Isaac’s Choreographic Style

In general terms, Isaac’s English ball-dances adhered to the aesthetic of “French dances” or la belle dance as defined by Michel de Pure in 1668 and requiring a strong sense of poise and musicality. Such dances were devised with largely symmetrical figures containing a wide range of steps, most of which were capable of added variation or ornamentation. As dances they were rarely generic, despite any musical terms (saraband, bourree, etc.) assigned to them. By 1700 many of their basic steps had been codified into categories set out in Raoul-Auger Feuillet’s Chorégraphie (subsequently translated as Orchesography by John Weaver and dedicated to Mr Isaac). Beyond those characteristics, however, Isaac’s dances reveal a distinctive and personal choreographic style: his willingness to play games with rhythm and metre, his use of syncopated steps as typified in the triple-time hornpipe (a dance type not known in France at that date but much used by Isaac). Added to these, his sometimes quirky forms of steps, his clever use of asymmetries and occasional glimpses of understated humour, all add up to an individualistic and imaginative approach to creating sophisticated ball-dances.