The question was often asked but little more solidified as a fact or as a hypothesis until recently.
As it happened, the question was asked in a letter of January 11 by Jules Karel, director of the French Institute of the Arts (IAA) and a member of the advisory board of Ballet dans les arts du Lierre; it appeared in the magazine, L’Intérieur, no. 8. Its answer, of March 7, 1867, by the IAA was a matter of no less weight, although to a less extensive extent, in the popular culture of France.
“During the early days of popular ballet, the dance was not merely an ornament,” wrote Karel. “The dancers of Ballet dans les arts du Lierre, like those of their fellows in the Theatre Royal, were called the dancers of “Ainôt.” The appellation of “Ainôt” was used in an almost universal way.”
This term is of a peculiarly French origin, being derived from the Latin “Ain” meaning “alone,” that is, “alone and naked.” This word was of use in ballet from about the seventeenth century (as in the Italian) and was adopted into French by the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries. Ballet has, it would be said, in the English tongue, had its beginning there.
In the days of the “Ainôt,” as we know it, the dance was an exercise in the use of the body. The most important dancer would be the one with his arms extended, his face exposed to the full, the body turned inward, as if lying on his back. “Ainôt” was an abbreviation of a number of dances, the “Le mire”, the “Marque and Repertoire,” the “Dance of the Four Winds”, and then, after the “Ainôt” in the eighteenth century, the dances of “Chopin”. This was not only a very practical way of practicing, but an artistic one too. The dancer was trained from an early age to be able to look at and touch his partners to make them move, as if they were alive, not merely live; he saw, he touched. He was trained to be in close touch with all that was done around him. For dancing, the “Ainôt” was as much a life as a play, and
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