James's. It is clear that the
ballet-dancers were becoming personages of real importance.
Mdlle. Salle, it seems, achieved extraordinary success in the year
1734 at Covent Garden Theatre, which a French journal of that date
describes curiously as the _Theatre du Commun Jardin_. The lady was an
admirable dancer, and brought with her complete dramatic ballets, the
characters in which were appropriately dressed according to the time
and place of the story they related; for Mdlle. Salle was a reformer
in the matter of stage costumes. She discarded paniers and hoops and
false hair. As Galatea in a ballet upon the story of Pygmalion, she
wore nothing, we are told, "in addition to her bodice and under
petticoats, but a simple robe of muslin draped after the manner of a
Greek statue." She won great applause, too, by her performance of
Ariadne in a ballet called "Bacchus and Ariadne," the beauty of her
dances, attitudes, and gestures, and her skill in depicting by
movements without words, grief, anger, love, and despair, obtaining
the warmest approval. She was patronised by the king, queen, and the
royal family, and her benefit produced an "overflow" and something
more; tickets were sold at most exorbitant prices, and the people
fought for places both with swords and fists.
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