Where did ballet begin?
History of ballet
Ballet originated in the Renaissance court as an outgrowth of court pageantry in Italy, where aristocratic weddings were lavish celebrations. Tutus, ballet slippers and pointe work were not yet used. The choreography was adapted from court dance steps. Performers dressed in fashions of the times. For women that meant formal gowns that covered their legs to the ankle. Early ballet was participatory, with the audience joining the dance towards the end.
Ballet
Romantic ballet was an artistic movement of classical ballet and several productions remain in the classical repertoire today. The Romantic era was marked by the emergence of pointe work, the dominance of female dancers, and longer, flowy tutus that attempt to exemplify softness and a delicate aura. This movement occurred during the early to mid-nineteenth century (the Romantic era) and featured themes that emphasized intense emotion as a source of aesthetic experience. The plots of many romantic ballets revolved around spirit women (sylphs, wilis, and ghosts) who enslaved the hearts and senses of mortal men. The 1827 ballet "La Sylphide" is widely considered to be the first, and the 1870 ballet "Coppélia" is considered to be the last. Famous ballet dancers of the Romantic era include Marie Taglioni, Fanny Elssler, and Jules Perrot. Jules Perrot is also known for his choreography, especially that of Giselle, often considered to be the most widely celebrated romantic ballet.
Ballet
Neoclassical ballet is usually abstract, with no clear plot, costumes or scenery. Music choice can be diverse and will often include music that is also neoclassical (e.g. Stravinsky, Roussel). Tim Scholl, author of "From Petipa to Balanchine", considers George Balanchine's "Apollo" in 1928 to be the first neoclassical ballet. "Apollo" represented a return to form in response to Sergei Diaghilev's abstract ballets. Balanchine worked with modern dance choreographer Martha Graham, and brought modern dancers into his company such as Paul Taylor, who in 1959 performed in Balanchine's "Episodes".
La Scala Theatre Ballet
Although the company was only founded officially after the inauguration of the "Teatro alla Scala" in 1778, its history can be traced back to Renaissance courts of Italy, notably in the Sforza family’s splendid palace in Milan, where the classical ballet itself was born as an art form to be later refined at the French court of Louis XIV. 
The first nucleus of the company was brought to Milan by the choreographer Gasparo Angiolini between 1779 and 1789, as part of his reform of serious opera. Milan was also home to Salvatore Viganò, who experimented his personal interpretation of ballet "d’action" (which he called “coreodramma”); this in turn later inspired Carlo Blasis and other choreographers.
History of ballet
France's court was in some ways the leading source of fashionable culture for many other royal courts in Europe. Styles of entertainment were imitated, including the royal ballets. Courts in Spain, Portugal, Poland, Germany, and elsewhere all became audiences and participants in ballets. In addition to France, Italy became an important influence on the art form, predominantly Venice.
Violante Doria
The "Balet comique de la royne", later known as the "Ballet Comique de la Reine", was created in October 1581 under the reign of King Henry III as a celebration of the marriage of the Duc de Joyeuse and the queen’s sister, Marguerite of Lorraine-Vaudémont. It was performed at the French court of Catherine de Médicis and was the first ballet to have a physical printed account (libretto). This five-hour show was created by Italian choreographer and musician Balthazar de Beaujoyeulx and is considered the first ballet to have created a theatrical experience by combining dance, music, sets, poetry, etc. This massive production cost 3,600,000 gold francs and was only performed once due to this high cost, however it had a major influence on the development of ballet, theatrical dance, and opera.
Ballet
French court ballet reached its height under the reign of King Louis XIV. Louis founded the Académie Royale de Danse (Royal Dance Academy) in 1661 to establish standards and certify dance instructors. In 1672, Louis XIV made Jean-Baptiste Lully the director of the Académie Royale de Musique (Paris Opera) from which the first professional ballet company, the Paris Opera Ballet, arose. Pierre Beauchamp served as Lully's ballet-master. Together their partnership would drastically influence the development of ballet, as evidenced by the credit given to them for the creation of the five major positions of the feet. By 1681, the first "ballerinas" took the stage following years of training at the Académie.
