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The research on which I am focusing concerns the production of pantomimes and ballet pantomimes in Paris from 1729 to 1745. These years limit a first season of experimental creation in mime performance genres, which fortune has a considerable development since 1750. My work consists in the critical edition, with an analysis and contextualisation of fourteen manuscript unpublished synopsis or librettos of pantomimes and ballet-pantomimes and thirteen programmes printed (even in partial form)1 at the time of the first performance, and never reedited. The frame for experimentation are Fair theatres, by their nature independent from political-cultural central control, and at the same time adversary of «official» stages. Forain artists are certainly influenced by, but demolish canonic artistic and literary models, and particularly those which are consecrated by Court spectators. In their fringe position, compared to performance centre of power (Académie Royale de Musique, Théâtre Français), they are particularly receptive to social changes, to variations of taste and of requests from the public, to cultural tensions and they are permeated by all this; they change their form and foresee a development of their genres, advancing modern shapes. This aptitude is reinforced by exchanges and friendships between French and foreign artists, – a real movement from an European country to another establishes contact between knowledges, themes, texts.Fair theatre finds its identity in exchange dimension, in innovation (although it maintains archaic elements), in mixing of forms, in parody of theatrical models. It constitutes2 itself as a whole of essentially mobile structures, always in the fringes and in opposition to the steadiness of the dramatic genres practiced at Théâtre Français and Académie Royale de Musique.During the second quarter of the eighteenth century middle class taste3 takes place and it looks for a mirror of its reality and its values in artistic features.4 This phenomenon is associated with the development of a sort of first «show business» in private French Fair enterprises; the process started during the previous decades and leaded to the ups and downs of Opéra Comique, always hated by the official theatres because of the public success increased by its continually renewed repertory which was able to arouse interest5 and was repeatedly hit by orders that limited its expressive means that were considered as a real «privilege» by the stages protected and managed by the central power.The history of pantomime genres mingles in fact several times with the imposition of prohibitions, from 1699 to 1752. Partially, recurrent restrictions, concerning allowed artistic means, incite actors creativity and encourage systematic resort to gesture as sense vehicle, in a stage so often deprived of verbal text.During the 1730s and the 1740s, in their continuous renewal of forms, forain performances combine:knowledges, techniques, figures of centuries-old tradition that are read and exercised as universal and poetic elements and at the same time as metaphors which meaning can change throughout history. (Commedia dell’Arte, by its nature an European form, is assimilated by intellectuals of Enlightenment period in an ideological key; rope dancing and acrobatic art, explained in France in a treatise by the Italian Arcangelo Tuccaro at the end of the sixteenth century, play a non secondary part in the representation of archaic scenes and supernatural events and they represent living forces that clash with rational impulses during the first half of the century);performance structures, shapes, knowledges and techniques derived from «major» models that were in great favour in ancien régime theatres and that are employed at Fair theatres with a critical or parodic intention, not only regarding the proposed themes, but also the dramatic structures and the composition. (Opera ballet formed of independent entrées, pastoral genres which themes and language meet at the beginning of the century in the fètes galantes, allegorical court ballet, French burlesque ballet, Italian theatrical dance performed between the acts of operas, Molière’s comédie-ballet);music repertory and composition processes proper to opéra-comique, the main theatrical-musical genre produced at Fait theatres since 1714;forms, structures, figures and themes developed on contemporary English stage (harlequinade, dramatic ballet pantomime), in their turn new elaborations of pre-existent continental models.Many pages should be given up to different components that are to be considered as precedents, with all the problems of this concept6.If during the first decades of 18th Century hypercritical issues against the faults of society were among the most interesting elements for Fair performances, liked by aristocratic public himself also, who willingly deserted royal halls and went laughing close to people on the