Comparing Archives for Research on Theatrical Dance in the 19th Century: On the Trail of Carlo Blasis in Milan and August Bournonville in Copenhagen

Abstract

The comparison between the archives of Nineteenth-century Italian and Danish dance, through the search for traces of Carlo Blasis (1795-1878) in Milan and August Bournonville (1805-1879) in Copenhagen, promotes the recognition of the cultural peculiarities of the two traditions, trasmitted and received in different ways at national and international level, activating different discourses on cultural memory. Italian dance is different from Danish dance because it leaves only fragmentary traces of the dancing bodies, facilitating the permanence of the institutional cultural memory. On the other hand, Bournonville has worked consciously so as not to disperse his work, writing and selecting choregraphic notations, memoires, letters, essays, articles throughout his life, thus earning the art of dance and its artists a recognized social status, favouring in a small territory with isolationist and conservative characteristics both the systematization of his archive and the international diffusion of his repertoire.