A Brief History of Ballet

At one time, everybody danced. Holidays and all special occasions were celebrated by dancing. Children learned dances that were passed along from generation to generation. Folk dancing, therefore, is the origin of all professional dance, whether ballet or modern, Broadway tap or jazz. Dancing, however, had its origins even further back than village or folk dances. Man danced before he could talk. Body languagethe root of dancingwas the communication of the cave man. The hunt was enacted before warriors left the tribe and the desired outcome was danced for the good harvest of crops. Finally, early man celebrated his victories in the hunt, the harvest and in protecting himself against the forces of nature and other tribes, with ritual dances. Symbolism was important, and masks, costumes and props were eventually incorporated to elaborate upon the steps. Folk dances took on more complex forms when revised for the aristocracy in the 1500s. These court dances were originally designed to be danced by everyone. An important part of every childs education was dance instruction. All parties included social dances, differing from folk dances in their formality. This was a result of court protocol and etiquette. Not meant to be a professional performance, dance was exhibited by the nobility for and with their peers. Social dances such as the minuet began to set patterns around the room that were interesting to watch. Required skill was limited to what courtiers had been taught to participate in formal parties and balls. When dancing shifted from being something everyone did to something aristocrats watched, elaborate garb was in vogue. Towering headdresses, heeled shoes, heavy skirts held out by hoops with layers of underskirts for the women, embellished waistcoats with trousers buttoned at the knee for menthese stiff garments resulted in fairly stiff movements. The costume, in other words, made the choreography. The performers were too limited to get off the ground and too encumbered to perform steps that were intricate or quick. The transition to dance as a performance instead of mere entertainment for the royalty occurred at the behest of Louis 14th. Dubbed the Sun King, he loved to dance and often held gigantic masques at his Versailles palace. Louis modeled his public image after Apollo, the Sun god. He believed everyone had to have total respect for the power of the king, and people understood the power of the Sun god. So Louis performed the part of the Sun god in these dance exhibitions to solidify his power. Louis 14th also loved to eat. Soon, his expanded girth made his own dancing impossible. Therefore, he decided that if he were going to have to sit by and watch dancing, others should too. He set about creating dancing entertainments that he and other members of his court could observe. For this purpose, he designed a large ballroom floor with a balcony that ran around all four sides. Thus, the first dancers were looked down upon. Because of this seating arrangement, steps and patterns of dance began to change as well since dances needed now to be both interesting to watch and fun to perform. As time progressed, Louis became more ambitious about dance as theater entertainment and founded the Academie Royal de Dance (which would later become the Paris Opera Ballet) in 1661 to objectify standards and codify court and character dances. Ballet had a political advantage as well in that Louis surely used his ballets, in which the courtiers bowed and curtsied to him in a variety of elaborate and elegant ways, to celebrate and glorify himself, to associate himself with divinity, and to reinforce the power of the throne. He expected that nobility should be models of elegance and required members of his court to study with a dancemaster. How to manuals employed the first dance notation and ballet was systematically recorded. The French courts were soon

