Chiaroscuro in the Eighteenth‐Century Ballet d'Action

The use of the term chiaroscuro by choreographers and commentators on the ballet d'action was part of a deliberate strategy, in the context of controversy surrounding this innovative art. De Piles's emphasis on the use of colour rather than the geometry of line is analogous to N overre and A ngiolini's emphasis on body language in mime dance rather than formal step vocabulary. The rationale for using such terminology was to show that the ballet d'action was a hybrid genre and to redefine the nature of contemporary drama, just as the coloristes had sought to redefine the nature of painting a few decades earlier.