a certain extent, those arabesque
ornaments that were still surface and line figures and
floor patterns in the Baroque and in Mannerism, into a
spatial figure. As only Heinrich von Kleist with his
Marionettentheater did otherwise, Blasis’ theory trans-
formed the mechanics of bodily movement and bodily
representation into a figure of grace: the arabesque.
And he did so in a new configuration of painting,
sculpture and mechanics. A model of representation of
the body emerges from this meeting between science
and the arts, a model that reflects the conditions of its
constitution. The ‘‘Code of Terpsichore’’ is therefore a
language of movement as well as a configuration of the
‘‘muse of dance’’: mechanics as the matrix of grace.
Whereas Kleist, with his Marionettentheater, pro-
poses a figure of thought of grace of a second order,
somewhere between animal and doll, Blasis brings to-
gether the movement science of mechanics and the
descriptive theory of grace (as mimesis) into a poetics
of the arabesque; the arabesque as a figure of that
aesthetic of the fleeting, of elevation and evanescence,
which we see when we conjure up pictures of nine-
teenth century Romantic ballet.
Figure 13. ‘Eva Evdokimova’ in: Max Niehaus, Ballett Faszi-
nation. Vom Studio zur Bühne (Nymphenburger, Munich
1972), illustration 28.
 THE CODE OF TERPSICHORE
The arabesque in ballet also represents a figure of
femininity, just as Kleist’s figure of grace represents
the figure of the male hero, but that is another issue
altogether.
Notes
* Translated from the German by Chantal Wright.
1
Cited throughout this paper in the 1830 edition, see Blasis
1830.
2 20
Cf. Souritz 1990.
3 21
Blasis 1968 includes a biographical sketch and foreword by
Mary Stewart Evans. See the introduction on p.VIII. The fact
that, even today, ballet teachers study the fundamentals of
anatomy as part of their training can also be traced back to
Blasis.
4
Bie 1906, p. 301.
5
Cf. Blasis 1830, p. 95, see note 1.
6
Kleist’s puppet, as a ‘‘machinist’’, similarly embodies both
the mechanist and the inspiration behind the finding/discovery
of movement (as one who imagines himself into the figure). Cf.
on the ‘question of movement’ and the subject of grace: Kittler
1987; Kleiner 1994 ; Knab 1996. In contrast, Christian Paul
Berger’s study of Kleist Bewegungsbilder. Kleists Marionetten-
theater zwischen Poesie und Physik, (Berger 2000), does not,
even though the title would suggest otherwise, investigate the
aesthetics and mechanics of movement, but rather gives a
(philosophical--anthropological) interpretation of integral
‘‘moving pictures’’ in Kleist -- an approach which in my
opinion is too holistic for a theory and description of
movement and which does not differentiate between the
complex tangle of discourses which developed in the eighteenth
century prior to Kleist and Blasis.
7
Blasis never tires of promoting study of the fine arts as a
source of influence on a dancer’s powers of imagination:
‘‘While upon the stage, the dancer should never cease to be a
potential model to a painter or sculptor’’; and he therefore
advises the student ‘‘to study both drawing and music, as these
will be of the greatest value to them in their art.’’ (Blasis 1968,
p. 8 and p. 10, see note 3).
8
On Noverre’s foundation of this as an independent dramatic
art form, cf. Noverre 1930.
9
Noverre 1930, Letter 4, p. 29. Also cf. Brandstetter 1990.
10
The first version of his ‘‘treatise’’ was published in Milan
in 1820. Blasis published a study in Paris that makes
reference to the ‘‘querelle des anciennes et des modernes’’,
from the perspective of an aesthetics oriented around
movement, the body and dance: De l’Origine et des Progre`s
de la Danse Ancienne et Moderne. Following his main work
The Code of Terpsichore, which was revised many times and
translated into many European languages, Blasis wrote a late
anthropological tract: L’uomo fisico, intellettuale e morale,
Blasis 1857.
11
Cf. Blasis 1830, Part 2: Theory of Theatrical Dancing, p.
93ff.
12
Ibid., p. 97f.
77
13
Ibid., p. 96.
14
Ibid.
15
Ibid., p. 97.
16
Ibid.
17
Ibid., p. 96f.
