Péris and Devadasis in Paris: orientalist ballet as poetic translation

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Amanda Lee is Visiting Assistant Professor of French at Colgate University, and recipient of the Center for European Studies First Article Prize in the Humanities for: “The Romantic Ballet and the Nineteenth-Century Poetic Imagination,” in Dance Chronicle. She earned her Ph.D. in French from Washington University in St. Louis in 2014, with a Graduate Certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She’s currently working on her book manuscript: French Dance Poetics: Transcribing Movement, Gender, and Culture.

Notes

1 Gautier described the private performance in an article for La Presse, August 20, 1838, in Ecrits sur la danse, eds. Ivor Guest and Martine Kahane (Arles: Actes sud, 1995), 64–71. The performers (Indian devadasis or bayadères) were housed in a small bungalow on what is now number 23 avenue Montaigne (65 n. 4). Gérard de Nerval documented the performance for Le Messager, August 12, 1838, see “Les Bayadères à Paris,” in Œuvres complètes Vol. 1, ed. Jean Guillaume and Claude Pichois (Gallimard, “Bibliothèque de la Pléiade,” 1989), 447–451. Other articles previewing the troupe’s dances and abode included “Les Bayadères à l’allée des Veuves,” in Le Figaro (13 Aug. 1838): 3, as well as “Les Bayadères,” Journal des débats (August 13, 1838). Auguste Barre likely attended the private showing as well, since he was already working on his sculpture of the bayadère Amany (in one of her dancing poses) before her troupe’s first public performance at the Théâtre des Variétés, 22 Aug. 1838 (Gautier [1838] 1995, Ecrits, 74). For more information on periodical coverage of the Bayadères in Paris, see (Bor 2007, 58).

2 The eighteen-month tour was organized by French impresario E.C. Tardivel, who brought to Europe four dancers and three musicians from Tiruvendipuram, a town near Pondichéry. The contract was reprinted in the Revue et gazette des théâtres, and the Courrier des théâtres in 1838 (Bor 2007, 55). It can also be found in “Les Bayadères,” Musée des familles: Lectures du soir, vol. 6 (Paris: Ch. Delagrave, 1839, 29). The Sanskrit term for a female servant of God (or temple dancer) is “devadasi,” a part of the Hindu tradition. See Prasad ( 1990); Vijaisri ( 2004). Complicating the European narrative of the temple dancer, Soneji’s study of the devadasi in Tajore (1798–1855) reveals that while European writings about India are filled with the term, it is absent in regional Marathi court records. Her research shows that depending on the context the devadasi acted as religious affiliate or concubine, and symbolized either modernity or the past. According to Soneji, the devadasis performed in court rituals, religious ceremonies, and private events (sometimes to honor European visitors), contributing to Europe and India’s imagination of themselves and each other. See Soneji’s (2012).

3 The dancers debuted their European tour in Bordeaux before coming to Paris (Bor 2007, 58). The term bayadère appears as early as 1770 in L’Abbé Raynal’s (1783, 114–18). Étienne de Jouy links the term to the Portuguese verb bailar, meaning, “to dance,” in Les Bayadères, opéra en trois actes; (Paris: Roullet, 1821, 7). For more information on the role of the bayadère in the French historical imagination see Marsh (2015, 40–47 and 75–77). See also Assayag (1988, 198). European writers often conflated the terms devadasi, bayadère, and temple dancer, as will I in this article.

4 A péri is “(in Persian mythology) a mythical superhuman being, originally represented as evil but subsequently as a good or graceful genie or fairy. The name comes ultimately from Avestan (Zend) pairikā, any of several beautiful but malevolent female demons employed by Ahriman to bring comets and eclipses, prevent rain, and cause failure of crops and dearth,” in the Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (2005). The word péri first appeared in Barthélemy d'Herbelot de Molainville’s Bibliothèque orientale (1697). The Avesta is a set of Zoroastrian sacred texts. See Adhami.

5 In a variation of this term, Michel Fokine used the words “oriental ballet” to describe his creations for the Ballets russes in Memoirs of a Ballet Master (1961, 155). Lynn Garafola discusses the aesthetics of these works at length in her book Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes (1989). While more recently, Molly Engelhardt has applied “oriental ballet,” to works performed in London in the 1830s and 1840s offering audiences “the visual topoi they expected to see – dancing girls, funeral pyres, licentious sultans … .– the ‘false and monstrous’ relics that fed European fantasies,” with inaccurate backdrops from varied and vague locales, and classical ballerinas in tutus using “scarves, earrings, darkened faces – as props for representing an exotic, non-specific east” in “The Real Bayadère Meets the Ballerina on the Western Stage,” Victorian Literature and Culture 42.3 (2014, 510).

