La Camargo was an C18 prima ballerina who died in poverty

Posted in Dance, Historical articles, Music, Theatre on Thursday, 13 December 2012

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This edited article about Marie Ann de Camargo originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 797 published on 23rd April 1977.

La Ballerina by Canova

Canova’s La Ballerina seems to owe something to La Camargo, though she died when he was just a teenager

One of the tragic things of life is how quickly people who have made great names for themselves can be forgotten, even in their own lifetime: such a person was Marie Ann de Cupis de Camargo. After her death on 20th April, 1770, only one admirer – a young man who remembered her from her dancing days – bothered to follow her hearse to the Paris cemetery. Yet a few years earlier her name had been a household word; she was a leader of fashion and the foremost ballet dancer in Europe.

Marie was born on 15th April, 1710, and by the time she was 14 she had made her name as a dancer at Brussels and Rouen in France. Two years later she appeared in Paris and took the city by storm. Everyone was raving about the 16-year-old girl who had transformed the rather stilted ballet of the day into something alive and magical.

Soon she was known for her dress design as well as her dancing. In those days the dresses of ballerinas reached the floor and made anything but the simplest steps very difficult. Marie, wishing to try more adventurous steps, introduced the shortened ballet skirt, much to the indignation of many prudish people who thought it very immodest.

Despite their protests the short ballet skirt remained and the art of dancing took a giant stride forward. Designers copied Marie’s stage costumes and soon she found herself a leader of fashion.

Immediately after the opening of one of Marie’s ballets, dressmakers would work through the night on dresses based on what she wore so that rich customers could show off their latest “Camargo creations” the next day. Marie went from success to success. Altogether she appeared in 70 ballets and operas, and earned herself a great deal of money. But she could not keep it. She loved to live in style and to entertain lavishly. So when she found that she was getting too old to dance she also found that nearly all her fortune had gone. She died a forgotten and lonely old woman.

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