18
The relationship between the concept of the body described
here and a history of perception, of perspective, of the
‘‘showroom’’ of the body (as theatricity) requires more
extensive research. Cf. on the horizons of a cultural-historical
theory of perception, Crary 1990 and Crary 1999.
19
Julius Bernhard von Rohr, as cited in Frühsorge 1990, p. 48.
Locke ([1705]1968).
Ibid., p. 310.
22
Ibid.
23
Ibid.
24
The treatise Essai sur la Beaute´ by Antoine de Marcenay de
Ghuy takes up an interesting position in the matter of
representation of the body and the concepts of beauty and of
grace, because he situates his concept of (movement and)
beauty between sculpture, mechanics and physiology: ‘‘c’est
que la grace est indépendante des belles proportions; [. . .] ce
rapport exact entre la pensée & les signes representatifs qu’il
auroit dû caractériser, a négligé maladroitement la partie la
plus essentielle de son art’’ (de Marcenay de Ghuy [1770]
1972, p. 30f).
25
In German, this is signalled by a change in expression from
Grazie [grace] to Anmut [charm, loveliness, elegance]; cf. Knab,
1996 and Kleiner 1994.
26
See Brandstetter 1990.
27
As cited in Kittler 1987, p. 343.
28
Cf. ibid., p. 333.
29
The aim here is that ‘‘every step [of this human machine]
occurs in the only possible correct order, each one prepares
and facilitates all future ones, and the health and beauty of the
body are not only not endangered but strengthened’’, as cited
in Kittler 1987, p. 33.
30
The complexity of bodily discipline and its discourses ran on
two different levels in the nineteenth century. On the one hand it
ran in the direction of a gymnastics (and later exercise)
movement, which also fulfilled a labour-market function and
was promoted as a fitness programme for the military. On the
other hand it operated on an aesthetically coded level: in dance
(stage dance as well as social dance), a direction it took
seemingly independently of the gymnastics movement’s advo-
cacy of bodily fitness, but which turned up numerous links
between body culture and ‘‘free dance’’ around 1900, as part of
a wide-reaching reform movement which extended to the
‘‘social body’’ as well as the artistic body of the dancer. It is
still striking that discursive-analytic research into nineteenth
century concepts of the body does not take up this proximity
and the specific difference between economic/hygienic discourse
of the body and an aesthetic discourse of the body (which is
nonetheless arranged around the knowledge dispositives of the
age). Cf., for example, Sarasin 2001.
31
Kittler 1987, p. 330.
32
Blasis 1830, Part 2: Theory of Theatrical Dancing, p. 93ff.
33
Ibid., p. 72.
78 GABRIELE BRANDSTETTER

34
von Kleist 1990, p. 415. Brandstetter, G.: 1990, ‘Die Bilderschrift der Empfindungen’,
35
Ibid., p. 417. Jean Georges Noverre’s ‘Lettres sur la Danse, et sur les
36
If one wanted to make a further link to Kleist’s Marion- Ballets’ and Friedrich Schiller’s treatise ‘Über Anmut und
ettentheater, then one could analyse the figure of the ellipse Würde’, in A. Aurnhammer, K. Manger, F. Strack (eds.),
(with an eye to the figure of the arabesque, see the conclusion Schiller und die höfische Welt, pp. 77--93, Tübingen: Nie-
of this paper), with respect to both its mathematical and its meyer.
tropical ‘‘incarnation’’. Cf., on the ellipse as trope, de Man Brandstetter, G.: 1995, Tanz-Lektüren. Körperbilder der
1984, p. 286. Avantgarde, Frankfurt a.M: Fischer-Taschenbuch.
37
Blasis 1830, Part 2: Theory of Theatrical Dancing, p. 65. Burckhardt, M.: 1999, Vom Geist der Maschine. Eine Ges-
38
It should at least be noted here that one of Blasis’ many chichte kultureller Umbrüche, Frankfurt a.M./New York
important innovations in dance technique was the discovery of Campus.
‘‘counterpoise’’ for a theory and practice of movement. Crary, J.: 1990, Techniques of the Observer, Camb., Mass: MIT
39
Blasis 1830, p. 73. Press.
40
Ibid., p. 74. ‘‘It is, in my opinion, a kind of imitation of the Crary, J.: 1999, Suspensions of perception: Attention, Spectacle,
attitude so much admired in the Mercury of J. Bologne.’’ and Modern Culture, Camb., Mass./London: MIT Press.
