author
Raoul-Auger Feuillet
1659–1710
A key figure in the history of dance notation, this French choreographer and publisher helped make complex court and theatrical dances readable on the page. His 1700 treatise Chorégraphie became the work most closely associated with the Beauchamp–Feuillet system.
1 Audiobook
Orchesography, or, the Art of Dancing The Art of Dancing by Characters and Demonstrative Figures
by Raoul-Auger Feuillet
About the author
Working in Paris around the turn of the 18th century, Raoul-Auger Feuillet is remembered as a French dance notator, publisher, and choreographer. He is best known for Chorégraphie, ou l'art de décrire la danse (1700), a landmark book that explained a system for writing down dance movements with symbols and floor patterns.
That notation system is now commonly called Beauchamp–Feuillet notation. Feuillet's publications helped preserve ballroom and theatrical dances that might otherwise have been lost, and later collections included both his own choreographies and dances associated with other masters such as Pécour.
Some reference works differ on details of his life, including his exact birth year, but they agree on his importance to dance history. More than three centuries later, his work still matters because it gives scholars and performers a rare, practical window into how Baroque dance was taught, recorded, and revived.