Ballet
...danced it with the royal family on a dais at one end and spectators in galleries on three sides. Since much of the audience saw the ballet from above, the choreography emphasized the elaborate floor patterns created by lines and groups of dancers. Poetry and songs accompanied the dances. Most French court ballets consisted of dance scenes linked by a minimum of plot. Because they were designed principally for the entertainment of the aristocracy, rich costumes, scenery, and elaborate stage effects were emphasized. The proscenium stage was first adopted in France in the mid-1600s, and professional dancers made their first appearance, although they were not permitted to dance in the grand ballet that concluded the performance; this was still reserved for the king and courtiers. The court ballet reached its peak during the reign of Louis XIV, whose title the Sun King was derived from a role he danced in a ballet. The Italian-French composer Jean Baptiste Lully and the French choreographer Pierre Beauchamp, who is said to have defined the five positions of the feet, created many of the ballets presented at his court. Also during this time, the playwright MoliŠre invented the die-ballet, in which danced interludes alternated with spoken scenes. Early Professional Ballet In 1661 Louis XIV established the Acad mie Royale de Danse, a professional organization for dancing masters. He himself stopped dancing in 1670, and his courtiers followed his example. By then the court ballet was already giving way to professional dancing. At first all the dancers were men, and men in masks danced women's roles. The first female dancers to perform professionally in a theatre production appeared in a ballet called Le Triomphe de l'Amour (The Triumph of Love). The dance technique of the period, recorded by the French ballet master Raoul Feuillet in his book Chorography, included many steps and positions recognizable today. A new theatrical form developed: the opera-ballet, which placed equal emphasis on singing and dancing and generally consisted of a series of dances linked by a common theme. A famous opera-ballet, by the French composer Jean Philippe Rameau, was Les Indes galantes (The Gallant Indies), which depicted exotic lands and peoples. Eighteenth-century dancers were encumbered by masks, wigs or large headdresses, and heeled shoes. Women wore panniers, hoopskirts draped at the sides for fullness. Men often wore the tonnelet, a knee-length hoopskirt. The French dancer Marie Camargo, however, shortened her skirts and adopted heelless slippers to display her sparkling jumps and beats. Her rival, Marie Sall‚ also broke with custom when she discarded her corset and put on Greek robes to dance in her own ballet, Pygmalion. During the second half of the 18th century the Paris Opera was dominated by male dancers such as the Italian-French virtuoso Gatan Vestris and his son Auguste Vestris, famed for his jumps and leaps. But women such as the German-born Anne Heinel, the first female dancer to do double pirouettes, also were gaining in technical proficiency. Despite the brilliance of the French dancers, choreographers working outside Paris achieved more dramatic expression in ballet. In London the English choreographer John Weaver eliminated words and tried to convey dramatic action through dance and pantomime. In Vienna the Austrian choreographer Franz Hilverding and his Italian pupil Gasparo Angiolini experimented with dramatic themes and gestures. The most famous 18th-century advocate of the dramatic ballet was the Frenchman Jean Georges Noverre, whose Letters on Dancing and Ballets influenced many choreographers both during and after his lifetime. He advised using movement that was natural and easily understood and emphasized that all the elements of a ballet should work in harmony to express the ballet's theme. Noverre found an outlet for his ideas in Stuttgart, Germany, where he first produced his most famous ballet, Medea and Jason. Noverre's pupils included the Frenchman Jean Dauberval, whose ballet La fille mal garde (The Ill-Guarded Girl) applied Noverre's ideas to a comic theme. Dauberval's Italian pupil Salvatore Vigan, who worked at La Scala, a theatre in Milan, developed a variety of expressive pantomime performed in strict time to the music. Charles Didelot, a French student of both Noverre and Dauberval, worked mainly in London and Saint Petersburg. In Didelot's ballet Flore et Z‚phire, invisible wires helped the dancers appear to fly. Toe dancing began to develop at about this time, although the dancers balanced on their toes only for a moment or two. Blocked toe shoes had not yet been invented, and dancers strengthened their light slippers with darning. The Italian choreographer Carlo Blasis, a pupil of Dauberval and Vigan, recorded the dance technique of the early 19th century in his Code of Terpsichore. He is credited with inventing the attitude, derived from a famous work by the Flemish sculptor Giambologna, a statue of the god Mercury poised lightly on the toes of the left foot. Romantic Ballet The ballet La Sylphide, first performed in Paris in 1832, introduced the period of the romantic ballet. Marie Taglioni danced the part of the Sylphide, a supernatural creature who is loved and inadvertently destroyed by a mortal man. The choreography, created by her father, Filippo Taglioni, exploited the use of toe dancing to emphasize his daughter's otherworldly lightness and insubstantiality. La Sylphide inspired many changes in the ballets of the time-in theme, style, technique, and costume. Its successor, Giselle, also contrasted the human and supernatural worlds, and in its second act the ghostly spirits called wilis wear the white tutu popularized in La Sylphide. The romantic ballet was not restricted, however, to the subject of otherworldly