The Evolution of

by C Reid, Year 12

The Evolution of Ballet

We begin our story in 16th Century Renaissance Italy: a world of sculpture and art, literature and poetry and stunning feats of architecture. Catherine De Medici, an Italian noblewoman, married the French King Henry II and there stemmed the birth of ballet. The word ‘ballet’ comes from the Italian word ‘Ballare’ meaning ‘to dance’, and in the Italian courts, noblemen and women were taught to dance and perform. Catherine funded festivals of the arts, involving ballet de cour - a mix of song, music, costume, décor, poetry and dance. However, it was King Louis XIV that elevated ballet from being an amateur pastime to a skill requiring professional training a century later.

Throughout the 16th and 17th Centuries, ballet grew in popularity, spreading its roots across Europe. The first ballet school was founded in Paris in 1661, and finally moved from court to stage in 1681. In France ballet was combined with Opera, and it remained that way until the mid-1700’s when Jean Georges Noverre - a professional ballet master - began to view ballet as something that can be performed as a narrative story to convey emotions and relationships of characters in an expressive, more physical way.

Entering the 19th Century we begin to see the famous works that still appear on stages today, with the likes of ‘Giselle’ and ‘La Sylphide’ being created in the early Romantic period. These works are staples in every ballet company, even now over 200 years later, and focus on the world of spirits, myths and subliminal beings as well as the delicate and dainty portrayal of them. These romantic ballets were characterised by the long, calf length skirts known as the Romantic Tutu as well as the introduction of Pointe work.

Classical Ballet took off from Russia in the late 19th century, and pieces like ‘Swan Lake’ (choreographed by Julius Reisinger in 1877, Moscow, to the music of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky), ‘Romeo and Juliet’ (Choreographed by Leonid Lavrosky in 1840, Leningrad, to the music by Sergei Prokofiev) and ‘La Bayadere’ (Choreographed by French choreographer Marius Petipa in 1877, St Petersburg, to the music of Ludwig Minkus) continued → Societal Evolution

began to crop up across Europe and into Great Britain. The Royal Ballet’s performances of pieces like The Nutcracker, The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, Giselle, Don Quixote, La Bayadère and Coppélia among many others are all still influenced through the work of Marius Petipa today.

Ballet became more experimental as it moved into the 20th century, with the neo-classical George Balanchine style arriving after he emigrated to America from Russia and began to explore more plotless pieces, focusing on the expression of music and human emotion. He founded New York City Ballet and is still considered by some to be the greatest innovator of ballet of all time. Another example of experimentation came in the form of ‘The Rite of Spring’ by Russian choreographers Sergei Diaghilev and Michel Fokine. The piece was so radical, focusing on human sacrifice and using completely new forms of movement and costuming that it caused the audience to riot.

Today, ballet is just as respected if not more so by audiences around the world, with dancers pushing their bodies to the extremes to break the boundaries we continue to set. That being said, old traditions still stand, seen in one of the most recognisable symbols of ballet: the pointe shoe. Originally in the form of a simple satin slipper, the pointe shoe has evolved substantially over the past two centuries. First in the form of a simple soft shoe with no sense of support, it has moved from there to the 19th century Italian pointe shoe made with newspaper, flour paste and pasteboard with leather reinforced cardboard insoles before finally progressing to the flat platform box and strong supportive shanks (the underside of the shoe) of today.

Some popular brands like Bloch, Freed, Grishko and Capezio keep to the more traditional styles, using cardboard and glue to create the stiffness of the shank and box, leaving dancers to ‘break in’ the shoes themselves. This involves first breaking the shanks of the shoes, then warming up the glue and softening it through the dancer’s continuous movement and wear until it no longer supports them safely and the shoes become ‘dead’. The cycle then repeats itself with a new pair. Professional dancers in a company can go through one to two pairs of pointe shoes a week, and approximately three pairs in

one performance, with most dancers going through one-hundred to onehundred and twenty pairs in a single season. Every shoe is hand made. Other brands like Gaynor Minden create more innovative styles inspired by the shockabsorption technology seen in athletics shoes and unbreakable elastomeric material. These shoes tend to last much longer and come with more options for customisation in terms of shape, fit, and stiffness.

Throughout time, ballet has been a defining factor in the development of many other forms of dance and is often the basis for many styles. It continues to change and evolve, developing into new and innovative ideas, but still holding on to the classical pieces that make up its history. In this it is clear to see not only how far ballet as a form of dance has evolved over the centuries, but also how far it has to go into the future and onwards.