Ballet has been an adorment of European culture for centuries. Ever since the Renaissance, it has been central to lavish festivals and theatrical entertainments presented at the courts of kings and dukes. Royal weddings and similar celebrations were accompanied by spectacles with scenery, costumes, and staged dancing known as an intermedio in Italy, a masque in England, and a ballet de cour in France. Louis XIV himself took part in one as the sun king. Elaborate ballets were also featured in the operas of Lully and Rameau.
The eithteenth century saw the rise of ballet as an independent art form. French ballet achieved preeminence in the early nineteenth century. Then Russian ballet came into its own, fostered by the patronage of the czar's court and helped along considerably by the arrival in 1847 of the great choreographer Marius Petipa at St. Petersburg. Petipa created the dances for more than a hundred works, invented the structure of the classic pas de deux (dance for two), and brought the art of staging ballets to unprecedented heights.
The history of early-twentieth-century ballet is closely identified with the career of Serge Diaghilev (1872-1929), an impresario whose genius lay in his ability to recognize the genius of others. Diaghilev's dance company, the Ballet Russes, which he brought to Paris in the years before the First World War, opened up a new chapter in the cultural life of Europe. He surrounded his dancers-the greatest were Vaslav Nijinsky and Tamara Karsavina-with productions worthy of their talents. He invited such artists as Picasso and Braqur to paint the scenery, and commisioned the three ballets-The Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring-that catapulted the composer Igof Stravinsky to Fame. His ballets have served as models for the composers and choreographers who followed.
Ballet is the most physical of the arts, depending as it does on the leaps and turns of the human body. Out of these movements it weaves an enchantment all its own. We watch with amazement as the ballerinas perform pirouettes and intricate footwork with the utmost grace, and their partners make leaps that seem to triumph over the laws of gravity. A special glamour attaches to the great dancers-Nureyev, Baryshnikov, and their peers-yet theirs is an art based on an inhumanly demanding discipline. Their bodies are their instruments, which they must keep in excellent shape in order to perform the gymnastics required of them. They create moments of elusive beauty, made possible only by total control of their muscles. It is this combination of physical and emotional factors that marks the distinctive power of ballet.
These days, ballet is becoming more and more popular in the United States. Regional groups thrive throughout the country, their activities supplemented by visits from the famous European companies-the Bolshoi from Moscow, the Royal Ballet from London, the Paris Opera Ballet, the Stuttgat and Danish Ballets, among others. This is a many-faceted art, and the number of its devotees is steadily growing.
BALLET
SITE MAP
BALLET PASSION