François Delsarte

By observing people in real life and in public places of all kinds, he discovered certain patterns of expression, eventually called the Science of Applied Aesthetics.

Delsarte coached preachers, painters, singers, composers, orators and actors in the bodily expression of emotions.

[1] Delsarte never wrote a text explaining his method, and neither did his only protégé, the American actor Steele MacKaye, who brought his teacher's theories to America in lecture demonstrations he delivered in New York and Boston in 1871.

[1][3] While St. Denis claimed a performance by Stebbins inspired her to dance, Shawn consciously embodied the Delsarte System in his work (and his book Every Little Movement (1954) is a key English-language text on the subject).

[3] As well as permeating the entire modern-dance movement in America,[4] Delsartian influence may also be felt in German Tanztheater, through the work of Rudolf Laban[b] and Mary Wigman.

No certification was needed to teach a course with the name Delsarte attached, and the study regressed into empty posing with little emotional truth behind it.

Stephen Wangh concludes, "it led others into stereotyped and melodramatic gesticulation, devoid of the very heart that Delsarte had sought to restore.