ballet

romantic ballet

The ballet La Sylphide, first performed in Paris in 1832, introduced the period of the romantic ballet. Marie Taglioni (below) danced the part of the Sylphide, a supernatural creature who is loved and inadvertently destroyed by a mortal man. The choreography, created by her father, Filippo Taglioni, exploited the use of toe dancing to emphasize his daughter's otherworldly lightness and insubstantiality. La Sylphide inspired many changes in the ballets of the time - in theme, style, technique, and costume. Its successor, Giselle (1841), also contrasted the human and supernatural worlds, and in its second act the ghostly spirits called wilis wear the white tutu popularized in La Sylphide.

The romantic ballet was not restricted, however, to the subject of otherworldly beings. Austrian dancer Fanny Elssler popularized a more earthy, sensuous character. Her most famous dance, the cachucha (in Le Diable Boiteux, 1836), was a Spanish-style solo performed with castanets, and she often performed very stylized versions of national dances.

Women dominated the romantic ballet. Although good male dancers such as the Frenchmen Jules Perrot and Arthur Saint-Léon were performing, they were eclipsed by ballerinas such as Taglioni, Elssler, Italians Carlotta Grisi and Fanny Cerrito, and others. Taglioni and Elssler danced in Russia, and Perrot and Saint-Léon created ballets there. Elssler also danced in the United States, which produced two ballerinas of its own: Augusta Maywood and Mary Ann Lee, both from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In Paris itself, however, ballet began to decline. Poetic qualities gave way to virtuosic displays and spectacle. Male dancing was neglected. Few ballets of note were produced at the Opéra during the second half of the 19th century. An exception was Coppélia, choreographed by Saint-Léon in 1870, but even in it the principal male role was danced by a woman.

Denmark, however, maintained the standards of the romantic ballet. The Danish choreographer Bournonville, who had studied in Paris, not only established a system of training but also created a large body of works, including his own version of La Sylphide. Many of these ballets are still performed by the Royal Danish Ballet.

Russia also preserved the integrity of the ballet during the late 19th century. A Frenchman, Marius Petipa, became the chief choreographer of the Imperial Russian Ballet. He perfected the full-length, evening-long story ballet that combined set dances with mimed scenes. His best-known works are The Sleeping Beauty (1890) and Swan Lake (co-choreographed with the Russian Lev Ivanov), both set to commissioned scores by Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky.

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