Marie-Madeleine Guimard - Characteristics of Her Dancing

Characteristics of Her Dancing

Not known for hazarding the more difficult movements that were being added to the professional repertory of ballet, she was renowned for her perfectly composed and fluid aristocratic movements, her mime and above all for her expressively smiling visage. She wore her skirt hitched up to reveal an underskirt, without hoops or paniers, held out simply by a starched muslin petticoat. The portrait painter Mme Vigée-Lebrun said, "her dancing was but a sketch; she made only petits pas, simple steps, but with movements so graceful that the public preferred her to every other dancer." Other dancers, like Jean-Georges Noverre, praised her enthusiastically, but Sophie Arnould, who thought that she had more graceful gesture than true dancing talent, remarked, after a piece of scenery fell and broke her arm in January 1766, after which she continued to make public appearances gamely, her arm in a sling, "Poor Guimard! if she had only broken a leg! that would not have kept her from dancing."