(b Paris, 30 Oct 1631; d Paris, early Feb 1705). French dancer, choreographer, composer and conductor. He has been wrongly identified with Charles-Louis Beauchamps. Called the father of all ballet-masters, he codified the five positions of feet and arms, and developed a rational system of dance notation which is now called after Raoul-Auger Feuillet, who published it (in his Chorégraphie, ou L’art de décrire la dance) in 1700.
Beauchamps was Louis XIV’s personal dancing-master and favourite partner in ballets de cour in the 1650s and 60s. Throughout his career he collaborated with Lully, whom he first met as comic dancer in, and later as composer of, ballets de cour. Beauchamps choreographed intermèdes and dances for Molière’s comédies-ballets, beginning with Les fâcheux (1661), for which he also composed the music and conducted the orchestra. He choreographed entrées for Le mariage forcé (1664), Le bourgeois gentilhomme (1669), Les amants magnifiques (1670, with Dolivet), Psyche (1671) and Le malade imaginaire (1673), and danced in others. He was the ballet-master of Pierre Perrin’s Académies d’Opéra, creating dances for Cambert’s Pomone (1671). As ballet-master for Lully’s Opéra during the 1670s and 80s, he choreographed dances for the premières of Lully’s L’impatience (1661), La naissance de Vénus (1665), Alceste (1674), Atys (1676), Isis (1677), Le triomphe de l’Amour (1681, with Pécour) and Ballet de la Jeunesse (1686). After Lully’s death (1687) Beauchamps left the Opéra to choreograph and compose music for ballets at the Jesuit colleges (1669–97), although he continued to choreograph and dance in the King’s court ballets. Louis XIV bestowed many honours upon him: he was appointed Intendant des ballets du roi in 1661 and director of the Académie Royale de Danse in 1680 (although he was not, as many have assumed, a founder-member).
F. Derra de Moroda: ‘Choreographie: the Dance Notation of the 18th Century: Beauchamps or Feuillet?’, Book Collector, xvi (1967), 450–76
R. Kunzle: ‘Pierre Beauchamp: the Illustrious Unknown Choreographer’, Dance Scope, viii/2 (1974), 32–42; ix/1 (1974), 30–45
R. Astier: ‘Pierre Beauchamps and the Ballets de Collège’, Dance Chronicle, vi/2 (1983), 138–63
G. Houle, ed.: Le Ballet de Facheux: Beauchamp’s Music for Molière’s Comedy (Bloomington, 1991) [incl. H.W. Myers: ‘Orchestral bowing technique’, pp.11–24]
J.S. Powell: ‘Choreographer to Molière’s Troupe du Roy’, ML, lxxvi (1995), 168–86
MAUREEN NEEDHAM