Dance and Music

(b Paris, France, c1762; d Washington, DC, April 11, 1841). American dancing master, choreographer, and composer of dance music. He was born into a family named Landrin with close connections to the court of Louis XVI. He was a pupil of Maximilien Gardel (1741–87), and for six years he was dancing master for the Paris Opéra. He left Paris three days after the fall of the Bastille in 1789 and arrived in Philadelphia in mid-1790. He changed his name, placing advertisements for his dancing schools as Mr. De Duport. Chiefly a choreographer and teacher of social dancing, Duport blended amateur and professional dancing with theatrical standards of content and performance. He wrote music and created hornpipes and other solo dances for his students, as well as duos such as figured minuets, allemandes, and waltzes; group dances, including complex French contredanses, cotillions, and English country dances; and ballets for his classes to perform at recitals. A music copybook in Duport’s hand traces his creative career from ...

French family of dancers and ballet-masters.

Gardel, Claude (d Paris, 1774)

Gardel, Maximilien Léopold Philippe Joseph (b Mannheim, Dec 18, 1741; d Paris, March 11, 1787)

Gardel, Pierre Gabriel (b Nancy, Feb 4, 1758; d Paris, Oct 18, 1840)

Member of Gardel family

(d Paris, 1774). French dancer. In 1741 he became ballet-master in Mannheim, where he was partly responsible for the choreography in Meride which opened the opera house on 17 January 1742. He later held appointments in Stuttgart, Metz (where he married the actress Jeanne Darthenay) and from ...

Member of Gardel family

(b Mannheim, Dec 18, 1741; d Paris, March 11, 1787). French dancer and ballet-master, son of Claude Gardel. He entered the Paris Opéra about 1755, and soon became a leading dancer along with such celebrities as Gaetano Vestris. Vestris, for unknown reasons, did not appear in Rameau’s Castor et Pollux on 21 January 1772, and Gardel was called on to take his place. He agreed to do so only if allowed to dance without a mask and with his own blonde hair instead of Vestris’s customary black wig. His appearance caused a sensation and in time led to the abolition of masks and wigs for male dancers.

In 1773 Gardel and his colleague Jean Bercher, called Dauberval, were appointed assistant ballet-masters to Vestris. On Vestris’s retirement in 1776 the two assistants expected to take his place, as was the usual practice at the Opéra; but Marie Antoinette had Noverre, formerly her dance teacher in Vienna, nominated to this position. Gardel and Dauberval started a campaign against Noverre, and by ...

Member of Gardel family

(b Nancy, Feb 4, 1758; d Paris, Oct 18, 1840). French dancer, son of Claude Gardel. In 1771 he entered the Opéra, where his elder brother was largely responsible for his training. He quickly became one of the best pupils of the Ecole de Danse, and soon after his début in 1774 reached the ranks of the leading dancers. In 1783 he became his brother’s assistant. In 1786 the brothers produced the ballet Les sauvages, for which they also wrote the music. On his brother’s death in 1787 Pierre was appointed ballet-master, a post he held for over 40 years with many successes both as dancer and as choreographer. Two of his best-known ballets were produced in 1790, Télémaque anns l’île de Calypso and Psyché; the latter remained in the repertory until 1829, reaching over 1150 performances. During the Revolution Gardel choreographed Le jugement de Paris...

(fl. 1784–1800). American dancing master and choreographer. Griffiths was the earliest-known choreographer to publish his work in the United States. He issued a collection of country dances and cotillions (Providence, 1788), and an expanded collection with instructions for polite deportment (Northampton, 1794). The whole or partial contents of these books were reprinted by several rural New England and New York publishers over the next 15 years. A broadside of the deportment rules was printed separately. Griffiths based his activities in New York (1784–7, 1796–9?) and Boston (1788–94), and taught in smaller towns in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and upstate New York. In 1800 he moved to Charleston, South Carolina, perhaps via Philadelphia. Through his publications and itinerant teaching, Griffiths strongly influenced the repertory of social dancing and behavior in New York and New England ballrooms in the early Federal period. Some of his choreographies, notably “Fisher’s Hornpipe,” are still danced today. Griffiths may have composed several tunes for use in his classes, such as “Griffiths Whim,” “Griffiths Fancy,” and “Duo Minuet.” And he may have been related to one of the Griffiths families active on the English stage during the second half of the 18th century....

[l’aîné]

Member of Leclair family

(b Lyons, May 10, 1697; d Paris, Oct 22, 1764). French composer, violinist, and dancer. He is considered the founder of the French violin school.

Before his 19th year, Leclair mastered violin playing, dancing, and lacemaking. He was then listed among the dancers at the Lyons opera, together with Marie-Rose Casthagnié whom he married on November 9, 1716. He may also have been active as a dancer and violinist in Rouen, where according to Gerber his patron was Mme Mezangère (La Laurencie however doubted the Rouen connection).

Leclair was in Turin in 1722, where he may have been drawn by employment at royal wedding festivities; he was evidently active there as a ballet-master, though he did not hold an official position. Possibly he received violin lessons from G.B. Somis.

Going to Paris in 1723, Leclair came under the patronage of one of the richest men in France, Joseph Bonnier, while he prepared his op.1 for publication. These sonatas were recognized for their originality and, according to one contemporary, they ‘appeared at first a kind of algebra capable of rebuffing the most courageous musicians’. Another wrote: ‘Le Clair est le premier qui sans imiter rien, Créa du beau, du neuf, qu’il peut dire le sien’ (‘Le Clair is the first person who, without imitating anything, created beautiful and new things, which he could call his own’)....