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Stage24 brings on demand and live performance to your own home. Watch full recorded ballet performances from Finnish National Opera and Ballet.
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Jul 27, 2021 · Types of Ballet: 10 Ballet Styles and Techniques. Written by MasterClass. Last updated: Jul 27, 2021 • 5 min read. Though it started as a form of social court dance during the Italian Renaissance, ballet evolved into a performance art with several distinct styles.
Ballet (French:) is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form of dance with its own vocabulary.
- Overview
- The emergence of ballet in the courts of Europe
- Ballet as an adjunct to opera
ballet, theatrical dance in which a formal academic dance technique—the danse d’école—is combined with other artistic elements such as music, costume, and stage scenery. The academic technique itself is also known as ballet. This article surveys the history of ballet.
Ballet traces its origins to the Italian Renaissance, when it was developed as a court entertainment. During the 15th and 16th centuries the dance technique became formalized. The epicentre of the art moved to France following the marriage of the Italian-born aristocrat Catherine de Médicis to Henry II of France. A court musician and choreographer named Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx devised Ballet comique de la reine (1581; “The Queen’s Comic Ballet”), which inaugurated a long tradition of court ballets in France that reached its peak under Louis XIV in the mid-17th century.
As a court entertainment, the works were performed by courtiers; a few professional dancers were occasionally participants, but they were usually cast in grotesque or comic roles. The subjects of these works, in which dance formed only a part alongside declamation and song, ranged widely; some were comic and others had a more serious, even political, intent. Louis XIII and his son Louis XIV frequently performed in them; the younger Louis was in time regarded as the epitome of the noble style of dancing as it developed at the French court.
The Académie Royale de Musique was to become incalculably significant in the development of ballet. The academy was created to present opera, which was then understood to include a dance element; indeed, for fully a century ballet was a virtually obligatory component of the various forms of French opera. From the beginning, the dancers of the Opéra (as the Académie was commonly known) were professional, coming under the authority of the ballet master. A succession of distinguished ballet masters (notably Pierre Beauchamp, Louis Pécour, and Gaétan Vestris) ensured the prestige of French ballet, and the quality of the Opéra’s dancers became renowned throughout Europe.
The growing appeal of ballet to an increasingly broad public in Paris was reflected in the success of opéra-ballets, of which the most celebrated were André Campra’s L’Europe galante (1697; “Gallant Europe”) and Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Les Indes galantes (1735; “The Gallant Indies”). These works combined singing, dancing, and orchestral music into numbers that were unified by a loose theme.
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Ballet is an art form created by the movement of the human body. It is theatrical – performed on a stage to an audience utilizing costumes, scenic design and lighting. It can tell a story or express a thought, concept or emotion. Ballet dance can be magical, exciting, provoking or disturbing.
Ballet dance is a highly stylized and formalized type of dance that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century. Characterized by precise and fluid movements, ballet incorporates specific techniques and positions that convey a narrative or evoke emotions.
Different styles of ballet have evolved over time, from neoclassical to romantic, and every flavor of dance is unique. We’re here to break down the major styles and help you become an expert in the art form, so you know just what to look for at the theater.
Ballet terminology has a great vocabulary that defines formalized positions or movements. Ballon technique means that ballet dancer appears lightfooted while jumping and looks lightweight like defying gravity. Bravura is the showy style of ballet dance that consists of a lot of elaborate steps.
