Mariquita (dancer)

Emilienne d’Alençon and Mariquita, lithograph by Toulouse-Lautrec (1893)

Mariquita, often referred to as Madame Mariquita, (1838/40–1922) was an Algerian-born dancer who became a ballerina, and later a successful choreographer and ballet mistress at various theatres in Paris from the 1870s until 1920. Though best known for her work at the Opéra-Comique, where she was a trailblazer in modernizing French ballet during the 1900s and 1910s,[1] Mariquita also staged popular ballets and divertissements for boulevard theatres and music halls throughout her life. Highly prolific, she created almost 300 ballets over a span of 50 years.[2] While her life and work are not well documented in modern ballet history, contemporaries regarded her as one of the best choreographers of her time, lauding her as “French Fokine,”[2] “model of choreographers,”[3] and “most artistic of all dance-mistresses.”[3]

  1. ^ Gutsche-Miller, Sarah (2021). "Madame Mariquita, Greek Dance, and French Ballet Modernism". Dance Research Journal. 53 (3): 46–68. doi:10.1017/S014976772100036X. S2CID 246612048 – via Cambridge Core.
  2. ^ a b Gutsche-Miller, Sarah (2009). "Madame Mariquita, the French Fokine". Proceedings of the Society of Dance History Scholars, Thirty-Third Annual Conference, Stanford University, Palo Alto and San Francisco, CA: 106–111.
  3. ^ a b Malandain, Thierry; Marquié, Hélène (2015). "Dans les pas de Mariquita". Recherches en Danse (3). doi:10.4000/danse.922 – via Open Edition Journals.