Our project is based on John Weaver’s description of his dance drama, The Loves of Mars and Venus — the first of its kind. The key known facts are that the first performance was given on March 2nd, 1717 at the Drury Lane Theatre and that the music and the choreography are lost. However, we do know much about this work, not only from John Weaver’s own writing but from the work of Richard Ralph, author of The Life and Works of John Weaver, and Moira Goff’s research for her book The Incomparable Hester Santlow.
This paper describes how I approached the re-creation of this work, with the music & dance steps supposedly being “lost”.
Using Weaver’s own libretto for the piece, but in the absence of any other material relating to the work, we created a musical score with 27 movements and 10 new dances. We formed The Weaver Ensemble comprising 2 baroque dancers, an actor, 4 musicians, plus all those needed to create a theatre piece (a Director, a Scriptwriter, a Designer et al).
We performed our version of The Loves of Mars & Venus on the exact 300th anniversary of Weaver’s first performance (Cambridge, March 2nd, 2017) and went on to develop and perform a fictional sequel The Loves of Pygmalion. The Weaver Ensemble performed both shows on the 350th anniversary of Weaver’s Baptismal Day in his home town, Shrewsbury on 21st July 2023.
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Evelyn Nallen is Founder of The Weaver Ensemble, creator and musical director of this project, Evelyn Nallen, made her BBC debut as a recorder player at the age of nine and since then has appeared on BBC TV and BBC Radios 1, 2, 3 and 4. Together with harpsichordist David Gordon, she formed the innovative early-music/jazz group Respectable Groove. Their take on Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas integrates improvisation with written compositions. Evelyn devised a programme with Respectable Groove and the French baroque dancer Gilles Poirier, called Dido’s Got the Blues. She founded The Weaver Ensemble in 2016. Evelyn taught recorder at The Royal Academy of Music, Junior Department, retiring in 2022.