ballet

early professional ballet

The earliest precursors to ballets were lavish entertainments given in the courts of Renaissance Italy. These elaborate spectacles, which united painting, poetry, music, and dancing, took place in large halls that were used also for banquets and balls.

A dance performance given in 1489 actually was performed between the courses of a banquet, and the action was closely related to the menu: For instance, the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece preceded the roast lamb. The dancers based their performance on the social dances of the day.

The Italian court ballets were further developed in France. Le Ballet Comique de la Reine (The Queen's Ballet Comedy), the first ballet for which a complete score survived, was performed in Paris in 1581. It was staged by Balthazar de Beaujoyeux, a violinist and dancing master at the court of Queen Catherine de Médicis. It was danced by aristocratic amateurs in a hall 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 (1643-1715) of Louis XIV, whose title the Sun King was derived from a role he danced in a ballet. Many of the ballets presented at his court were created by Italian French composer Jean Baptiste Lully and French choreographer Pierre Beauchamp, who is said to have defined the five positions of the feet. Also during this time, the playwright Molière invented the comédie-ballet, in which danced interludes alternated with spoken scenes.

In 1661 Louis XIV established the Académie 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 theater production appeared (1681) 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 Chorégraphie (1700), included many steps and positions recognizable today. A new theatrical form developed: the opéra-ballet, which placed equal emphasis on singing and dancing and generally consisted of a series of dances linked by a common theme. A famous opéra-ballet, by French composer Jean Philippe Rameau, was Les Indes galantes (The Gallant Indies, 1735), 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. French dancer Marie Camargo, however, shortened her skirts and adopted heelless slippers to display her sparkling jumps and beats. Her rival, Marie Sallé, also broke with custom when she discarded her corset and put on Greek robes to dance in her own ballet, Pigmalion (1734).

During the second half of the 18th century the Paris Opéra was dominated by male dancers such as Italian French virtuoso Gaétan Vestris and his son Auguste Vestris, famed for his jumps and leaps. But women such as 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, English choreographer John Weaver eliminated words and tried to convey dramatic action through dance and pantomime. In Vienna, 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 (1760) 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 (1763).

Noverre's pupils included the Frenchman Jean Dauberval, whose ballet La fille mal gardée (The Ill-Guarded Girl, 1789) applied Noverre's ideas to a comic theme. Dauberval's Italian pupil Salvatore Viganò, who worked at La Scala, a theater 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 Zéphire (1796), 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.

Italian choreographer Carlo Blasis, a pupil of Dauberval and Viganò, recorded the dance technique of the early 19th century in his Code of Terpsichore (1830). He is credited with inventing the attitude, derived from a famous work by Flemish sculptor Giambologna, a statue of the god Mercury poised lightly on the toes of the left foot.

Contributed by Susan Au, M.A., Dance historian. Author of Ballet and Modern Dance.