Performing Bodies, Dancing Trifles: Drawing New Worlds in Il Tabacco, Commemorative Album for the Courtly Ballet Staged in Turin (1650)

This paper analyzes the commemorative album for Il Tabacco, a ballet staged in Turin in 1650 at the court of the Duchess of Savoy, Christine of France. The album’s drawings, in ink and watercolor with silver or gold accents, take the viewer on a journey following in the footsteps of tobacco: where it was grown, how it was prepared, and even how it was smoked according to diverse geographically-specific customs as the product moves through the world.

Focusing the analysis on the extant visual record and associated libretto, the paper illustrates the integration and translation of sweeping and fine-grained transcultural motifs and influences. These ideas were manifested in ways that bodies of foreigners were depicted on stage, particularly in terms of their movements, costumes, fabrics, and through the languages of attributes and ornaments. In particular, this ballet is a valuable source for investigating how a non-human historical actor could be translated into the allegorical language of performance and its corresponding figurative culture. Considering calligraphic lines, alchemical metaphors, and the bodies of the dancers in relation to the various shapes of tobacco, the paper demonstrates how the ballet tells the story of a semantically unstable commodity that is at times considered a panacea for all ills and at others accused of being a dangerous threat to individual health as well as national wealth.