[l'aîne]
(b Paris, March 1648; d Paris, 1719). French dancing-master, choreographer, violinist and possibly composer. He came from a family of violinists and dancing-masters. He danced the role of a monkey in 1660, and by 1666 he was clearly an accomplished and versatile professional. In 1674 he choreographed a divertissement by Cambert for performance at the English court. Among his illustrious pupils was the dauphine, Marie-Anne Christine-Victoire.
Favier was one of several late 17th-century French dancing-masters to devise a dance-notation system. He used it to preserve his choreography for A.D. Philidor's Le mariage de la grosse Cathos (1688), which includes movement notation for all 28 performers, including singers and instrumentalists. Favier notation lacks the visual attractiveness and readily discernible floor patterns of Beauchamp-Feuillet notation, but it has two advantages over the latter: dances for large groups are more easily notated, since each dancer has his own ‘part’, as in a music score; and greater rhythmic precision is possible....
