The Arabesque

Nothing can be more agreeable to the eye than those charming positions which we call arabesques, and which we have derived from antique bassorilievos, from a few fragments of Greek paintings, and from the paintings in fresco at the Vatican, executed after the beautiful designs of Raphael, wrote Carlo Blasis in The Code of Terpsichore (1828).' As everyone knows, the pose or body attitude called arabesque is executed in supporting the body on one leg while the other leg is held backward in the air. Eight years before, in his first work, Traite elementaire theorique etpratique de l'art de la danse, Blasis had theorized the arabesque as a body attitude, the first to do so in dance technique. Its meaning, though, was still broad: the free leg could be extended both backward and forward. In the Traite he emphasized, however, that the word arabesque was long since in use with a broader meaning: Nos maitres d'ecole de danse auront aussi introduit dans l'art cette expression, a raison des tableaux ressemblans [sic] aux arabesques de la peinture, par les groupes qu'ils ont forme de danseurs et de danseuses, s'entrelacant de mille manieres, avec des guirlandes, des couronnes, des cerceaux ornes de fleurs, et melanges quelquefois d'instrumens [sic] antiques propres a la pastorale.2

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• Resonanzen des Tragischen

  Open Access•Nicole Haitzinger•Resonanzen des Tragischen•2015

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• The evolution of the arabesque in dance

  Francesca Falcone•Dance Chronicle•1999

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