Paris in the 17th century
Dance had been popular at the French court since the Middle Ages, but ballet was not given a formal status until March 30, 1661, with the founding of the "Académie royale de danse". The first French comedy-ballet, "Les Fâcheux", was a collaboration between Moliere, Beauchamp and the composer Lully; it was performed on August 17, 1661. In 1669, the ballet academy was formally merged into the Royal Academy of Music and became part of the opera. The first opera-ballet in Paris, "L'Europe galante", with music by Campra and choreography by Louis Pécour, was performed in 1697.
Italian ballet
Ballet, if not the first, produced and shown was Baldassare de Belgiojoso's balletto comico, also known as 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 centre of technical ballet development.
Ballet
The roots of ballet go back to the Renaissance in France and Italy when court wear was the beginning of ballet costumes. Ballet costumes have been around since the early fifteenth century. Cotton and silk were mixed with flax, woven into semitransparent gauze to create exquisite ballet costumes.
History of ballet
George Balanchine is often considered to have been the first pioneer of what is now known as neoclassical ballet, a style of dance between classical ballet and today's contemporary ballet. Tim Scholl, author of "From Petipa to Balanchine", considers Balanchine's "Apollo" (1928) to be the first neoclassical ballet. It represented a return to form in response to Serge Diaghilev's abstract ballets. "Apollo" and other works are still performed today, predominantly by the New York City Ballet. However, other companies are able to pay a fee for performance rights to George Balanchine's works.
International Ballet
1951 was the year of the Festival of Britain and the opening of the newly built Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank, and International Ballet was invited to present a programme of ballet for its inaugural season. 
The Festival Hall is principally a concert hall and has no proscenium arch or stage curtains. Temporary ones could have been erected, but International Ballet decided to present their ballets without them. Special lighting had to be devised, and new sets designed to complement the unusual lighting. The varied programme included the two Massine ballets and the Russian classical ballets, but they had to be adapted somewhat to suit the new stage arrangement. This novel presentation of ballet attracted criticism from some quarters, but all performances of the long summer season were sold out.
The company was invited to do another season the following year but could not accept because of prior commitments overseas. However it had shown that ballet could be successful staged this way, and some time later the Festival Ballet made the Royal Festival Hall their London base.
Ballets de cour
Beauchamp, "superintendent" of the ballet and director of the Académie Royale de Danse, codified the five positions based on the foundations set down by Thoinot Arbeau in his 1589 "Orchésographie". Emphasising the technical aspects of dance, Beauchamp set out the first rules of ballet technique. The emphasis on turnout, light costumes, female dancers, and long dance sequences with light, flexible footwear, all first seen in "L'Europe galante" (1697), was a turning point in ballet practice that led to the pre romantic ballet era. Pierre Rameau expanded on Beauchamp's work in "Le Maître à danser" (1725), further detailing carriage of the body, steps and positions.
History of ballet
Ballet was further 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. When Catherine de' Medici, an Italian aristocrat with an interest in the arts, married the French crown heir Henry II, she brought her enthusiasm for dance to France and provided financial support. Catherine's glittering entertainments supported the aims of court politics and usually were organized around mythological themes. The first "ballet de cour" was the "Ballet de Polonais." This Ballet was performed in 1573 on the occasion of the visit of the Polish Ambassador. It was choreographed by Balthasar de Beaaujoyeulx and featured an hour-long dance for sixteen women, each representing a French province. "Ballet Comique de la Reine" (1581), which was also choreographed and directed by Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx, was commissioned by Louise of Lorraine, queen consort of King Henry III, son of Catherine, to celebrate the marriage of Henry's favorite the Duke de Joyeuse to Marguerite de Lorraine, the sister of Queen Louise. The ballet lasted for more than five hours and was danced by twenty four dancers: twelve naiades and twelve pages.
Job: A Masque for Dancing
Job: A Masque for Dancing is a one act ballet produced for the Vic-Wells Ballet in 1931. Regarded as a crucial work in the development of British ballet, "Job" was the first ballet to be produced by an entirely British creative team. The original concept and libretto for the ballet was proposed by the scholar Geoffrey Keynes, with choreography by Ninette de Valois, music by Ralph Vaughan Williams, orchestrations by Constant Lambert and designs by Gwendolen Raverat. The ballet is based on the Book of Job from the Hebrew Bible and was inspired by the illustrated edition by William Blake, published in 1826. "Job" had its world premiere on 5 July 1931, and was performed for members of the Camargo Society at the Cambridge Theatre, London. The first public performance of the ballet took place on 22 September 1931 at the Old Vic Theatre.
