Mariquita (dancer)

Little is known about Mariquita's early life. She was born near Algiers, likely sometime between 1838 and 1840. She is said to have been found by a female dancer as a small child beside a fountain near Aumale in Algeria. She learned to dance even before she could read. After the death of her adoptive mother, Mariquita was brought to Paris by an impresario. She débuted in Paris in 1845 in a Vaudeville production at the Théâtre des Funambules at the age of seven or eight, under the stage name “Fanny.” She also began choreographing at the Folies Bergère, collaborating with conductor-composer Olivier Métra on such works as Les Fausses almées, Les Papillons noirs, Les Joujoux, and Les Faunes. In high demand throughout the 1890s and 1910s, Mariquita was nationally and internationally acclaimed as a choreographer. In 1900, she was appointed choreographic director at the Palais de la Dance at the Exposition Universelle. Mariquita continued to work until she fell ill at around age 80. She retired on April 16, 1920, after an evening attended by the leading artists of the period, completing a career lasting over 70 years. She died on October 5, 1922. According to Cléo de Mérode, despite her small size, Mariquita was an imposing figure, always standing straight so as not to diminish her height. Wherever she went, she had her lorgnette and her fan with her. She always held her fan in her right hand, using it as a conductor's baton. == Style ==

Mariquita's choreographic style is difficult to pinpoint; her approach adapted over time and depending on the venue. She was skilled at combining a variety of dances, including character dances, historical dances, classical ballet, dramatic mime, music-hall dances, lascivious dances, and visual tableaux. Mariquita's popular dance choreography was a site of early innovation, perhaps because popular venues allowed for more flexibility and experimentation. Her works at the Folies Bergère were particularly creative, moving away from post-romantic pantomime-ballet. In her music-hall choreography, she often prioritized spectacle and character dance over classical ballet, and she used parody, contemporary dress, and a mixture of academic and popular dance forms—characteristics that would become part of ballet modernism. Mariquita made many changes to modernize traditional ballet, whose stagnation she publicly criticized. In 1901, she claimed that ballet “had given way to so-called virtuosity,” and that “spectacle was killing ballet.” She is credited with being the first to eschew the traditional tutu, which she thought to be “grotesque,” and with eliminating gymnastics routines from classical ballet. Disliking academic forms of classical ballet, she moved away from standardized steps and poses, instead promoting a more modern dance style with a freer interpretation of the music. It was in part a desire to break with classical ballet traditions that drove Mariquita to experiment with Ancient Greek-inspired dance at the Opéra-Comique. Although Mariquita began experimenting with this style in popular venues as early as 1897, her most famous Greek dance choreography was done for the Opéra-Comique: productions of Gluck’s Orphée (1899), Iphigénie en Tauride (1900), Alceste (1904), and Iphigénie en Aulide (1907), Thomé’s Endymion et Phoébé (1906), Erlanger’s Aphrodite (1906), and Nouguès' opera-ballet La Danseuse de Pompei (1912). Likely drawing on 1880s academic reconstructions of Greek dance, as well as popular erotic-exotic representations, these choreographies used antiquity as an exotic backdrop for spectacles with mass appeal. By the 1910s, Mariquita had made the Opéra-Comique a centre for innovative choreography. ==Choreography==

One of the most striking aspects of Mariquita’s career was her ability to choreograph for popular venues even while working for “high art” institutions. == Legacy ==

In the years following her death, Mariquita has largely been forgotten from dance history. In her own lifetime, Mariquita was highly regarded as a dancer, teacher and choreographer. As a dancer, she was respected as one of the best character dancers of the era, but also as a technically skilled ballerina. English dancer Edouard Espinosa listed her as one of “the great outstanding PREMIERES ETOILES” of France. As a ballet mistress and choreographer, she was praised by fellow Parisian artists including Jules Massenet, Louis Delluc, Pierre-Barthélémy Gheusi, and Albert Carré. Upon her death, contemporaries credited her with ushering in a new era of ballet, particularly through her Greek-inspired choreography from 1899 to 1912. ==See also==