beings. The Austrian dancer Fanny Elssler popularized an earthier, sensuous character. Her most famous dance, the cachucha, was a Spanish-style solo performed with castanets, and she often performed very stylized versions of national dances. Women dominated the romantic ballet. Although good male dancers such as the Frenchmen Jules Perrot and Arthur Saint-Lon were performing, ballerinas such as Taglioni, Elssler, the Italians Carlotta Grisi and Fanny Cerrito, and others eclipsed them. Taglioni and Elssler danced in Russia, and Perrot and Saint-Lon created ballets there. Elssler also danced in the United States, which produced two ballerinas of its own: Augusta Maywood and Mary Ann Lee, both from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In Paris itself, however, ballet began to decline. Poetic qualities gave way to virtuosic displays and spectacle. Male dancing was neglected. Few ballets of note were produced at the Opera during the second half of the 19th century. An exception was Copplia, choreographed by Saint-Lon in 1870, but even in it a woman danced the principal male role. Denmark, however, maintained the standards of the romantic ballet. The Danish choreographer Bournonville, who had studied in Paris, not only established a system of training but also created a large body of works, including his own version of La Sylphide. Many of these ballets are still performed by the Royal Danish Ballet. Russia also preserved the integrity of the ballet during the late 19th century. A Frenchman, Marius Petipa, became the chief choreographer of the Imperial Russian Ballet. He perfected the full-length, evening-long story ballet that combined set dances with mimed scenes. His best-known works are The Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake, both set to commissioned scores by Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky. 20th Century With time, Petipa's choreographic method settled into a formula. Fokine called for greater expressiveness and more authenticity in choreography, scenery, and costume. He was able to realize his ideas through the Ballets Russes, a new company organized by the Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev. The Ballets Russes opened in Paris in 1909 and won immediate success. The male dancers, among them the Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, were particularly admired because good male dancers had almost disappeared in Paris. The company presented a broad range of works, including Fokine's compactly knit one-act ballets with colourful themes from Russian or Asian folklore: The Firebird, Shrazade, and Petrushka. The Ballets Russes became synonymous with novelty and excitement, a reputation it maintained throughout its 20 years of existence. Although the most famous members of the company were Russian, Diaghilev commissioned many Western European artists and composers, such as Pablo Picasso and Maurice Ravel, to collaborate on the ballets. Diaghilev's choreographers, Fokine, Polish choreographer Branislava Nijinska, Nijinsky, Russian-born Lonide Massine, Russian-born American George Balanchine, and the Russian-born French dancer and choreographer Serge Lifar, experimented with new themes and styles of movement. The offshoots of the Ballets Russes revitalized ballet all over the world. The Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, who danced in its early seasons, formed her own company and toured internationally. Fokine worked with many companies, including the future American Ballet Theatre. Massine contributed to the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, a company formed after Diaghilev's death. Two former members of the Ballets Russes, the Polish-born British dancer Dame Marie Rambert and the British dancer Dame Ninette de Valois became the founders of British ballet. Rambert's students included the British choreographers Sir Frederick Ashton, Antony Tudor, and John Cranko. De Valois founded the company that became Britain's Royal Ballet. Balanchine was invited to work in the United States by Lincoln Kirstein, a wealthy American patron of the arts. Lifar worked at the Paris Opera and dominated French ballet for many years. In the 1920s and 1930s, modern dance began to be developed in the United States and Germany. The American dancers Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey, the German dancer Mary Wigman, and others broke away from traditional ballet to create their own expressive movement styles and to choreograph dances that were more closely related to actual human life. Ballets also reflected this move toward realism. In 1932 the German choreographer Kurt Jooss created The Green Table, an antiwar ballet. Antony Tudor developed the psychological ballet, which revealed the inner being of the characters. Modern dance also eventually extended the movement vocabulary of ballet, particularly in the use of the torso and in movements done lying or sitting on the floor. Popular dance forms also enriched the ballet. In 1944 the American choreographer Jerome Robbins created Fancy Free, a ballet based on the jazz-dance style that had developed in musical comedy. The idea of pure dance also grew in popularity. In the 1930s Massine invented the symphonic ballet, which aimed to express the musical content of symphonies by the German composers Ludwig Van Beethoven and Johannes Brahms. Balanchine also began to create plotless ballets in which the primary motivation was movement to music. His ballet Jewels is considered the first evening-length ballet of this type. Two great American ballet companies were founded in New York City in the 1940s, American Ballet Theatre and the New York City Ballet. The latter drew many of its dancers from the School of American Ballet established by Balanchine and Kirstein in 1934. Since the mid-20th