Court dancers and musicians collaborated to entertain aristocrats on celebrations. One of the first ballet dancing masters was Domenico da Piacenza. The first ballet was Ballet de Polonaise performed in Traditional shoes were not yet used, and the costumes were formal gowns.
In Renaissance time in France ballet was more formalized by Pierre Beauchamp. He codified five positions of the feet and arms. Ballet dancers organized into professional ballet troupes and performed for aristocrats as they toured through the Europe. The movements of the dancers were designed to express the story telling and characters. That is how ballet became an essential part of the opera dramatisation. It was included in operas as interludes called divertissements.
A big role in this development played French dancer and balletmaster Jean-Georges Noverre and composer Christoph Gluck. Dance, music and scenery were brought together to support the plot. Venice was also a centre of dance.
Dancers travelled there for cultural exchange. Romanticism or also known as the Romantic era, was a reaction to the Industrial Revolution and a rejection of the Age of Enlightenment. The Industrial Revolution, about to between and , was a period of development which saw massive changes to the way people lived and worked. It was a time when the goods manufacturing moved from small shops or homes to large factories. People moved from rural areas to big cities to work. The movement focused on art, science, reasons, literary, music and rationality.
Cities were expanding with people leaving the countryside and scientific reasoning had taken over from the old religious belief and superstition. Romantics tried to escape industrialism and turned to idealised imagination and nature. Young artist wanted the freedom to express in an unconstrained and individual way. They rejected the original classical ideas of order, balance and harmony; and turned to human themes of tragedy, love and loss as a source of inspiration.
Romantic Ballet was created, focused on sensuality and spirituality. Preliminary dancing on toes with only satin ballet slippers darned at the tips of the toes became popular at this time. The romantic tutu, a calf-length, full skirt made of tulle, was introduced.
It was at this time, most creation was danced by female dancers, and male dancers were no longer an equal star. Technical proficiency rose, lighter costumes to portray elaborate and difficult movements, greater leaps to portray lightness, removal of masks and headdresses to allow expressive face, arms became softer and rounder to create delicate and elegant feel and forward tilt to create the sylphlike look.
During the latter half of the 19th century, especially after , the popularity of ballet flourish in Russia and Denmark although it was beginning to wane in France. Masters such as August Bournonville — , Enrico Cecchetti — and Marius Petipa — created great ballets in Russia.
The official terminology and vocabulary of ballet was gradually codified in French over the next years, and during the reign of Louis XIV, the king himself performed many of the popular dances of the time.
Professional dancers were hired to perform at court functions after King Louis and fellow noblemen had stopped dancing. A whole family of instruments evolved during this time as well. The court dances grew in size, opulence, and grandeur to the point where performances were presented on elevated platforms so that a greater audience could watch the increasingly pyrotechnic and elaborate spectacles.
The great Romantic ballerinas, including Fanny Elssler, Fanny Cerrito and Taglioni herself, danced a dazzling array of balleticised czardas, polkas, mazurkas and boleros. The period remains synonymous with the poetry and fire of these intrepid female celebrities. By the s, ballet was flourishing around the globe as an essential ingredient of popular entertainment. In Britain alone, dozens of new venues for ballet opened across the country.
Some staged divertissements, pantomimes or narrative ballets based on well-known works like La Sylphide and Paquita. Over time, hundreds of leading dancers from Europe travelled to work in the Imperial Theatres, helping foster an outstanding native ballet tradition. The visitors included ballet masters like Franz Hilverding and Charles Didelot, celebrities such as Fanny Elssler, and virtuosic Italian ballerinas who starred alongside Russian-born talent. However, none left a greater legacy than Frenchman Marius Petipa, who was appointed ballet master of the Mariinsky Theatre in By the late 19th century, ballet had cheerfully given itself over to popular culture.
They collectively spearheaded the appeal of new dance techniques, encouraging freer forms of expression influenced by nature and spirituality, as well as Symbolism and other artistic movements. In the 20th century, America and Germany emerged as important centres for modern dance, producing choreographers such as Kurt Jooss and Martha Graham, whose approaches to movement and expression have immeasurably enriched ballet. Since the s, numerous ballet companies have supported experimentation and cross-pollination by inviting modern choreographers to create new ballets.
In the spring of , Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev assembled an exceptional group of dancers, artists and musicians to present a short season of ballets in Paris. For the next 20 years the nomadic Ballets Russes was synonymous with glamour, sophistication and the kaleidoscopic brilliance of the avant garde.
Despite its name, the Ballets Russes never performed in Russia, but provided a dynamic haven for artists separated from their homeland by conflict, many of whom founded their own schools and companies. In Moscow, the rise of drambalet produced dancers of extraordinary stage presence, including Galina Ulanova, Vladimir Vasiliev and Maya Plisetskaya.
Although classical ballet was denounced during the Cultural Revolution, it survived under the auspices of Madame Mao. Today, Chinese-trained dancers perform with companies around the globe. He found himself in a country where ballet was the stuff of children teetering about in pointe shoes and curvaceous, prosaic ballerinas.
A prolific choreographer, Balanchine created ballets referencing many different styles, from the neo-classicism of Apollo to the jazz-inflected Rubies , from the hoedowns of Western Symphony to his own immensely successful production of The Nutcracker , which drew on his childhood memories of St Petersburg.
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