Madame Mariquita, Greek Dance, and French Ballet Modernism

Abstract

This article seeks to correct prevailing narratives of French ballet modernism, which exclude one of its earliest and most significant choreographers, Madame Mariquita. Although long overshadowed by the Diaghilev enterprise and by dancers such as Isadora Duncan, Mariquita's experiments with creating dances that drew on ancient Greek imagery while ballet mistress at the Paris Opéra-Comique in the early 1900s were central to ballet culture in France at a pivotal moment in dance history. This article discusses Mariquita's nascent ballet modernism through her choreography of Greek dances as well as her engagement with early twentieth-century French dance and broader cultural trends.

Reverse-Engineering the Sylph: Reclaiming Female Ballet Bodies in Florentina Holzinger’s TANZ

“…On late 19 th -and early 20 th -century France, prominent examples are Sarah Gutsche-Miller's work on Madame Mariquita and Hélène Marquié's work on Madame Stichel. Mariquita was a prolific creator who navigated diverse institutional and artistic contexts ranging from boulevard theater and music halls to the Opéra-Comique, and who integrated significant modernist tropes in her choreography (Gutsche-Miller, 2021); Stichel was the first principal female ballet mistress of the Paris Opéra; her work encompassed choreographing, dancing, teaching but also pursuing significant legal battles for the recognition of (women's) choreographic work (Marquié, 2015). Garafola's study of Nijinska (2022), filtering out her authorial innovations from the overshadowing presence of the Ballets Russes, furthers such work.…”