6 According to Stavros Stavrou Karayanni, ghawazee is the “general term by which female dancers were known in Egypt during most of the nineteenth century,” while the “awâlim, were learned female singers who enjoyed great respect,” and who perpetuated oral tradition, see Dancing Fear & Desire, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2004, 28–29). The term almeh was adopted for dancers when the ghawazee became subject to legislative constraints and banishment under ruler Mohammad Ali Pasha in 1834, though their services were in high demand amongst European tourists (28–29). Wendy Buonaventura argues that the “original ghawazee were gypsies, though the word has come to be used as a generic term for dancers rather than to denote a particular tribe, or tribes, as was once the case,” in Serpent of the Nile: Women and Dance in the Arab World (1998, 39).

7 See the “Essai sur les moeurs” for a mention of the a’lmeh and ghàouâzy dancers of Egypt in Description de l’Egypte, Vol. 14 (Paris: C.-L.-F. Panckoucke, 1821, 120).

8 It is important to note that while most of the movement in orientalist ballets was derived from Western classical ballet vocabulary, even the most traditional Romantic ballets were filled with national dances from such diverse European countries as Scotland, Spain, Italy, and Hungary. Fanny Elssler’s famous Spanish “Cachuca,” is an example. Furthermore, the dancer of the nineteenth century was herself othered by her appearance in Romantic ballets as an otherworldly, supernatural, androgynous or queer creature. Orientalist ballets take this othering one step further in geographical terms, transporting the dancer to such diverse locales as India, China, North Africa and the New World.

9 “Nineteenth-century choreographers utilized a repertory of movement markers that gave a transcript or a vibrant picture of a particular nation. These markers were distilled to an emblematic set of steps, gestures, attitudes and stylization that were understood by nineteenth century audiences as uniquely ‘Polish’, or ‘Spanish’ or ‘English’ etc.” See Arkin (1997, 134).

10 H. Justament, “Ballets pantomime de M.H. Justament,” manuscript, C. 891 (1-9), BN-Opéra. See also Arkin and Smith (1997, 41–42).

11 In Act 2 scene 4 of La Péri, Carlotta Grisi frenetically tries to avoid a bee that is pursuing her, rhythmically shaking her clothing. See Binney (1965, 118). In Act 1 scene 4 of Sacountala, the bee dance causes Douchmanta to fall in love with Sacountala. See Gautier (1858, 6).

12 André Dutertre joined the French campaign through Egypt and Syria in 1798–1801. See Terrage (1899) and L'expédition d'Égypte 1798-1801, Journal et souvenirs d'un jeune savant (Cosmopole, 2001 et 2003, 260–339).

13 Amalia Ferraris’ technical prowess en pointe was stunning. See Guest (1953, 103–122).

14 The words “other” and “othering” are described in A Dictionary of Human Geography, eds. Noel Castree, Rob Kitchin, and Alisdair Rogers (Oxford University Press, 2013) as “A person or group of people who are perceived to be different in some fundamental way from oneself and the group one perceives one belongs to … .Others are often defined by race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality.” Martin Jones, Rhys Jones, and Michael Woods have argued, “In describing the allegedly different qualities of peoples encountered on the periphery- which, in the majority of cases involved emphasizing their perceived weaknesses-Europeans could morally justify their efforts to civilize and exploit them” in An Introduction to Political Geography: Space, Place and Politics (New York: Routledge, 2004, 43).

15 La Presse, August 27, 1838.

16 France’s colonization of India began in 1601 and ended in 1793 with the loss of their colonies to the British. Pondicherry was the most significant and lucrative of the colonies, and was lost in 1763. See Mehta (2002, 15–16). For more information on the colonial history between France and India, see Darby (1974); and Vincent and Padgaonkar (1990).

17 The French occupation of Egypt lasted from 1798-1801, when British, Ottoman, and Albanian forces recaptured the country. See Cole (2007).

18 In August of 1842, Gautier published La Mille et deuxième nuit in the periodical Le Musée des familles, a charming orientalist tale in which Scheherazade visits the author in his Parisian garret, begging him to entertain her with a fantastical and distracting story. The love story that follows (between Mahmoud-Ben-Ahmed and Ayesha, daughter of the Calif) resembles closely the plot of La Péri in prose form.

19 The poem appeared in La Presse on July 25, 1843.

20 In what was most likely a publicity stunt, Gautier published a review of his ballet in La Presse, in the form of a personalized letter to Nerval.