outskirts, – with the passing of time, dramaturgical choices by Lesage, Carolet, Pontau, Favart, from 1720s, go towards the expectations of a public mainly composed by bourgeois. Comic quality outdistances, in a way, from low bodily and carnival dimension. We must remember that Jean Monnet’s management policy imposes changes precisely in the composition of public at Opéra Comique, by prohibiting the entry to servants in the theatre. A no return point, for a long time.Meanwhile, ceramics and tapestry factories propose dancing characters of Fairs theatres; they come from Arcadian landscapes turned into rustic one, or directly from fairs, from stalls full of mountebanks phials, or ropes tightened in the air.7 A private and domestic landing contributes to prolong the life of little works certainly destined to oblivion, while critical operation of favourable reception cross the frontiers of France. European dimension of pantomimic comic genre emerges indeed from several factors, as the attention brought on the phenomenon by authoritative critics and dramaturgs like Lessing or his epigons (Strodtmann), or from intertextuality (concerning narrative, thematic, iconic aspects), which is evident for instance in Anglo-French exchange; rare iconographic documents also help to find common threads.8It must be considered that forain pantomime genre preludes the development ballet d’action, of ballo pantomimo, events that are accompanied by exchanges of opinions, polemic also, between theorizers from France (Noverre), Italy (Angiolini, Arteaga), Austria (Hilverding), in the climate of reforms, during 1770s and 1780s.We are talking of short plays, rarely made up of more than one act, a kind of after-piece, the last and awaited section of shows formed by three or four parts.Forain production, that is the result of a team of artists, preserves for a long time a positive ethics of artistic work peculiar to artisanship (that is to say: two or three author names for one performance, but also the publication of anonimous synopsis and librettos, certainly not only because of censorship, and the silence, too frequent, on music, dance, scenes composers).9My study in progress (as I noted in the book that precedes it)10 is the logic continuation of that one about pièces par écriteaux, the displays of a first form of forain pantomime. A modified cultural and social-historical context, and different goals in authors and performers intentions are to be explored.The workshop of Saint-Germain and Saint-Laurent experiments again, after the season 1710-1715, theatrical forms where gesture has a supporting part. Differently from the pièces par écriteaux, the works that are realised in the following decades, regain possession of singing and words on stage, and at the same time try to develop gestural elements in less heterogenous directions, in each play.Public can see then new expressive «agglomerations» like ballet pantomime or ballet coupé de scènes, which frequently are autonomous sections, composed by dance and singed scenes, in modular shows, and the first pantomimes, which model is more structured and homogeneous. Specific studies are lacking about forain pantomime. Fundamental lines, for a map and a recognition of pantomime genres in 18th Century are marked in three articles by Henry Lagrave11 and Nathalie Rizzoni,12 the author of a monograph on Charles-François Pannard.13 I believe it is necessary to approach a minor and old matter as this one with a philological method, in order to give it back dignity in the first place, after the oblivion. That does not signify bringing back texts to their silent death. Their examination leads us on one hand to approach the social reality of a period and with it, the aesthetic and «ideological» incentives of a kind of performance mostly popular and critical again, subject to continuous formal changes. On the other hand, available inedit theatrical materials, with their contextualisation, might encourage artists to bring to life again old forms of gestural theatre. (I think for instance to philological research initiatives concerning 17th and 18th Centuries performance, with didactic-scenic reconstructions, realised by the Association pour un Centre de Recherche sur les Arts du Spectacle aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles).14I think also that semiotic tools may help historical research in the analysis of existent traces. The programmes and synopsis, the descriptions of movements they contain, the engravings and drawings, the popular airs find a readability and a sense when they are considered each one as a text, as well as in a mutual relation as layers of bigger text that is largely unknown to us (the performance); in its turn, naturally it is linked to the social and cultural reality which engendered it.To do this, the problem of reception is not secondary. Although they are full of gaps, our sources let us near a historical reality and grasp its tendencies, its impulses towards