Ballet

WHAT IS BALLET?

Some Basic Facts:

The word ballet is derived from the Italian word ballare meaning "to dance."

Music, dance and mime combine in ballet to tell a story.

In ballet, each step and movement is planned in advance. This is called choreography.

Ballet developed its vocabulary in France, and many of the original French names for steps and jumps are still used around the world. That way, dancers from different countries can understand each other.

Performing ballet is very hard work and requires hours of practice. Most ballet dancers begin training at an early age. Just as in athletics, dancers must take very good care of their bodies.

Women must work even harder than men because they have to learn to learn a very special technique called "pointe." Pointe dancers wear special shoes which allow them to dance on the very tips of their toes.

Dance in ballet is based on the five classic positions of the feet and must be performed by dancers trained in classic technique. All ballet movements begin and end with one of the five positions. They were created in the 18th century to provide balance and to make the feet and hands look graceful. The five positions are based on the foundation which underlies ballet dance - the turn out. The turn out is the ability of the dancer to rotate the legs outward much further than is normal or natural in everyday life. "Turn out" must come from the hip if injury is to be avoided.

HISTORY

1. Court and Classical Ballet

Ballet began as entertainment for the royal families of Europe more than 400 years ago. It has a long and rich history growing out of noble and courtly manners and behavior. Ladies and gentlemen of the court were the performers. The first "ballet" was presented at the court of Catherine De Medici in 1581. Soon these "ballets" bcame so popular in France and Italy that, if you were a member of the nobility, you had to have dance training. By the time of France's Louis XIV, there were hundreds of dance teachers in Paris alone. The king, an accomplished dancer himself, decided to put ballet in the hands of the professionals. He created a school - the Academie Royale de la Danse. Classical ballet style has developed gradually since then. In the 19th century "romantic" ballet became popular. Dancers in floating white dresses performed folktales and fairy tales such as LA SYLPHIDE and GISELLE.

The ballet company of Russia was important in the 19th century, too. At that time it was the Imperial Ballet (of the Emperor) and huge productions could be presented, with the most beautiful costumes and sets and magical stage effects. The choreographer Marius Petipa designed many of these deluxe productions, and the great composer Tchaikovsky created musical compositions for ballets that would provide an evening of drama, music, and dance.

Early the twentieth century, many Russian artists left their country for political reasons. Some of them formed the Ballets Russes (or Ballet Russe--it just means “Russian Ballet”) which brought old and new works to life all around the world. Great choreographers such as the Russian Fokine (1880-1942) and the dancer Vaslov Nijinsky and his sister Nijinska arranged dances for the Ballets Russes.

For a time, ballet companies toured everywhere in America and when they came to the smaller cities it was an important event. During the time of Anna Pavlova (1881-1931), ballet became "the thing" for people to see and talk about. Gradually it became too expensive for companies to tour and ballet became more of a big-city entertainment. But there were many schools around the country teaching ballet and dance, with children learning the positions and dreaming of going to New York or to Europe to dance in a great company.

Neo-classical ballet and Modern ballet are two twentieth-century styles which developed from Classical ballet, which is what we call the traditional European dance style as it was in France and Russia around the year 1900.

2. Neo-Classical Ballet

Neo-classical means “new classical” and this ballet is a style of dance developed by choreographer George Balanchine. When he was only ten years old he began learning ballet at the Kirov Ballet School in St. Petersburg, Russia. In 1924, when he was 20, he left Russia and soon joined the Ballets Russes, touring in Europe and America. He had many opportunities to try out new dance ideas. In 1933, with the help of an American named Lincoln Kirstein, Balanchine came to New York to start a new ballet school which would have a new, American style. It took them a long time, almost 15 years, before they had developed dancers and a style that were important enough to become the New York City Ballet. Balanchine died in 1983, having made over 400 dances, many of which are still treasured by the dancers who learned them and the audiences who have seen them.

From his classical training, Balanchine kept the line, the elegance, the precision and the presence, but he made everything go faster. Instead of thinking ANow he is going to leap@ or counting how many times the ballerina twirls, you kept watching all the dancers and just trying to see everything they did. Without any loss of elegance or precision Balanchine increased the speed at which steps were danced, shortened the time between step sequences, and choreographed preparation for the next sequence as part of the end of the sequence being danced.

In choreography too, Balachine chose carefully. He did not completely eliminate storytelling. Instead, he reduced the plot and character to a minimum and drew on his audiences' cultural knowledge through use of gestures, costumes and properties to convey his story. Nor did he eliminate mime, just the steps and postures which were stereotypical and humiliating, while retaining both classical and folk steps and poses which reflect humanity generously.

While Balanchine was eliminating those aspects of classical ballet which did not fit his vision he was exploring the movement of other dance styles - Neo-romantic ballet from Russia, modern dance from Middle Europe, folk and Western dance from the United States, the visual forms of modern art; cubism, surrealism, suprematism, and the new harmonies and rhythms created by Stravinsky.

3. Modern Ballet and Modern Dance

Modern ballet is a much more inclusive style of dance than is Neo-classical. It also comes from the early part of the 20th century, but it is not the creation of one great choreographer. Instead, it comes from the many choreographers and dancers who were taught in many combinations of ballet and other dance styles. Some dancers had political or spiritual ideas about dancing, others had ideas about storytelling, or trying to go back to prehistoric uses of dance to express a religious or cultural truth. Some choreographers use popular music or world music or really strange music, and sometimes there is no music at all. So the range of style and movement is much greater and also the range of feelings that the dances arouse.

A modern ballet choreographer can call on the whole range of dance styles and can incorporate jazz, the various styles of Modern expression from Isadora Duncan to Twyla Tharpe, European, African, South American and Pacific Island ethnic forms, as well as the several versions of romantic and classical ballet styles. Not only can Modern ballet choreographers select from a variety of styles of dance, they can also collaborate with artists in other fields to create new works. Composers, visual artists, choreographers and dancers can work together to produce a grander work because of the synthesis of the art forms. For example, TROY GAMES combined the dancers of the London Contemporary Dance Theatre, South American Indian music and instruments, and choreography taken from styles of dance as divergent as chorus line dancing; African rhythms and classical ballet.


Ballet is once again enjoying a period of great popularity. Ballet is an art form that must be seen to be enjoyed. With television and video technology, everyone can now see ballet. In the past 30 years, the great America male dancer Edward Villella and the two great Russian male dancers Rudolph Nureyev and Mikhal Baryshnikov did much to change the American perception of ballet and to influence the "acceptance" of ballet among men. Many professional male sports figures now receive regular ballet training to enhance their sports performance.