SAINT-LON, ARTHUR

born Sept. 17, 1821, Paris, France died Sept. 2, 1870, Paris in full Charles-victor-arthur Michel Saint-lon French dancer, choreographer, and violinist, acclaimed for the choreography of the ballet classic Copplia. A dancer and violinist at age 14, Saint-Lon made his early reputation on an extended European tour (183859), dancing with such ballerinas as Marie Taglioni, Carlotta Grisi, Lucile Grahn, and Fanny Cerrito, whom he married in 1845. For Cerrito's debut at the Paris Opra, Saint-Lon choreographed his first ballet, La Fille de marbre (1847; The Girl of Marble). Its success encouraged the Opra to produce many more of his works, including Le Violon du diable (1849; The Devil's Violin), in which Saint-Lon danced and played the violin. As ballet master (185969) at the Imperial Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia, and then in Moscow, Saint-Lon danced, played the violin, and created the dances for the first ballet based on Russian folklore, The Humpbacked Horse (1864; revised 1960), which remains in the Russian repertory. He staged ballets throughout Europe, then returned to Paris as ballet master at the Opra, where he staged his most famous ballet, Copplia (1870). Saint-Lon also wrote La Stnochorgraphie (1852), a book in which he developed a system of dance notation. This system was separately decoded in the 1970s by Pierre Lacotte of the Paris Opra Ballet and Ann Hutchinson, thus allowing for accurate restaging of early Saint-Lon and Cerrito ballets, including the dances from La Vivandire.