emulated by the court of Sweden and then others, leading to proper social etiquette and dance spreading. Because the Sun Kings school was the first to write down the names of steps, ballet vocabulary dates back to this time. The universal language of dance is still French, and ballet is still the basis of all professional dance. Even though the steps have evolved into what we see today, their origins are firmly rooted in those first traditions begun in Louis 14ths court. In the 1600s, dance was a mans game. The ballerina, as we know her, had not yet come into existence. Women really couldnt participate in the way men could, in large part because of their clothes. Men got to wear tights, which gave them more freedom of movementthey were able to jump and beat. Women had to wear heavy wigs and enormous headdresses, full, heavy skirts and shoes with heels, anddont forgettight corsets that restricted breathing, not to mention bending. There were, of course, popular female dancers in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, such as Mme. Lafontaine, Mlle. Subligny and Marie Prevost, but they were limited by their costumes. The men got to do all of the good steps. To make matters worse, as ballet dancing moved out of the ballrooms of royal palaces and onto the proscenium stage, women had to overcome societys disapproval of female performers. In the early 1700s, dancers took to the air. Rather than just moving elegantly from lovely pose to lovely pose, they began to jump, hop and leap. Women began to rebel against their restrictive costumes. Marie Salle literally let her hair down and loosened her clothes for her ballet daction, and her rival, Marie Ann Cupis de Camargo took the heels from her shoes and shortened her skirts to better perform the flashy new steps that had heretofore been done exclusively by men: entrechat quatre and cabriole. The eighteenth century saw an increased prominence of the female dancer and the expansion of the ballet vocabulary to include more jumps and turns. Among the other stars of the era were Mlle. Lyonnais, famed for her gargoulliades, and Fraulein Heinel, who dazzled Europe with her multiple pirouettesbut on demi-pointe. But Marie Taglioni often gets the credit and the blame for being the first to dance on pointe. But no one really knows for sure. It is established that in 1832, Marie Taglioni danced in the full length La Sylphide on pointe. But almost certainly there were dancers before her who rose onto the tips of their toes. Its even possible that Mme. Camargo had done so one hundred years before. There are references in newspaper accounts of various ballerinas with fantastic toes or of falling off her toes. Taglioni herself most likely danced on pointe before La Sylphide. But whoever was first, it was Taglioni who pioneered and developed the technique and who revolutionized ballet as a result. What had been merely a stunt and a kind of circus trick became a means of artistic expression, a dramatic as well as a technical feat. Her grace, lightness, elevation and style earned her an adoring audience and a brilliant career. In Russia, her fans loved her so much that they cooked her slippers and ate them with a sauce! By 1830, ballet came truly into its own as a theatrical art. Influenced by the Romantic movement, which was sweeping the world of art, music, literature and philosophy, ballet took on a whole new look. Writers such as Thophile Gautier paid tribute to the female dance muses of the time who inspired flights of fantasy and amorous liaisons. The beautiful, light and elusive ballerina reigned supreme. Female dancers wore calf-length, white, bell-shaped tulle skirts. And with the introduction of the pointe shoe, they began dancing on the tips of their toes. Male dancers began wearing tights, long-sleeved shirts and shorter jackets that greatly facilitated their movements. Ballet technique for both men and women expanded and developed because of these lighter costumes. Many ballets from this period, including Giselle, La Sylphide and Napoli, remain in the ballet repertoire and are a constant challenge for todays dancers.

Just before the turn of the century, in the 1890s, the center of ballet moved from France to Russia. There the renowned French-born choreographer Marius Petipa collaborated with composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky on lavish story ballet spectacles that brought ballet to a pinnacle of technical virtuosity. These ballets included Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker. Petipa also created works that continued to challenge dancers with their technical and artistic demands for razor-sharp precision graced with flowing ease. These works included La Bayadere Act II, Paquita and Don Quixote. In 1909, the Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev brought together some of Russias most talented dancers, choreographers, composers, singers, artists and designers in his company, the Ballets Russes. The troupe took Paris by storm as it introduced whole new aspects of classical ballet to the world. Diaghilevs company presented the first one-act ballets. Tightly constructed, exotic and often abstract, these works challenged preconceived notions of the potential of classical dance. Such works included Michel Fokines Schhrazade, The Firebird, Petrouchka and Les Sylphides; Vaslav Nijinskys The Rite of Spring and LApres Midi dun Faune; Bronislava Nijinskas Les Noces and Les Biches and George Balanchines Apollo and Prodigal Son. Almost all contemporary ballet companies and dancers have been influenced by the impact of the Ballets Russes. George Balanchine left Diaghilevs company and went to the United States to found the New York City Ballet; Ninette de Valois and Marie Rambert went on to found, respectively, Englands Royal Ballet and the Rambert Ballet Company. It is from these roots in England that Celia Franca came to Canada in 1951 to found The National Ballet of Canada. The world of ballet is rich with history and tradition that has been passed down from generation to generation.

Resources: Re Rabassi-Davis www.gaynorminden.com