Ballet Page 1

Ballet

Ballet is not just a style of dance, it is also an art form. This is because ballet dancers have
to train for many years to develop strength and flexibility, balance and speed, agility and
grace. Ballet is specially designed to be performed in front of an audience in a theatre. The
dancers wear costumes and perform among scenery. Their movements are matched to
music that allows them to express all sorts of feelings and ideas without saying a word. The
combination of all these different creative elements makes a ballet performance a truly
magical experience.

HOW BALLET BEGAN

Ballet is more than 500 years old. It began during the 16th and 17th centuries, when European kings
and queens staged grand entertainments in their palaces. They paid dancing masters and drama
teachers to train their courtiers to recite speeches, sing and play instruments and perform elegant
versions of folk dances. Expert craftsmen created breathtaking costumes and beautiful scenery. Then
the nobles performed in musical spectacles that told stories from Ancient Rome and Greece through
dancing, singing and poetry.

King Louis XIV of France (1643-1715) particularly loved dancing. He trained daily with a dancing
master called Pierre Beauchamps and they established a dancing school called the Académie Royale
de Danse. Beauchamps decided there should be five different foot positions and taught a series of
properly defined steps. These formed the basis of ballet technique, and French words have been used
to describe ballet moves ever since.

FROM THE COURT TO THE THEATRE

Dancers in the first court ballets were restricted by their heavy and ornate costumes, high heels and
masks. The aim of the dancing was to parade about gracefully making interesting patterns on the
dance floor. Everyone kept their backs straight and their heads lifted—not just to look poised, but
also to keep their huge wigs and headdresses from falling off.

In 1669 the first French opera company opened a theatre in Paris and began to use ballet dancers.
To begin with, only men were allowed to perform, but from 1681 there were women ballet dancers
too. These performers worked hard to develop their range of movement and technical skills. In 1713
the first-ever ballet company was set up at the Paris Opéra, to train dancers and develop new steps,
such as spins and jumps. It was not long before ballet broke away from opera completely. In 1717 in
London, a dancing master called John Weaver put on a ballet called The Loves of Mars and Venus. It
was the first ballet to use dancing alone to tell the story, with no songs or speeches at all.

EXCITING DEVELOPMENTS

Performers rapidly thought up more new ideas for ballet dancing. In 1726 a dancer in France called
Marie Camargo appeared in shoes without heels. She also daringly shortened her skirts above her
ankles so audiences could see her nimble footwork when she jumped. Italian performers introduced a
new way of showing off their leg movements by turning out their feet. Then in the early 1800s,
women dancers began to raise themselves on the tips of their toes. By 1830, an Italian called Marie
Taglioni could support her entire body weight on the toes of just one foot in soft shoes.

ROMANTIC BALLET

Before the late 18th century, most choreographers aimed to dazzle audiences with the technical
abilities of their dancers. This changed between 1830 and 1850, when they began to focus on stirring
people’s feelings too. Choreographers created ballets that told sad love stories of heroes, heroines

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Ballet Page 2

and villains. They were set in magical worlds inhabited by ghosts and spirits. These were portrayed
by a group of female dancers called the corps de ballet, who wore long, flowing white dresses and
moved eerily as one. The works came to be known as Romantic ballets and the most famous are still
regularly performed today, for example La Sylphide and Giselle.

CLASSICAL BALLET

In 1857 a French choreographer called Marius Petipa went to work at the Imperial Russian Ballet
company. Petipa thought that Romantic ballet restricted male dancers. Men mainly had supportive
roles, lifting the female dancers as though they were flying. Petipa began to create ballets with rapid
turns and soaring leaps, which challenged male dancers. His female roles demanded breathtaking
spinning and incredibly high leg lifts. (To perform these moves, girls found that a short, stiff ballet
skirt called a tutu was better than a long, Romantic skirt.) Petipa’s ballets still told a story, but the
characters, costumes, scenery and music were less important than the dancing. For instance, Petipa
often included divertissements in his ballets. These dances do not move the story along, but are
simply enjoyable to watch. His style became known as Classical ballet. The most famous Classical
ballets today are Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty (both choreographed by Marius Petipa) and
The Nutcracker (choreographed by Petipa’s assistant, Lev Ivanov). The wonderful music for these
three was written by the great composer, Peter Tchaikovsky.

