Ballet Dancers

Ballet is a specific academic dance form and technique which is taught in ballet schools according to specific methods. more...

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Works of dance choreographed using this technique are called ballets, and usually include dance, mime, acting, and music (usually orchestral and occasionally sung). Ballet is best known for its unique features and techniques, such as pointe work and high extensions; its graceful, precise movements; and its ethereal qualities.

Etymology

The word ballet comes from French and was borrowed into English around the 17th century. The French word in turn has its origins in Italian balletto, a diminutive of ballo (dance). Ballet ultimately traces back to Latin ballere, meaning to dance.

History of ballet

Ballet originated in the Renaissance court as a spectacle in Italy, but was particularly shaped by the French ballet de cour, which consisted of social dances performed by the nobility in tandem with music, speech, verse, song, pageant, decor and costume.

Domenico da Piacenza was one of the first dancing masters. Along with his students, Antonio Cornazano and Guglielmo Ebreo, he was trained in dance and responsible for teaching nobles the art. Da Piacenza left one work: De arte saltandi et choreus ducendi (On the art of dancing and conducting dances), which was put together by his students.

The most important early ballet, if not the first, produced and shown was Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx's Ballet Comique de la Reine (1581) and was a ballet comique (ballet drama). In the same year, the publication of Fabritio Caroso's Il Ballarino, a technical manual on court dancing, both performance and social, helped to establish Italy as a center of technical ballet development.

Ballet developed as a separate, performance-focused art form in France during the reign of Louis XIV, who was passionate about dance and determined to reverse a decline in dance standards that began in the 17th century. King Louis XIV established the Académie Royale de la Danse (which is now the Paris Opera Ballet) in 1661.

Jean-Baptist Lully's form consisted of a play in which the scenes were divided by dances. Lully soon branched out into opéra-ballet, and a school to train professional dancers was attached to the Académie Royale de Musique, where instruction was based on noble deportment and manners.

Read more at Wikipedia.org