Le comédien anglais David Garrick, source d’inspiration pour la danse pantomime ?

2011

Jean-Georges Noverre (1727-1810), un artiste européen au siècle des Lumières

Laurence Marie

CRLC (Université Paris-Sorbonne)

Noverre began to write his Letters upon Dance between 1755 and 1757 at a time when he was in London working with David Garrick. This famous actor was credited to have introduced a new, natural style based on facial and bodily expression of passions. Noverre’s long stay in London was, for him, an unparalleled opportunity to watch Garrick play in performance, to see British theatre plays and pantomimes based on body action rather than on French declamatory style, to take part in theatrical debates on natural playing, and also to read the numerous books on the history of pantomime and on European aesthetics gathered in Garrick’s impressive library. The London experience, in connection with the aspiration for natural spectacle that emerged in France in the beginning of the 18th Century, helped Noverre deepen the approach of pantomime dance he first begun to develop.