BALLET HISTORY

1. BALLET HISTORY

2. What is Ballet? • Ballet is a way of telling a story using music and dance instead of words. • It consists of patterns of movement which have developed over centuries. • Dancers who perform ballet are highly trained. • Ballet is found all around the world, for instance in Europe, USA, China, Japan and South America.

3. Romantic Ballet • Early ballets such as Giselle and La Sylphide were created during the Romantic movement of the first half of the 19 century. • Ballets that are concerned with the supernatural world of spirits and magic. • It often showed women as passive and fragile.

4. Classical Ballet • Ballet created later part of the 19th century, such as Swan Lake, The Nutcracker and The Sleeping beauty represented classical ballet. • Their main aim was the display the techniques of ballet to its fullest. • These ballets have complicated sequences of movements to show off demanding steps, leaps and turns to fit the story.

5. Modern Ballet • Ballets that are created in this century. • They do not always have a definite story. • They have a theme. • These ballets concentrate more on emotions and atmospheres and attempt to arouse the feelings of the audiences. Used parallel positions of the feet instead of turn out.

6. How Ballet Began? • The roots of ballet go back more than 100 years. It began in the courts of Italian noblemen who sang, danced and recited poems. It soon spread to the French courts. Louis XIV (Sun God), soon after, founded the first ballet school called the Royal Academy of Dancing (1661). A ballet master of the academy, Pierre Beauchamps, established the five feet positions of the feet which are still the basis of all ballet steps.

7. How Ballet Began? Continues…. • When ballets were first performed, men played the female roles, disguising themselves with wigs and masks. Women, finally, were allowed to dance publicly in 1681. Unfortunately they had to wear bulky clothes that hampered movement. Then the possibility of fast foot work emerged when Marie Camargo daringly shorten the dress above the ankles. Which resulted in the Tutu

8. Serge Diaghileff(1872-1929) • Artistic Director of Ballet Russes from 1909 to 1929. • He did not reject modern dance and fostered many choreographers to create modern ballet pieces. • Diaghilev's greatest achievement was his dance company - the Ballets Russes. Created a century ago, the productions of the Ballets Russesrevolutionised early 20th-century arts and continue to influence cultural activity today.

9. Michael Fokine1880 -1942 • One of Diaghilleff’s choreographers who changed ballet radically with five cardinal rules for ballet. • FIVE PRINCIPLES are: • •The invention of a new form of movement corresponding both to the subject and the character of the music. • •Dancing and gesture have no meaning in ballet unless they serve as an expression of dramatic action. • •In general, to replace gestures of the hands (classic mime) by movement of the whole body. • •A group of dancers in not merely an ornament. There should be expressiveness of the combined dancing of a crowd. • •The alliance on equal terms of dancing with the other arts and the provision of liberty for the creative powers of the artists. • He Choreographed “Firebird” Ballet

10. VaslavNijiniski(1889 – 1950) • Nijinsky succeeded Fokine as Diaghilev’s choreographer. His work was controversial. In The Rite of Spring his dancers stood with feet turned in rather than the usual turnout position and moved in asymmetric groups. • In 1913 Nijinsky fell in love with and married Romola de Pulsky. In a jealous rage Diaghilev fired him. • Tragically, by 1919 he was so mentally disturbed that he never danced again. He died in England in 1950. • Nijinsky became a 20th-century legend. His wife’s biography was a bestseller, Hollywood filmed his life, ballets have been choreographed about him and a racehorse was named after him.

11. George Balanchine Born January 22, 1904 (St. Petersburg Russia) • A Russian born U.S. choreographer who studied at the Imperial Ballet School and left the USSR to work with Lincoln Kirstein to form the School of American Ballet. He emerged to be one of the greatest choreographers of the 20th century. He also founded the New York City Ballet and created many ballets such as the Nutcracker, Don Quixote, Stars and Stripes and Jewels which are still performed today. • Defected from the former Soviet Union in 1924 to America. • Choreographed many ballets in his unique style, combining Jazz and Modern dance to classical ballet technique. • He was recognized for his musicality and choreographic skills.