My pursuit of Mr Isaac began some decades ago, following a weekend course on his Chaconne and Minuet during which I started to become intrigued by his dances. It soon became essential to find out more about Isaac himself, his performing and teaching career in Paris and London; why he always worked under a pseudonym instead of his real name; why the aristocratic cousin of his star pupil was ‘upon thornes’ while watching her dance solo at William III’s birthday ball; and why Isaac himself clashed with domineering courtiers and recusancy officials in London. His surviving dances are significant, for he was the first dancing-master in London to adopt and promote Beauchamp-Feuillet notation by having his own ball-dances recorded in that system. All those notations are now brought together in The Gentleman Dancing-Master, Mr Isaac and the English Royal Court from Charles II to Queen Anne, just published by Clemson University Press. This paper looks at aspects of the life and work of Isaac, who did much to shape the nature of dance as part of English court culture before and during the reign of Queen Anne by creating sophisticated ball-dances to honour her and members of her court.
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Jennifer Thorp has a particular interest in court and theatre dance of the late-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, their contexts and sources, at present mainly with reference to dances associated with the royal court in London between 1670 and 1740. She has been the joint organiser, with Michael Burden, of the annual Oxford Dance Symposium since 1998, and joint editor of related publications deriving from some of those symposia