Tarantism

Tarantella 1850, signed T.M.R.

Gill has commented on the posting Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin and suggested that the Mme or Mlle Degville is identified as Sophie d'Egville, daughter of Pierre d'Agueville and Sophia Anselme. I hadn't eliminated Sophie from being identified as this woman; it is rather that Sophie or Sophia has left a confusing trail.

In 1797 Sophia was dancing at Drury Lane with George and Fanny where all were payed at the same rate of £2. One source gives the year of 1793 for Sophia's birth and while children younger than five years old appeared on stage it is likely that she would have been identified as 'infant d'Egville' rather than appearing on the roll and payed in her own right.

I have always assumed this woman is Madame Michau who died in 1859. Her age is given as seventy six in a death notice which would push her birth date back to 1783. A Sophie d'Egville was performing at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin from at least as early as November 1803 which is more plausible if she and Madame Michau are the same person.

One source states that Louis Francois Bonaventure Michau was born about 1801 in France but this is far too late. The Life and Adventures George Augustus Sala Written By Himself (1895) provides a brief sketch of Madame Michau,

Her first husband had been a M. Bizet, originally one of the private secretaries of Napoleon the Great; and at his death she married a French gentleman named Michau, who was especially distinguished for his highly cultivated gastronomic taste and his skilled culinary capacity. Indeed, in addition to his connection with the Terpsichorean art, he was a cook of the first water.

In the 1841 Census an Augustus Michau born circa 1811 is a resident of Brighton. We know that Sophie Degville is in Paris at this time and Augustus' father could be either of her two husbands.
This supports an explanation of why Sophie Degville remains settled in France during the Napoleonic Wars. I do not yet know when she returned to England but by 1820 Madame Michau was a practicing dance teacher in London and was promoting herself to the Court.

Sophie went on to publish a book on deportment and is still remembered for her form of the Tarantella,

Dance masters and manuals gave instruction as to how to perform these dances in the correct way, removing them from the streets and popular festivals into the indoor arena of palaces and ballrooms. One example of the notation of the tarantella in this way was by the dance teacher Madame Michau, born as Sophie D'Egville into a dynasty of dance instructors. Her version of the tarantella was seen in London in 1844 and published in 1860, and became the established form of the dance.

Ritual, Rapture and Remorse: A study of tarantism and pizzica in Salento

by Jerri Dabo 2010 

The Tarantella when danced solo was a supposed therapy for a spider bite and could last for hours or even days. It has even been suggested that the origins of the dance lie in Bacchanalian rites. This seems to resonate more with Sophia's voluptuous dance of great energy of expression in 1805 and her life which at that time seems distant from being mistress of ceremonies at the court.