BALLETS RUSSES

At the beginning of the 20th century, a dance-maker in Russia called Michel Fokine broke away from
the Classical style of ballet. He felt that dancers should be able to move in any way that fitted the
subject of the ballet, instead of having to stick rigidly to recognized steps and technique. For
instance, if a ballet was about cloth puppets, the dancers’ movements should be limp and floppy
instead of upright and graceful. He thought the corps de ballet should express themselves as
individuals instead of always dancing as one. And he also felt strongly that costumes, scenery, music
and acting should be just as important in a ballet as the dancing.

A director who shared Fokine’s ideas was Sergei Diaghilev. He created a company called the Ballets
Russes and brought geniuses from different artistic areas to work with Fokine. The artists Pablo
Picasso, Léon Bakst and Alexandre Benois worked on scenery and costumes. The great composers
Frédéric Chopin and Igor Stravinsky wrote music. A brilliant dance master called Enrico Cecchetti
taught the dancers.

The Ballets Russes toured Europe and America from 1909 to 1929 and stunned audiences with a
variety of new one-act ballets, such as Petrushka and The Firebird. The star dancers became legends,
including Vaslav Nijinsky (for his earth-defying leaps), and Anna Pavlova (for her wonderfully
dramatic style). The company’s work inspired many later dancemakers, including Leonide Massine,
choreographer of the film The Red Shoes; George Balanchine, who became artistic director of the
New York City Ballet; and Sir Frederick Ashton, who created Cinderella and La Fille Mal Gardée, and
who became director of the Royal Ballet.

BALLET IN THE 20TH AND 21ST CENTURIES

Creators of ballets today enjoy both drawing on the traditions of the past and experimenting with
new ideas. Some modern ballets continue to tell a story, such as David Bintley’s Hobson’s Choice,
which is set in a Victorian bootmaker’s shop. Other modern ballets have a theme rather than a story.
For instance, John Cranko used playing cards as the theme in his ballet, Card Game. Other ballets
are abstract, which means that they have neither a story nor a theme, but are created purely to
display the dancers’ skills. In 1988 the choreographer William Forsythe created an abstract ballet
called In the middle, somewhat elevated, with challenging rhythms and athletic moves. Other
modern ballets focus on up-to-the-minute topics. For instance, David Bintley’s Still Life at the
Penguin Café is about concern for the environment. A choreographer called Matthew Bourne has
created brilliant new versions of old masterpieces, such as an all-male production of Swan Lake and a

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Ballet Page 3

reworking of Cinderella that includes tango dancing.

The music created for a ballet is called a score. Modern ballets may either have a score composed
specially for them or be choreographed to music that already exists. Kenneth MacMillan used the
ragtime music of Scott Joplin to create a fun-filled ballet called Elite Syncopations.

The designers of modern ballets use all sorts of dance clothes, from elaborate tutus, to all-over
animal costumes (such as in Frederick Ashton’s The Tales of Beatrix Potter), to fancy leotards and
tights.

BEHIND THE SCENES

Every ballet dancer, no matter how experienced, takes a daily class to keep her or his muscles supple
and strong. This begins with exercises holding on to a wooden pole called a barre for support. The
dancer performs knee bends called pliés, leg and foot stretches called battements tendus and leg lifts
called développés. Then the dancer moves to the centre of the room to practise arm positions called
ports de bras, slow and flowing movements called adage and faster steps called allegro. The class
finishes with spins such as pirouettes and large leaps such as jetés.

It is ideal for girls and boys to start dance training as young as possible, while their bodies are still
flexible. However, the Russian male star Rudolf Nureyev did not properly train for ballet until he was
17. And the British ballerina Darcey Bussell did not go to full-time ballet school until she was 13. Girls
do not begin training for pointe work until their feet and legs are strong enough, at around 11. At
about the same age, boys start exercises to build up their arms and shoulders ready for partner
work, called pas de deux. Ballet students also take classes in mime and other dance styles such as
national folk dances.

Ballet dancing is so physically demanding that most professional dancers cannot continue beyond the
age of about 30 or 35. There are some roles in ballets, which involve more acting than dancing, and
older stars occasionally perform these character roles (for example, the great dancer-actress, Lynn
Seymour). Other dancers enjoy turning to non-performing jobs such as dance teaching.

Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.