probably not the famous ‘Le grand’ Dupré of the Paris Opera. Mrs Santlow was an English dancer-actress, greatly admired for her beauty as well as her dancing skills – one contemporary described her as ‘incomparable’. Weaver’s stage skills were essentially those of a comic dancer, although he was obviously also a master of rhetorical gesture. They were supported by Drury Lane’s best dancers as the ‘Followers’ of Mars and Venus, with the company’s comedians as Weaver’s workmen the Cyclops. Reception and subsequent history The Loves of Mars and Venus was an undoubted success, with seven performances during its first season and revivals at the Drury Lane Theatre until 1724. Colley Cibber the English actor- manager, playwright and Poet Laureate, said of it ‘To give even Dancing therefore some Improvement; and to make it something more than Motion without Meaning, the Fable of Mars and Venus, was form’d into a connected Presentation of Dances in Character, wherein the Passions were so happily expressed, and the whole Story so intelligibly told, by a mute Narration of Gesture only, that even thinking Spectators allow’d it both a pleasing and a rational Entertainment’. It also inspired a parody version by John Rich It was subsequently far more influential than many realise. It may well have been seen by the young French ballerina Marie Sallé, who would herself later experiment with narrative and expressive dancing. Sallé, of course, influenced the choreographer Jean-Georges Noverre when he came to create his ballets d’action. They led to the story ballets of the romantic period and onwards to the narrative dance works for which English ballet became famous in the 20th century. 300th anniversary performance The Weaver Dance Company, now The Weaver Ensemble, was founded in 2016, initially to produce a show to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the first performance of The Loves of Mars and Venus. Weaver created a patchwork to make his musical score, a pasticcio, but it has been lost. So a pasticcio was pieced together using music from the London stage of the day with works by Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–87), Jacques Paisible (c1656-1721), Henry Purcell (1659–95), Gottfried Finger (c1660-1730), John Eccles (1668-1735), Jeremiah Clarke (c1674-1704), and William Croft (1678-1727), using Weaver’s text as a guide. As a reconstruction of the full dance-drama with its cast of 26 characters was beyond the Company’s resources, they set out to create a show that would introduce the