Henri Justamant

Henri Justamant (born March 29, 1815 in Bordeaux , France , †  1890 in Parc Saint-Maur , France) was a French dancer , choreographer and ballet master .

Life

Henri Justamant was the eldest of three sons of Auguste Justamant and his wife Marie, nee. Ricard. A text from 1893 reports that he was a student of the "célèbres chorégraphes français Henry et Blache". He began his career at the theaters of Marseille, Bordeaux and Nantes, and then worked so successfully as a choreographer at the Grand Théâtre de Lyon from 1849 to 1861 that many of his works were later taken over by the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels.

In the 1860s, Justamant worked mainly in Paris, where he successively directed the Ballets de la Porte-Saint-Martin, de l'Opéra, de la Gaîté and des Folies Bergère . As Premier Maître de Ballet at the Paris Opera in the 1868/69 season, he created the choreography for the divertissement in the new version of the opera Faust by Charles Gounod .

Justamant has also worked as a choreographer abroad, mainly in Brussels and London, but also with a choreography in Berlin. At the Royal Alhambra Theater in London, Justamant u. a. 1877 the choreographies for the English premiere of Jacques Offenbach's Orphée aux Enfers . Justamant continued to work for the Théâtre des Folies Bergère in Paris until his death in 1890.

meaning

In 1893 Justamant was still considered "d'un des plus grands chorégraphes du siècle". Because international ballet historiography in the twentieth century for nineteenth-century France concentrated primarily on the choreographers of the Paris Opera, where he had only worked briefly and did not perform a large independent ballet of his own, his work was increasingly forgotten. The rediscovery through dance studies did not begin until about 100 years after his death , whereby his extensive written oeuvre of over 190 previously found staging notes for the ballets he performed provides important information about the choreographic practice of the 19th century. From his estate, which was auctioned in 1893, the handwritten books with the records of his ballets ended up in various libraries and archives over the decades; larger bundles are in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Jerôme Robbins Dance Collection of the New York Public Library and the theater studies collection of the University of Cologne. His notation der Giselle appeared in print as a facsimile in 2008.

literature

• Drouot auction catalog, Paris 1893.
• Claudia Jeschke : Scarves and veils as choreographic processes in 19th century dance theater. In: Gunhild Oberzaucher-Schüller , Daniel Brandenburg and Monika Woitas (eds.): Prima la danza! Festschrift for Sybille Dahms. Würzburg 2004, pp. 259-273, especially pp. 266ff.
• Paul Ludwig: Henri Justamant (1815-1890). Annotated inventory of his ballet notations in the Theater Studies Collection Schloß Wahn. Cologne 2005.
• Gabi Vettermann: The stage as the scene of the foreign. For the use of arabesques in dance theater. In: Claudia Jeschke, Helmut Zedelmaier (ed.): Other bodies - strange movements. Theatrical and public productions in the 19th century. Münster 2005, pp. 196-210.
• Claudia Jeschke, Robert Atwood: Expanding Horizons: Teaching of Choreo-Graphy in Nineteenth-Century Dance. In: Dance Chronicle. 29/2006, pp. 195-214.
• Gabi Vettermann: Les Choses espagnoles as a dance libretto. In: Gunhild Oberzaucher-Schüller (Ed.): Souvenirs de Taglioni. Volume 2: Stage dance in the first half of the 19th century. Munich 2007.
• Frank-Manuel Peter (Ed.): Giselle ou Les Wilis. Ballet Fantastique en deux actes. Facsimile of the notation by Henri Justamant from the 1860s. Hildesheim, Zurich, New York 2008.
• Gabi Vettermann: In Search of Dance Creators' Biographies: The Life and Work of Henri Justamant. In: Claudia Jeschke, Gabi Vettermann, Nicole Haitzinger: Les Choses Espagnoles. Research into the Hispanomania of 19th Century Dance. Munich 2009, pp. 124-136.