V.1. 2. BACKERS, SEX AND MONEY

5.2. Backers sex and money

OUR GUIDE STRIDES THROUGH AN EMPTY PASSAGE

TOWARD WHAT LOOKS LIKE A BOARDED-UP DOOR 

Cyprian Leym

In brief

• The backers who finance performances

• Ballet, an art of the French court  

• Millionaires and ballerinas

• Degas's "Little dancer"

• A ceiling decorated by an orgy

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Next,

The backers who finance performances

THE BACKERS WHO FINANCE PERFORMANCES

THE CITY'S WEALTHIEST MEN FINANCED THE SHOWS BY

RESERVING THE MOST EXPENSIVE SEATS 

Those "subscribers"* might use them for their families or visitors from the provinces, on Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Fridays for a year... .

*The "abonnés," whom we will call "subscribers"

By Honoré Daumier

 ...but the main attraction was dinner on those nights in a private salon next to the now sealed-off door. The tycoons reached it through an entrance created for them alone, after leaving their carriages in the huge space surrounding it — we are coming to it.

Roofs cover tables of the modern restaurant.

That salon — please read on — was at the heart of the edifice and at the heart of its purpose.

It was the place where leaders of industry, commerce and culture connected among themselves, and met the most venerable nobility in a context as intimate and exclusive as that of a salon.

The dinners took place while awaiting the end of the ballet that took place after the opera's second act.

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 Ballet, an art of the French court

BALLET, AN ART OF THE FRENCH COURT

 

IT BEGAN AS PROCESSIONS ROYALS LED

(FROM ABOUT 1560)

Louis XIII and Anne of Austria conducted them...

     The Ball by Abraham Bosse, 1634 / zoom 

...or observed the ritualized dances that followed...

Maurice Leloir in Richelieu by Théodore Cahu, 1901, a history of France for children

... allegories about the king that young nobles performed. 

Maurice Leloir in Le Roy-Soleil by Theodore Cahu, 1931

Louis XIV, an excellent dancer, established the first school for ballet and ordered that a performance be inserted after the second act of every opera produced at court.

 The Man with the Iron Mask by R. Wallace with Leonard Dicaprio as Louis (1998) and The King Dances by G. Corbiau (2000) 

Ritualized dance was part of court life until the end of the Old Regime:

The Princess of Navarre by Nicolin Cochin, 1745 / zoom

# # #

  

The Opéra continued the royal tradition, with a ballet after every opera's second act:

All Degas's dancers were "Opéra girls:" The city had no other ballet.

 Shown at the exhibit Degas at the Opéra at the musée d'Orsay

Their interludes are the link 
 between court dance and floor shows, 
which also began in Paris.

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Millionaires and ballerinas

MILLIONAIRES AND BALLERINAS

"KEEPING" A DANCER WAS A SOURCE OF IDENTITY,  PRESTIGE AND CREDIT

 "...Mr. Leuwen, the wealthy banker who keeps Mademoiselle des Brins, of the Opéra..."

-- Lucien Leuwen by Stendhal, 1834

# # #

The second act over, the subscribers would meet the dancers backstage, or in a room specially designed for that purpose:

    Backstage at the Opéra by Jean Béraud, 1889 / City Museum (musée Carnavalet)

• The idealized image contributed to Paris's reputation for high-end sex:

The Foyer de la Danse, courtesy Opéra archives

"It is meant [...] as a setting for the graceful groups of ballerinas [...] one thinks of a kaleidoscope when they intermingle in thousands upon thousands of ways."

 -- Charles Garnier

• Degas's point of view

Shown at the exhibit "Degas at the Opéra," musée d'Orsay

# # #

Those ballerinas, "the elite of Parisian pleasures:"

-- Splendor and Misery of Courtesans by Balzac (1838-47)

• "...her mother, as I have since learned, to my horror, was a dancer at the Opéra"

-- Said of the adventuress Becky Sharp
 in Vanity Fair by W.M. Thackeray 1848

By Degas

• The expression "It's my dancer" (C'est ma danseuse)...

means a pastime that absorbs huge resources and gives nothing in return. It harks back to the dancers' exorbitant demands for presents.

From humble backgrounds, usually illiterate, they left no records, and we know of them only through men who despised them.

They despised them back. The black choker Degas's dancer wears recalled a dog collar and meant, "We know what you think of us. We don't like you either."  

-- Nadège Maruta, cancan choreographer and historian,

personal communication

• Dancers' and courtisans' revenge : "At every bite, Nana devoured an acre...

She passed [...] like a cloud of locusts [...] she burned the land where she placed her little foot. Farm by farm, prairie by prairie, she bit into the inheritance [...] without even noticing, as she would munch a packet of pralines [...] but one night, all that was left was a little wood. She swallowed it with a look of contempt, for it was not even worth opening her mouth."

-- Nana by Émile Zola, 1880.

# # #

The practice declined when the "Opéra girls" joined a strike of Opéra employees and obtained livable salaries: Subscribers' furious letters show that many girls then refused their "sponsorship." 

(In 1912)

It ended when an austère Protestant Jacques Rouché became director and ended the abonnés' privileges by financing performances himself.

(In the 1930's)

-- Pascal Payen-Appenzeller, historian of Paris,
personal communication

When Rouché's funds ran out the State took over.

(In 1939)

 

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Next,

Degas's "Little dancer"

DEGAS'S "LITTLE DANCER"

BALLERINAS WENT ON STAGE AGED 13 OR 14, AND BEGAN TRAINING AT SIX OR SEVEN: THAT IS HOW THE DEBAUCHERY OF A BALZAC HEROINE BEGINS

(CORALIE IN SPLENDOR AND MISERY OF COURTESANS) 

Their scampering recalled that of rats and they were called "petits rats."

By Degas 

Notice the man on the left and the exchange of glances.

Pedophilia, publicly tolerated

At Palais-Royal, Internet, no further information

"Little dancer, 14 years old:" For Degas, the low forehead and salient jaw were monkey-like signs of degeneration and criminality:

"The vicious muzzle of this young, scarcely adolescent girl, this little flower of the gutter, imprints her face with the detestable promise of every vice."

-- Critic cited in The Painted Girls
 by Cathy Marie Buchanan, 2013, a novel about the model based on fact.

Communards say:
"...if you do not want your daughters 
to be instruments of pleasure

 for the aristocracy of wealth, 
workers arise!"

-- Paris Babylon by Rupert Christiansen, 1994

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A ceiling decorated by an orgy

A CEILING DECORATED BY AN ORGY

NYMPHS SEDUCE SATYRS AS BACCHUS* LOOKS ON, IN DECOR THAT COVERS THE FULL CEILING OF THE SUBSCRIBERS' SALON

-- The Fête of Bacchus by Georges Clairin

* God of debauchery

End of this section.

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