century, ballet companies have been founded in many cities throughout the United States and in Canada, among them: the National Ballet of Canada, in Toronto; Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, in Montral; the Pennsylvania Ballet, in Philadelphia; and the Houston Ballet. Beginning in 1956, Russian ballet companies such as the Bolshoi and Kirov performed in the West for the first time. The intense dramatic feeling and technical virtuosity of the Russians made a great impact. Russian influence on ballet continues today, both through visits from Russian companies and the activities of defecting Soviet dancers such as Rudolf Nureyev, artistic director of the Paris Opera Ballet from 1983 to 1989; Natalia Makarova; and Mikhail Baryshnikov, director of the American Ballet Theatre, New York City, from 1980 to 1989. Dance in general underwent an enormous upsurge in popularity beginning in the mid-1960s. Ballet began to show the influence of a younger audience, in both themes and style. The athleticism of dancing was enjoyed in much the same way as sports, and virtuosic steps were admired for their challenge and daring. Popular music such as rock and roll and jazz was used to accompany many ballets. Today's ballet repertoire offers great variety. New ballets and reconstructions and restaging of older ballets coexist with new works created by modern-dance choreographers for ballet companies. Choreographers experiment with both new and traditional forms and styles, and dancers constantly seek to extend their technical and dramatic range. The frequent tours of ballet companies allow audiences throughout the world to experience the full spectrum of today's ballet activity. Although the roots of classical dance can be traced back through the Renaissance to medieval pageantry and religious rites, ballet as Western civilization knows it is an invention of artists associated with the French court of Louis XIV, who was known as the Sun King. In 1661 a group of dancing masters asked the king to establish an authorized academy, and he responded by giving them a room in the Louvre for their use. The head of this academy was the king's own dancing master and perhaps the first great French dancer, Pierre Beauchamp’s, a competent choreographer who was closely associated with the composer Jean-Baptiste Lully. At this time the ballet de cour (court ballet) was largely concerned with using dancers to trace inventive patterns on the stage. As a rule these dances were but one component of an elaborate stage presentation. The codification of technique that was undertaken under Beauchamp’s supervision, however, pointed the way to the later virtuosic vocabulary and to a form of ballet that is self-contained and whose association with operatic productions became the exception rather than the rule. A trend toward a greater degree of self-expression began early in the 18th century. Among performers the Belgian-French ballerina Marie Camargo was noteworthy for introducing new steps to the ballet vocabulary and for performing with a level of virtuosity that had rarely been seen. In 1726 she also opened new vistas for her audiences by being the first dancer to raise her ballet skirt several inches, a change in fashion that made her virtuosity all the more evident. A decade later another ballerina, Marie Salle, also instituted several changes in costume that were considerably ahead of her time, including loosening her skirt and bodice while she danced and giving her entire body a new freedom of expression. She was the first woman to choreograph the ballets in which she appeared. Two French choreographers were in the vanguard of this movement. Pierre Rameau, who in 1725 codified the five absolute positions of the feet, encouraged a livelier, less earthbound style of dancing; and Jean-Georges Noverre, the father of the ballet d'action, urged in his 'Lettres' that, without abandoning the fundamental five positions, a full range of facial and bodily gestures be used to express emotion. Noverre also wanted all elements of a stage production, from the story to the music to the actions of the corps de ballets, to be as emotionally honest as possible. Noverre's influence was profound, both as the leading dance figure of his day--he was ballet master to Marie Antoinette--and as the creator of milestone works such as 'Jason et Medee', first performed in Paris in 1775. By the beginning of the 19th century, despite these innovations, France had ceased to be the center of ballet creativity. Not one of the greatest ballerinas of the day was French: Marie Taglioni, Carlotta Grisi, and Fanny Cerrito were of Italian lineage; Lucile Grahn was Danish; and Fanny Elssler was Austrian. These ballerinas still symbolize the essence of Romantic ballet, of a style that stresses above all else an ethereal and floating lightness. For these women title roles were created in such works as 'La Sylphide', for Taglioni, and 'Giselle', for Grisi, roles that exploited their airiness. Choreographers, too, came to prominence outside France. In Milan, where he made his debut in 1804, Salvatore Vigano refined and more fully realized the reforms proposed by Noverre. Milan also was where Carlo Blasis spent his most creative years, appearing as a dancer, working as a choreographer, and making his most lasting contribution with his 'Code of Terpsichore', a manual of instruction that became the standard ballet handbook not only in Italy but in France, England, and, perhaps most of all, in Russia. Russia, in fact, is where ballet took its largest strides in the last half of the 19th century. In 1847 Marius Petipa arrived in St. Petersburg, establishing that cosmopolitan city as the capital of both the most gifted ballet dancers and the most imaginative choreographers. Associated with the Imperial Ballet for more