innovation, its oppositions and its relation to dramatic theories of past and contemporary politics.The thing most arouses my curiosity are those signals, although often very small, that talk to us of ways of making dance in that context, of the part it had in the performance, of the meaning it brought. What is certain, is that choreography and choreutic execution had a share in the critical intent we have underlined.A short foray in the ballet pantomime texts allows us to perceive some significant elements on this matter. Above all, the terms authors and critics of the time used to define the choreography of the plays. About Don Quichotte chez la Duchesse by Pannard,15 brothers Parfaict say: «C’étoit des Acteurs habillez, comme sont peints les Rois, les Dames, et les Valets des quatre couleurs d’un jeu de cartes, qui da nsoient autour de Dom Quichotte. On vouloit représenter par des danses figurées, les différentes folies de ce Chevalier Errant chez la Duchesse, pendant le séjour qu’il y fit. Ce Ballet étoit fort ingénieux, et fut très-bien exécuté».16The expression «figured dance» strikes: at that time, it did not mark a geometrical abstract dance, as we could imagine in this case, if we consider the absence of referentiality in cards game. (It can remember allegorical and horizontal dances that were created during 16th and 17th Centuries)17. The «danse figurée» in 18th Century was a representative, theatrical dance, as we can read in the article Ballet written by Cahusac for the Encyclopédie; Cahusac introduces the matter by choicing these words: «danse figurée exécutée par plusieurs personnes qui représentent par leurs pas et leurs gestes une action naturelle ou merveilleuse, au son des instrumens ou de la voix»18. And the word «madness» used by Parfaict, referring essentially to novel episodes, clear up the representative and narrative character of dances, linked to the novel generated them. But in this case, it is not a «natural» action, close to real life, verisimilar, but a fantastic one.The centre of mimic action in Don Quichotte chez la Duchesse by Pannard may be read as a metatheatrical subject, not lacking in meaning: Don Quichotte is designated sultan of a pantomime world (the Dumb Island); the performance celebrates, through dance, pantomimic expressive mean. And Madness, with its long past in theatre history since Middle Ages, reigns in this country.A few years later, Favart gives to Madness a demiurgical function; it has to be the creator of performance. With the assistance of Chance, the Ambigu de la Folie is created, which subtitle is Le Ballet des Dindons,19 a parody of Rameau-Fuzelier’s Indes Galantes. If the reference to dancing turkeys on embers in occasion of Saint Martin’s festival20 is a fierce satire against Opéra and its dancers who staged stories set in Peru, the term and the practice of ambigu-comique parody in their turn the fragmented composition of opéra-ballet. By singing on the air Du pouvoir, Folie that longs to replace the Muse Thalie, exclaims:Le Hazard conduira la scene,Tout viendraComme il pourà.De nos jeux bannissons la gène;La RaisonEst un poison.Je pretens hurler, barlu,De deux opera faire un ambigu.21And its follower Calotin22 adds:Du bon sens plus on s’écartera,Plus à l’Opera, l’on ressemblera.Fair theatre widely mocks lack of verisimilarity characterizing music theatre repertory of Académie Royale de Musique; in the following entrées of Ambigu comique nothing of what appears ridiculous in Rameau-Fuzelier’s opera is spared, nor Occidental presumptions, until, in third entrée, the good savage Adario himself appears (as if he sprang from Lahontan’s dialogues), to mock Europeans, with no mince words. The same humorous charge, which passes from parody of contemporary official theatre to world portrait, animates allegorical ballets pantomimes performed in the 1730s. So, the most singular among these ones, L’Industrie by Pannard and Carolet (1737) stages a series of characters issued from Boissy, Marivaux, Meville, La Chaussée’s comedies, and creates for them and for more common subjects, gathered from everyday life, character dances. And these newly-coined expressive dances combine with others already practiced in French regions, as la Cabaretière, les Rats, les Sept sauts.23 Narrative choreographic thread in L’Industrie never breaks, although the performance is structured in parade form; it is always supported by the renewal of choreographic composition which mingles with pantomime to let performers «marcher en caractères»24 and it shows modern world, with its craftsmen, soldiers, workmen that are partially relieved in their work by new methods of production, thanks to machines. Marie Sallé composes a contra-dance entitled La Découpure25 on this subject, for Pannard and Carolet’s ballet pantomime. The vaudeville that accompanies the contradance takes us again to the vital and modern principle of forain theatre: «[…] On part sur le champ, faire un tableau changeant».