The History of Ballet
Dance as an entertainment was common in the late 15th and 16th centuries and generally included a mixture of acrobatics, mime, speech and song. The performances were created on a large scale for royalty and on a smaller scale as travelling shows for common people.
Court entertainments often held a political agenda. Aside from being
used to
to show off the magnificence of the court, court dances were written and
conceived as subtle propaganda. For instance, a dance may be designed to
flatter a visiting dignitary who was about to start negotiations of
state, thereby giving him an idea of the hosts intentions. Or, on the
other hand, the dance could be used to threaten the dignitary by a
show of strength.
Catherine de Medici took the art of court dance with her to France when she married King Henry II. During this time, the Ballet Comique de la Reine was created at Catherines command. It was an epic piece that lasted over 5 hours, and was meant to celebrate the wedding of the Duc de Joyeuse to Margaret of Lorraine. It was from this point that the history of ballet is commonly said to have begun.
It was around this time that court ladies began participating in the dances, dances that were at one time limited to only to men. However, much like the Shakespearen drama, the lead female roles could only be played by men. The ladies involvement amounted to little more than elaborate walking, while creating complicated floor patterns. Any intricate footwork, turns or jumps would have been impossible since the ladies wore, as they continued to wear right into the 18th century, cumbersome, hooped dresses. It wouldn't be until a century later that womens' repetoire would consist of a greater variety of movements. Men, on the other hand, wore tights as part of everyday dress and thus had greater freedom to show off a well-turned out leg and finely pointed foot, both of which soon became necessities in ballet.
One important figure in the history of ballet, is King Louis XIV, who had a great influence in the transition of dance from a court entertainment to a professional occupation. Louis performed in the next popular ballet of the day, La Nuit, where he played the Sun King. His own love of dancing, from an early age, gave dance respectability and encouraged others to work at perfecting the art. His courtiers, politicians, and one particularly talented Field Marshal devoted much of thier energy to dance, and acheiving greater proficiency. This was a period when the great Moliere created the subjects and Lully and Beauchamps wrote the music. Moliere's plays usually included dance scenes and it was from him that ballet acquired an occasional touch of comedy. Louis' first formal act to establish ballet as a professional theatrical art occured in 1661, when he created the Royal Academy of the Dance and its associated Royal Academy of Music. Then, with the addition of a dance school in 1671, the Paris Opera of today has grown. Louis last significant influence on the direction that dance would take came when he retired from dance in 1669 because he was too fat. Naturally, his court had to follow suit and the field was now left open for the professional dancer.
By the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the foundations of ballet were established. Ballet masters began to codify teaching and some attempts had been made at dance notation. In addition, costumes began to changeto adapt to more intricate footwork and the female dancer, or ballerina, began to move to a position of dominance.
Up to this time there were many restrictions to the art of ballet. Free-flowing movements, jumps and lifts were not socially acceptable. The only variations of effect would be through changing floor patterns or tempo. Still, "ballet" continued to be a combination of dance, singing and music, with singing usually taking precedence. Female dancers, who didn't appear on the stage until 1681, had strict standards of dress that they had to adhere to. Marie de Camargo, one of the first ballerinas, was famous for her quick and intricate footwork. To show off her footwork she shortenend her skirt just a few inches, but wouldn't be considered completely acceptable for another 50 years. Bu 1760, ballet masters began to question the restrictions placed on there art, unwanted restrictions from the days when ballet was part of the court with its rigid protocol. The greatest of these ballet masters was Jean Georges Noverre (1727).
In his Letters, Noverre was first to propose ideas that were central to the development of ballet as a serious art form. According to Craig Dodd in his Ballet and Modern Dance, Noverre believed that ballet should be a means of expressing a dramatic idea through the perfect combination of dancing, drama and character. Speech, either declaimed or sung, was to be discarded, as were restrictive wigs, masks and cumbersome costumes. Noverre shared his ideas with many students, dancers, and choreographers of the time, but the one person who really put Noverre's ideas into practice was the great choreographer Dauberval. In his ballet La Fille MalGarde"(Bordeaux 1789), Dauberval put real people on stage for the first time. La Fille MalGarde was a story filled with farmers, lawyers, harvesters, and lovers. Today only the title and inspiration of the ballet remains.
