“Dancing Liberty: The Forgotten History of How Ballet Became American”

A colloq with Olivia Sabee (Swarthmore College). Please note that all colloquia papers are pre-circulated. Please register via the link below to receive a copy.

Dancing Liberty: The Forgotten History of How Ballet Became American charts the intertwined careers of three European dance artists who crossed the Atlantic in search of freedom, fame, or fortune: Alexandre Placide, Jean-Baptiste Francisqui, and Suzanne Théodore Taillandet Douvillier. Between stops in Port-au-Prince, Saint-Pierre, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, and Havana, these dancers made an extended stay in Charleston, where they established a French Theatre company in 1794, the subject of this paper. In a cross-genre collaboration that would not have been possible in France, these dancers’ company was built on an aesthetic of variety, predating the advent of the American revue, but sharing many characteristics with it.

Olivia Sabee is Associate Professor of Dance and Associate Dean of the Faculty for Academic Programs and Research at Swarthmore College. A specialist of early modern France, her work examines cultural exchange in dance across and beyond Europe during the eighteenth century. Her first book, Theories of Ballet in the Age of the ‘Encyclopédie’ examined how the publishing industry shaped the dissemination and reception of early modern dance texts, and subsequently early modern dance theory. She is currently working on a second book, tentatively titled Dancing Liberty: The Forgotten History of How Ballet Became American, research for which was supported by a Mellon New Directions Fellowship from 2023 to 2026. She has published two related articles: “Performing Liberty and Empire on the Ballet Stage: Mirsa in Transatlantic Context” (Dance Research) and “L’imaginaire du menuet sur les scènes étatsuniennes des années 1790” (Monde Français du Dix-huitième Siècle).

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