41
Ibid., p. 82. Feldman, A.: 2000, ‘Der menschliche Touch. Zu einer histor-
42
Blasis clearly describes the physical conditions necessary ischen Anthropologie und Traumanalyse von selbsttätigen
for a stable starting point for a pirouette (feet, toes, contact Instrumenten’, in G. Brandstetter and H. Völckers (eds.),
with the floor): ‘‘Let your body be steadily fixed on your legs ReMembering the Body, pp. 224--260, Ostfildern-Ruit:
before you begin to do your pirouettes, and place your arms Hatje Cantz.
in such a position as to give additional force to the impulse Frühsorge, G.: 1990, (ed.), Einleitung zur Ceremoniel-Wis-
that sends you round, as also to act as a balance to senschaft der Privatpersonen [Berlin 1728], Edition Leipzig:
counterpoise every part of your body as it revolves on your Leipzig: VHC, Acta humaniora.
toes’’ (Blasis, 1830, p. 85). Kittler, W.: 1987, Die Geburt des Partisanen aus dem Geist der
43
Ibid., p. 86. Poesie. Heinrich von Kleist und die Strategie der Be-
44
On the relationship between the body-machine and the freiungskriege, Freiburg i.Br.: Rombach.
steam engine in the context of nineteenth century physiology, Kleiner, G.: 1994, Die verschwundene Anmut, Frankfurt a.M.:
cf. Osietzki 1998. Lang.
45
On the relationship between mechanics and tiredness, cf., von Kleist, H.: 1990, tr. Roman Paska, ‘On the Marionette
for example, Koschorke 2000, as well as Rabinbach 1998. On Theater’, in M. Feher (ed.), Fragments for a History
the history and anthropology of the machine, see also of the Human Body, Part I, pp. 415--421, New York:
Burckhardt 1999. Urzone.
46
Cf. Feldman 2000, pp. 224-260. Knab, J.: 1996, Ästhetik der Anmut. Studien zur ‘‘Schönheit der
47
Cf. Brandstetter 1995. Bewegung’’ im 18. Jahrhundert, Frankfurt a.M.: Lang.
48
Blasis 1830, p. 74. Koschorke, A.: 2000, ‘Selbststeuerung. David Hartleys Assoz-
49
Ibid.; on the arabesque cf. the seminal studies of Oesterle iationstheorie, Adam Smiths Sympathielehre und die
(2000a), as well as Oesterle (2000b). Dampfmaschine von James Watt’, in I. Baxmann, M. Franz,
50
Blasis 1830, p. 74. W. Schäffner (eds.), Das Laokoon-Paradigma. Zeichenre-
51
Ibid., p. 75. gime im 20. Jahrhundert, pp. 179--190, Berlin: Akademie.
Locke, J.: [1705] ‘Some Thoughts Concerning Education’, in J.
L. Axtell (ed.), The Educational Writings of John Locke,
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New York: Dover Publ. New York, Oxford, Vienna: Lang.
 THE CODE OF TERPSICHORE 79

Oesterle, G.: 2000b, ‘Arabeske’, in K. Barck et al. (eds.), Äs-
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Il ballo romantico in Italia, pp. 137--156 (La Danza Italiana,
nos. 8--9), Rome: Edizioni del Centro documentazione
danza.
Gabriele Brandstetter (1997--2003), Professor of Modern
German Literature Studies at the University of Basel, since
2003 Professor of Theater Studies at the Free University of
Berlin. Her research focus is on: performance theories; con-
cepts of body and movement in notation, image and perfor-
mance; dance, theatricality and gender differences. Selected
publications: Loie Fuller. Tanz - Licht-Spiel - Art Nouveau
1989, (with co-Author B. Ochaim); Tanz-Lektüren. Körper-
bilder und Raumfiguren der Avantgarde (1995); ReMembering
the Body. Körperbilder in Bewegung (2000, with co-editor
Sibylle Peters); Erzählen und Wissen. Paradigmen und Aporien
ihrer Inszenierungen in Goethes ’Wahlverwandschaften’ (Ed.,
2003).

Institut fur Theaterwissenschaft

Freie Universitat Berlin
Grunewaldstrasse 35
12165 Berlin
Germany
E-mail: sekbrand@zedat.fu-berlin.de