Teaching dance, in France, 17th-21st centuries – ENDANSANT
ENDANSANT Teaching Dance in France (17th–21st Centuries)
This project focuses specifically on the figure of the pedagogue, the places and conditions of dance teaching over the long term, from the mid-seventeenth century to the present day. While four million French people over the age of fifteen practice dance today-three times more than fifty years ago - there is still no history of dance pedagogues, nor of dance pedagogy. The place of dance teaching within the university, itself at the heart of tensions and raising questions about legitimacy.
To write a regulatory and social history of dance teachers structured around the triptych of regulation, identities, and modes of practice.
This project drew on the study of largely unexplored archival collections and covered the period from the mid-seventeenth century to the present day, focusing on the regulatory and administrative dimensions of dance teaching. It laid the foundations for a history of dance structured around transmission. Our central objective was to write a regulatory and social history of dance teachers by analyzing the triptych of regulation, professional identities, and modes of practice. The research confirmed that the history of dance teachers has been marked by conflicts revealing their position at the heart of social tensions—between the bodies of the State and the bodies of students. These struggles shed light on professional strategies and processes of recognition, while highlighting long-term social transformations. From the ambiguous social downgrading of dancing masters under the Ancien Régime, to their integration into the nineteenth-century entertainment economy, and later to the twentieth-century tensions between sport and art, we showed that this profession constitutes a privileged observatory of transformations in labor and professional status (guild, academy, liberal profession, civil service, self-employment). We also contributed to revisiting the history of authority and authorship. The study demonstrated that the valorization of the choreographer was partly constructed through separation from the teaching function. The analysis of dance masters’ writings and professional archives (SACD, SNAC, SFA) made it possible to question the relationship between creation and transmission and the status of authorship in pedagogical techniques. We situated this history within a framework of cultural circulation. The study emphasized the central role of dance teachers in artistic transfers and cultural diplomacy. Although the primary framework was French, the research contributed to an international understanding of the circulation of choreographic knowledge. Finally, the project engaged with gender history. It showed that, while the profession was long conceived as male, women were present from the eighteenth century onward—though often less visibly—and were durably assigned to transmission roles, which were less valued than creation. The analysis of pedagogical practices also illuminated power relations, the use of touch and gaze, and the regulatory frameworks through which these tensions were managed across periods.
A Structured and Open Research Design
The project was organized around three investigations covering the Ancien Régime, the nineteenth century, and the twentieth–twenty-first centuries. It took as its starting point the mid-seventeenth-century conflict concerning the status of dancing masters, when certain Parisian masters sought to emancipate themselves from their guild, leading in 1661 to the creation of the Royal Academy of Dance. The analysis extended to contemporary debates, particularly those surrounding the State Diploma, the teaching of hip-hop, and evolving professional statuses.
We adopted a long-term perspective in order to highlight moments of crisis and controversy that reveal the status of pedagogues. The dimensions of “identities” and “modes of practice” were addressed through in-depth case studies. Each investigation was conducted jointly by a postdoctoral researcher and the scientific lead specialized in the relevant period, combining thematic expertise with methodological renewal.
An Exchange-Based Method
The research relied on biannual seminars bringing together the scientific team, partner institutions (BnF, CND, National Archives), and representatives of the sector. Each year, a public study day brought together scholars and practitioners in a dialogue between historical analysis and professional experience, extending research-action approaches. These meetings fostered comparative perspectives and reflection on the international circulation of pedagogical knowledge.
Mediation Integrated into Research
Mediation was a structuring axis of the project. Public seminars, university workshops, and “dance-history” workshops were organized across the country for dancers and pedagogues in training. These formats mobilized archival materials as tools for historical and choreographic experimentation, articulating academic knowledge and embodied practice. Students in dance and history worked jointly on the analysis and embodiment of historical documents, while audiovisual resources were produced within an open-science framework.
The “Research and Experimentation” days (Lille 2022, Valenciennes 2023, Strasbourg 2024) concluded with lecture-demonstrations in partnership with cultural institutions, enabling broad dissemination of the results and encouraging reflection on contemporary issues of transmission. The dance-history workshops proved particularly productive in fostering a reflexive and trans-period understanding that goes beyond purely archival analysis. This approach has become central to EnDansant’s methodology and forms a foundation for future projects.
he project made a major contribution by renewing historical knowledge of the socio-professional category of dancing masters and dance teachers from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century. It enabled a clearer understanding of the gradual construction of this category, its successive reconfigurations, and the logics that led to the creation of the State Diploma in 1989. It also shed light on the reasons why this framework has been repeatedly questioned for more than forty years, particularly in relation to the integration of new disciplines and debates over the status of these professionals positioned at the crossroads of art, education, pedagogy, well-being, and bodily health.
The project also had a significant impact on today’s community of dance teachers. By retracing the history of methods, strategies, and relationships to the body, it fostered a reflexive awareness of how these professionals have shaped their teaching and professional identity. It thus constitutes both a scientific and formative contribution, helping to inform contemporary practices.
Finally, the project demonstrated that dance teachers have, over the long term, been genuine strategic actors. Far from the stereotype of the socially or intellectually dominated dancing master, the study revealed professionals capable of organizing themselves, negotiating with authorities, and adapting to constantly evolving regulatory frameworks. Following the disappearance of guilds at the end of the eighteenth century, they developed new forms of recognition and modes of practice. As artisans of the body and specialists in bodily techniques, these teachers played a structuring role within the ecosystem of the leisure society, in schools, and in the development of post-1945 cultural policies. The project thus contributed to repositioning them as full-fledged actors in contemporary social, cultural, and educational dynamics.
The ANR-type project, 2026 call, entitled “EnDansant-InterChor”, extends the ANR program “EnDansant: For a History of Dance Teachers” (2021–2025), building on the scientific results and collaborations developed over the past four years. Led by the same team whose complementarity and collegiality have been tested and confirmed, the research has highlighted the complexity of the structuring logics of the dance teaching profession, at the intersection of national, cross-border, and international scales.
These findings have laid the foundations for a social and cultural history of the profession and have demonstrated the need to expand the analysis to a European and international dimension. By showing how the profession was shaped, well before industrialization, by dense networks and multiple mobilities, the project invites us to rethink the construction of professional identities in the choreographic field through the lenses of circulation, professional solidarities, complementarity, and the porosity of models.
The ENDANSANT project proposes to question the construction of the profession of dance teacher, the conditions and places of its exercise between the seventeenth century and the twenty-first century in France. From sources of diversified natures (handwritten, iconographic, printed, oral), private or public, and from conflicts and moments of tension between teachers and the different authorities that govern them, the study will seek to identify this socioprofessional category, to define the legal frameworks of their activity and the conditions of its exercise.
Project coordination
Emmanuelle Delattre (CENTRE DE RECHERCHE INTERDISCIPLINAIRE EN SCIENCES DE LA SOCIÉTÉ)
The author of this summary is the project coordinator, who is responsible for the content of this summary. The ANR declines any responsibility as for its contents.
Partnership
CRISS CENTRE DE RECHERCHE INTERDISCIPLINAIRE EN SCIENCES DE LA SOCIÉTÉ
CEAC CENTRE D'ETUDE DES ARTS CONTEMPORAINS (EA3587)
ACCRA Approches contemporaines de la création et de la réflexion artistiques (EA 3402)
Help of the ANR 322,436 euros
Beginning and duration of the scientific project:
- 48 Months
