ABSTRACT
So wrote the dancing master John Essex in his own preface to his translation of Pierre Rameau’s Le Maître a danser in 1728. He deliberately draws a comparison between Hester Booth and Françoise Prévost of the Paris Opéra, who is highly praised by Rameau in what Essex calls the ‘French Preface’ to the treatise. Essex is careful to praise Mrs Booth in very similar terms; where Rameau says Mlle Prévost ‘deserves to be regarded as Terpsichore the Muse’, he refers to Mrs Booth’s unique combination of ‘Art and Nature’. Rameau calls attention to Mlle Prévost’s expressive gifts by declaring that she ‘has all the Advantages over Proteus in the Fable’, thereby hinting at skills akin to acting. Essex writes of the ‘many different Characters’ represented in dance by Mrs Booth, although he says nothing of her work for Weaver and omits any mention of her parallel career as an actress, preferring to emphasise her exceptional mastery of belle dance.1