Ballets de cour
"Ballet des Polonais" was one of the first works to be recognized as a true court ballet. The spectacle was commissioned by Catherine de’ Medici in 1573 to celebrate the election of her second son, Henry of Anjou, as King of Poland. Performed at the Tuileries Palace and organized by the Italian dancing master, Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx, the hour-long ballet consisted of sixteen amateur French ladies representing the sixteen provinces of France. Describing it as the most beautiful ballet ever made on earth, the court observer Brantome recounted that they “danced their ballet so curiously designed, with so many turns, swerves, and sinuosities, interlacings and minglings, confrontations and withdrawals, that [it was surprising that] no lady ever failed to be at her appointed turn or place.” Although its combination of verse, song and dance had been used before, the intricate figure dancing involved in the "Ballet des Polonais" marked the beginning of the French style that would become the dominant continental school over the next century.
Contemporary ballet
George Balanchine is often considered to have been the first pioneer of contemporary ballet. However, the true origin of contemporary ballet is credited to Russian art producer Serge Diaghilev. Diaghilev wanted to bring an understanding of the arts to the general public. He created a program that combined all forms of the arts (painting, music, theater, and art) to present to the public. When this program had success in Russia, Diaghilev was inspired to bring it to a European audience by creating a new spin on classical ballet. He created Diaghilev's Russian Ballet Company, debuting the first show in 1909. However, Diaghilev was not a choreographer, he entrusted the evolvement of his creation to several well-known choreographers, one of them being George Balanchine.
Cincinnati Ballet
Organizing founders Nancy Bauer, Virginia Garrett, and Myrl Laurence first chartered the company as the “Cincinnati Civic Ballet” in 1958. Then in 1962, seven ballet teachers in the Cincinnati area, including Anneliese von Oettingen, Shirley Frame Elmore, Mac Vestal came together to officially form the company. The first official auditions were in 1963 at the YMCA where 41 dancers were chosen from the 200 audition hopefuls. Debut performances took place at the University of Cincinnati’s Wilson Auditorium in 1964 and 1965. The first performance included an original ballet by guest choreographer Joseph Levinoff, "Chopin Piano Concerto in F Minor". The repertoire consisted of ballets choreographed or staged by Oleg Sabline, Tania Karina, William Dollar, and John Taras.
Oleg Sabline, a European-trained dancer whose career had taken him through Europe and the United States, was appointed director for the first performances. He originally came to Cincinnati to teach ballet and stage the classics at The University of Cincinnati – College-Conservatory of Music (CCM).
Ballet Cymru
Ballet Cymru, formerly Independent Ballet Wales and, prior to that, Cwmni Ballet Gwent, is a touring classical ballet company based in Newport, South Wales, formed in 1986 by dancer and choreographer Darius James. Formed of 8 dancers, the company tours to around 70 venues each year throughout the UK. "The Independent" described them as "a brightly gifted, energetic young ensemble that tours England, Wales and Ireland, taking dance to smaller venues that might otherwise be starved of ballet."
Ballroom dance
Toward the latter half of the 16th century, Louis XIV founded his 'Académie Royale de Musique et de Danse', where specific rules for the execution of every dance and the "five positions" of the feet were formulated for the first time by members of the Académie. Eventually, the first definite cleavage between ballet and ballroom came when professional dancers appeared in the ballets, and the ballets left the Court and went to the stage. Ballet technique such as the turned out positions of the feet, however, lingered for over two centuries and past the end of the Victoria era.
Ballet
Ballet is a French word which had its origin in Italian "balletto", a diminutive of "ballo" (dance) which comes from Latin "ballo", "ballare", meaning "to dance", which in turn comes from the Greek "βαλλίζω" ("ballizo"), "to dance, to jump about". The word came into English usage from the French around 1630.
History of ballet
After the “golden age” of Petipa, Michel Fokine began his career in St. Petersburg but moved to Paris and worked with Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes.
