Dance and Cultural Memory: Interpreting Fin de Siècle Performances of ‘Olde England’

Abstract

In late Victorian and Edwardian England, there existed in performance and in popular historical imagination, a cultural memory of the nation's ancient dances. This national repertoire had largely been constructed through nineteenth-century romantic imagery of ‘olde’ and ‘merrie’ England and appeared across a wide variety of genres and contexts. Alongside the morris, country and maypole dances were courtly dances such as the minuet and gavotte which were fashionable at costume balls, salons and on the stage. These dances were also taught to children of the middle and lower classes as a means of embodying what were regarded as earlier more civilised ways of moving and social interaction, as well as celebrating and engendering a vision of England as happy and communal. This article explores this fascination with England's so-called ancient dances, in particular, the Victorian rococo minuet, as a historically and socially situated manifestation of cultural memory. It raises issues of dance and nationalism, the transmission of fashionable dances across country and class, the recycling of dance imagery and practice, and the trend towards authentication in the revival of dances for popular consumption.

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