Dancing to his Tune

Russell Millard’s chapter on Ravel’s ballet Daphnis et Chloé
interrogates the tonal and rhythmic disruptions instigated by female
characters—Chloé, the girls and Lyceoin—in the light of traditional
gender roles. Delineating the normalcy of the male gaze, Millard
indentifies Lyceion as a Salomé-like femme nouvelle who threatens the
masculine status quo. Her subversion of gender roles and the re-placement
of her episode early in the ballet (as opposed to its much later placement in
the source material), ignites Daphnis’ sexual desire for Chloé allowing
Chloé’s dance in Part III to be seen as “controlled by Daphnis’s flute”. He
further concludes that the previous dances by Lyceion and Chloé all
“exhibit increasing control […] by male characters”. However, using
Byron Almén’s theory of transvaluation, Millard explains the significance
of the final mismatch of tonal and narrative closure concluding that
Chloé’s dance is, in fact, an act of subversion: “The musical narrative thus
effects a transvaluation by outlining a narrative trajectory that calls into
question the values inscribed in the libretto.”