Russian ballet continued development under Soviet rule. There was little talent left in the country after the Revolution, but it was enough to seed a new generation. After stagnation in the 1920s, by the mid-1930s that new generation of dancers and choreographers appeared on the scene. The technical perfection and precision of dance was promoted (and demanded) by Agrippina Vaganova, who had been taught by Petipa and Cecchetti and headed the Vaganova Ballet Academy, the school to prepare dancers for the Kirov Ballet in St. Petersburg/Leningrad.
Women in dance
In the 15th century, court festivities in Italy became ever more elaborate, often featuring formal dances. One of the early masters was Domenico da Piacenza (c. 1400–1470) who compiled a manual of dance: "De arte saltandi et choreas ducendi". In France, too, professional dancing began to take shape when dancers performed for Henry III of France at Fontainebleau in the early 1580s. Further presentations were made for Louis XIII, who frequently took the main part himself. But it was, above all, during the reign of Louis XIV (1643–1715) that the foundations were laid for what became known as ballet. The king not only had the rules of dance written down but established the Académie Royale de Danse in 1661, which developed into today's Paris Opera Ballet. Many of the early ballets were created by the Italian-French composer Jean Baptiste Lully and the French choreographer Pierre Beauchamp, often assisted by Molière.
Paris Opera
In 1661 Louis XIV, who was a dancer himself and one of the great architects of baroque ballet (the art form which would one day evolve into classical ballet), established the Académie Royale de Danse, intended to codify court and character dances and to certify dance teachers by examination. From 1680 until Lully's death, it was under the direction of the great dancing master Pierre Beauchamp, the man who codified the five positions of the feet. When Lully took over the Opéra in 1672, he and Beauchamp made theatrical ballet an important part of the company's productions. The ballet of that time was merely an extension of the opera, having yet to evolve into an independent form of theatrical art. As it became more important, however, the dance component of the company began to be referred to as the Paris Opera Ballet. In 1713 an associated ballet school was opened, today known as the Paris Opera Ballet School. The Académie Royale de Danse remained separate, and with the fall of the monarchy in 1789 it disappeared.
Cleveland Ballet
The Cleveland Ballet was founded in 1972 by Dennis Nahat and Ian Horvath as a dance school, the School of Cleveland Ballet. They subsequently recruited professional dancers who by 1975 were previewing performances around Cleveland. The company first performed at the Hanna Theatre November 16, 1976. A year later the Ohio Chamber Orchestra began providing live music and in 1978 the company presented its first original full-length ballet, “The Gift” in 1976 "The Nutcracker" in 1979, "Coppelia", "Romeo and Juliet" and "Swan Lake" were next added to the repertory. In 1984 Horvath resigned, leaving Nahat solely responsible for the company and school. That year the ballet moved to the newly renovated State Theater in Playhouse Square where Nahat created another full evening ballet Celebrations and Ode music from Ludwig van Beethoven full 7th and 9th symphonies.
Ballet dancer
Ballet dancers begin their classes at the barre, a wooden beam that runs along the walls of the ballet studio. Dancers use the barre to support themselves during exercises. Barre work is designed to warm up the body and stretch muscles to prepare for center work, where they execute exercises without the barre. Center work in the middle of the room starts out with slower exercises, gradually leading up to faster exercises and larger movements. Ballet dancers finish center work practicing big leaps across the floor which is called grande allegro.
Performing arts
In the 15th century performing arts, along with the arts in general, saw a revival as the Renaissance began in Italy and spread throughout Europe plays, some of which incorporated dance, which were performed and Domenico da Piacenza credited with the first use of the term "ballo" (in "De Arte Saltandi et Choreas Ducendi") instead of "danza" (dance) for his "baletti" or "balli". The term eventually became "Ballet". The first Ballet "per se" is thought to be Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx's Ballet Comique de la Reine (1581).
By the mid-16th century Commedia Dell'arte became popular in Europe, introducing the use of improvisation. This period also introduced the Elizabethan masque, featuring music, dance and elaborate costumes as well as professional theatrical companies in England. William Shakespeare's plays in the late 16th century developed from this new class of professional performance.
