ABSTRACT
The intention in this paper is to explore an aspect of American Delsartean performance practice in relation to its historical context. As with any such project, writing in 1993 about an experiential and presentational phenomenon of the late nineteenth century presents its own set of challenges.1 I am purportedly attempting to learn something about a vanished practice from a distant past-and hopefully illustrate its process through time. (Isn’t that the business of history?) But the minds and bodies of those who developed it and practiced it have disappeared; only a residue remains in their words and photographs. This past, therefore, no longer exists except in what our minds and bodies do with those traces.