than 50 years, Petipa virtually single-handedly created the 19th-century Russian repertory. During his tenure he invented 57 new ballets, revived and revised 17 more, and choreographed dances for 34 operas. Among his works are what many consider the crowning achievements of Russian ballet, 'Swan Lake', 'The Sleeping Beauty', and 'The Nutcracker', each made in collaboration with the composer Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky. Petipa also exploited a yearning for faraway and Romantic locales and gave his audiences exotic tableaux in such ballets as 'Don Quixote', which was set in Spain, and in the Egyptian-inspired 'The Daughter of Pharaoh'. If Petipa was responsible for creating a renaissance in Russian ballet, Michel Fokine can be credited with the reformation of the genre. It was Fokine who, in 1884, proposed that ballet once again dedicate itself to an expressiveness that was pure and direct, that it not concern itself with exotic plots and fables. As if to illustrate these sentiments, Fokine's ballet 'Les Sylphides', choreographed in 1906, presented dancers as purely as possible in a piece uncluttered by plot and what were then considered artificial atmospherics. The choreographers associated with the fabled Ballets Russes expressed the ideals that Fokine sought--emotional directness and dramatic realism--throughout much of the 20th century’s opening decades. Sergei Diaghilev, a connoisseur of extraordinary tastes and energies, led this company, whose legend endures. With an ensemble that included some of the Imperial Ballet's finest performers and choreographers and with productions enhanced by the preeminent composers and visual artists of the day, Diaghilev conquered, first, western Europe and then North and South America. Among his associates were choreographers Leonide Massine, Vaslav Nijinsky, George Balanchine, and, of course, Fokine; dancers Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina; scenic artists Leon Bakst and Pablo Picasso; and composers Igor Stravinsky, Claude Debussy, and Erik Satie. Never, perhaps, in the history of dance had such a formidable array of talents been presented by a single ballet company. When the international center of ballet innovation shifted to the United States--a shift explained in part by political events of the time--many of Diaghilev's artists found new homes and careers in the United States. Although theatrical dancing was occasionally imported from Europe to entertain the citizens of the colonies, no native-born dancer of note emerged until the late 18th century. The best known of these early American artists was John Durang, who made his debut in Philadelphia in 1785 and went on to found America's first dynasty of dancers. It was a foreign dancer, however, who was the first ballet celebrity to be embraced by American audiences. With a glorious European career behind her, Fanny Elssler made her New York City debut in 1840 and for the next two years toured the United States. So popular was she that when she visited Washington, D.C., the entire United States Congress feted her. Elssler's visit stimulated a keen interest in classical dance. Later in the century four United States artists won considerable renown--the ballerinas Mary Ann Lee, Julia Turnbull, Augusta Maywood, and the male dancer George Washington Smith. He was America's first native-born premier danseur, a dancer of elegant mien and bearing known not only for his technical accomplishments but also for his courtliness as a partner. Smith had a long and distinguished career and is credited with staging 'The Black Crook', a theatrical extravaganza often considered the basis for United States music hall and vaudeville. At the beginning of the 20th century ballet began to build a substantial following. The team of Anna Pavlova and Mikhail Mordkin, who played a brilliant season at New York City’s Metropolitan Opera House in 1910, presented the first events of note. Schooled to perfection in the finest traditions, both Pavlova and Mordkin had established themselves in the first rank of artists in their native Russia. Their appearances in the United States set a standard to which native performers could aspire and stimulated an appreciation of ballet on a wide scale. Another milestone occurred in 1916, when Diaghilev's Ballets Russes made its United States debut. The company's two tours were critical to the future of American ballet: they revealed an exotic beauty and a level of technical perfection that were new to American eyes, and they directly influenced the coming generations of United States dancers, for many of Diaghilev's discoveries were later to teach and live in the United States. Among these Russian expatriates were Michel Fokine and Mikhail Mordkin, Adolph Bolm, Ludmilla Schollar, and Bronislava Nijinska. After Diaghilev's death in 1929, his company splintered in several directions. Several impresarios tried to take his place; the most important among them in the United States were Col. Wassily de Basil and Rene Blum. Companies led by these two showmen--called at various times, among others, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and the Original Ballet Russe--toured the United States throughout the 1930s and 1940s, and were joined in the 1940s by a company led by still another former associate of Diaghilev, Leonide Massine. From these companies, none of which was clearly distinguished by an individual profile, emerged the Ballet Theatre. It presented its much-awaited first performance on Jan. 11, 1940. Dedicated both to the preservation and revival of the very best of the classical and modern repertory and to the creation of new works of exceptional interest, Ballet Theatre struck a balance between tradition and experimentation. Of equal importance, it was well endowed and well direc...