Encyclopedic Definitions: Tracing Ballet from the Encyclopédie to the Gazzetta Urbana Veneta

In the Encyclopédie, Diderot and D'Alembert positioned ballet within a network of ideas that emphasized the categorization of dance as a theater art as well as the influence of the Ancients on contemporary ballet reforms. Panckoucke's Encyclopédie méthodique divided ballet and dance-related articles among five different volumes, effectively dismantling ballet's interdisciplinary definition as it had been written through the Encyclopédie's cross-references. Later reprints of these articles in new editorial settings further distanced them from their original context, allowing for the rearrangement of texts in ways that altered their meaning and presented new paradigms for creating knowledge.