21 Muhammad Ali Pasha, originally from Albania, ruled Egypt from 1805 until his death in 1848. His goal was to create a European style state and military, and he thus instituted reforms to encourage modernization and trade. These reforms included the Europeanization of education, agriculture, hospitals, and bureaucracy, just to name a few. See Sayyid-Marsot (1984) and Vatikiotis (1991).

22 Nerval describes this scene in a titillating fashion for his readers, before revealing that the dancers are male Khowals, allowing readers to experience a similar confusion and exposing them to queer sexuality through dance (Karayanni 2004, 87–92). Gustave Flaubert was also intrigued by male almées during his travels to Egypt in 1849–1850, and viewed a dance performance by the female courtesan Kuchuk Hanem. See Flaubert (1973, 570–572 and 605–606). Said famously referenced this encounter with Kuchuk Hanem (Orientalism 6).

23 Many writers of the nineteenth century echoed this sentiment. See Baudelaire’s poem “Le Port,” in Petits poèmes en prose (1867–9) and Paul Verlaine’s poem “Qu’en dis-tu, voyageur, des pays et des gares” in Sagesse (1880).

24 Gautier also published a short account of his travels to Algiers for the inauguration of a train line to Blida in 1862, and was later an official guest in Egypt for the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. See Goellner (2018, 31–4).

25 Christopher W. Thompson refers to work’s tone as a “descent into hell,” in French Romantic Travel Writing: Chateaubriand to Nerval (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 211.

26 Théophile Gautier, Voyage pittoresque en Algérie, ed. Madeleine Cottin (Geneva: Librarie Droz, 1973), 237 and 257. The Aissoua sect originated in the sixteenth century and followed the teachings of Sidi Mohammed ben Aïssa, a Muslim saint from Meknès, see Goellner (2018, 35), and René Brunel, Essai sur la confrérie religieuse des Aïssaoua au Maroc (Paris: Paul Guethner, 1926).

27 Gautier, Voyage, 275–6.

28 Ibid.

29 La Presse, May 25, 1852.

30 The Voyage Pittoresque appeared only in installments rather than as a coherent final work. See Goellner (2018, 35–36).

31 The review was published August 4, 1845.

32 Shoshana Felman discusses Nerval’s attempt to reconcile his poetic imaginary (expressed through writing) with the real world, as key to his experience of madness, in Writing and Madness (Palo Alto, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2003).

33 This review of the ballet Le Diable à Quatre appeared in La Presse, August 18, 1845.

34 Gautier’s ballet opens in a sacred wood where King Douchmanta falls madly in love with Sacountala, promising to make her his queen. Promptly falling prey to an evil curse, Douchmanta loses his memory and his favorite consort condemns Sacountala to death. At the last possible moment, Douchmanta remembers Sacountala and her funeral pyre turns into a bed of flowers.

35 A resounding success, the ballet was performed fourteen times in 1858. Among its spectators were the Empress Eugénie and Prince Napoléon. Ernest Reyer’s musical score also inspired praise, though it was largely inspired by his stay in Algeria, and was more Arabic in nature than Indian (Binney 1965, 290–298 and Appendix B).

36 Gautier holds much in common with eighteenth-century philosophes who believed that exotic languages and dance possessed a unique capacity for poetic expression, linked to their supposed tendency to produce visual metaphors, to incorporate gesture and pantomime, and to express human sentiment in a natural and uninhibited manner. See Rosenfeld’s (2001, 76–78).

37 There are several important differences between Gautier’s ballet and Kalidasa’s text. Gautier received Léonard de Chezy’s 1830 translation of the text from his friend Maxime du Camp. He shortened Kalidasa’s seven act play (written between IV and V century AD), inserted a harem and a funeral pyre, and excised Sacountala’s pregnancy by Douchmanta. See Mehta (2002, 144–147). Further, Gautier’s adaptation of Shakuntala disregards Indian theatrical conventions, which were widely known at the time thanks to Alphonse de Lamartine’s Cours familiers de littérature (1856), where he alludes to the theatrical treatise Natyasastra, and outlines the theory of rasa, in which actors wear costumes and makeup in specific colors, combined with dance and music to portray a particular mood.

38 Frederic Jameson cautions against this ahistorical approach that in The Prison-House of Language (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974).

39 Gregory Colomb describes “materialist poetics” as a practice that “redefines the notion of particulars, treating poetic particulars (words, images, figures) as parts of an intricate web connecting the social facts of persons and places to the ‘prosaic’ particulars of history,” in Designs on Truth: The Poetics of the Augustan Mock-Epic (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992, xii). The reaction of spectators to Orientalist ballet is an example of the ways that political and social realities interact with material moving bodies and poetics.