Cecchetti method
Dame Marie Rambert was a former pupil and colleague of Cecchetti, who also established a professional ballet school teaching his methods. This led to the formation of the UK's first ballet company, which survives today as the country's oldest established dance company, although it is now known as Rambert Dance Company and specialises in contemporary dance. The school also remains and is known as the "Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance". Dame Ninette de Valois was a colleague of Cecchetti during her professional career with the Ballets Russes. She established The Royal Ballet in London, with many of the companies early dancers being pupils of Cecchetti. The Cecchetti method was also favoured by de Valois when she formed the Royal Ballet School. Phyllis Bedells, another Cecchetti pupil, would also play an important role in the teaching of ballet in Britain, as a founder member of the Royal Academy of Dance, which today is a classical ballet teaching examination board.
Ballet Society
On April 28, 1948 "Orpheus" premiered at City Center, prompting Morton Baum, Chairman of the Finance Committee of City Center of Music & Drama, to invite Balanchine and Kirstein to establish a resident company, renamed the New York City Ballet. Once the dance company was given a stable home at New York City Center, Ballet Society continued to operate separately as a non-profit organization in the service of the School of American Ballet and the New York City Ballet, publishing dance books and developing and funding projects related to the sustenance and encouragement of dance in the United States, while continuing to commission new ballets.
Dayton Ballet
Dayton Ballet had its beginning when Josephine (Jo) Schwarz and her sister Hermene opened The Schwarz School of Dance in 1927. Jo Schwarz later studied ballet and danced in Chicago, in New York at the School of American Ballet, and in Europe. She danced on Broadway, but was forced to return home to Dayton after being injured while performing there. In May 1938, Jo and Hermene gathered together the school's finest dancers, named the troupe "The Experimental Group for Young Dancers," and staged a performance at the Dayton Art Institute. This was the first performance of what is now the Dayton Ballet.
History of ballet
The etymology of the word "ballet" reflects its history. 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 Italian "ballare", meaning ""to dance"".
Bolshoi Ballet
The earliest origins of the Bolshoi Ballet can be found in the creation of a dance school for a Moscow orphanage in 1773. In 1776, dancers from the school were employed by Prince Pyotr Vasilyevich Ouroussoff and the English theatrical entrepreneur Michael Maddox, to form part of their new theatre company. Originally performing in privately owned venues, they later acquired the Petrovsky Theatre, which, as a result of fires and erratic redevelopment, would later be rebuilt as today's Bolshoi Theatre. While some guest dancers come and go from other very prestigious ballet companies—like the Mariinsky and American Ballet Theatre—many company dancers are graduates of the academy. In 1989, Michael Shannon was the first American ballet dancer to graduate from the Bolshoi Ballet Academy and join the Bolshoi Ballet company.
History of dance
Since the Ballets Russes began revolutionizing ballet in the early 20th century, there have been continued attempts to break the mold of classical ballet. Currently the artistic scope of ballet technique (and its accompanying music, jumper, and multimedia) is more all-encompassing than ever. The boundaries that classify a work of classical ballet are constantly being stretched, muddied and blurred until perhaps all that remains today are traces of technique idioms such as turnout.
Romantic ballet
The Romantic ballet is defined primarily by an era in ballet in which the ideas of Romanticism in art and literature influenced the creation of ballets. The era occurred during the early to mid 19th century primarily at the Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique of the Paris Opera Ballet and Her Majesty's Theatre in London. It is typically considered to have begun with the 1827 début in Paris of the ballerina Marie Taglioni in the ballet "La Sylphide", and to have reached its zenith with the premiere of the divertissement "Pas de Quatre" staged by the Ballet Master Jules Perrot in London in 1845. The Romantic ballet had no immediate end, but rather a slow decline. Arthur Saint-Léon's 1870 ballet "Coppélia" is considered to be the last work of the Romantic Ballet.
Performing arts
The 19th century was a period of growth for the performing arts for all social classes, technical advances such as the introduction of gaslight to theatres, burlesque, minstrel dancing, and variety theatre. In ballet, women make great progress in the previously male-dominated art.
Modern dance began in the late 19th century and early 20th century in response to the restrictions of traditional ballet.
World Ballet Day
World Ballet Day is an annual celebration of ballet held since 2014 in the first week of October. It is a collaboration between major ballet companies around the world, which stream live video of their behind-the-scenes preparations in their respective timezones. Other companies and schools hold local celebrations. Lead co-producer is the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London.
Dance Theatre of Harlem
Arthur Mitchell, the first African-American principal dancer in a major ballet company (New York City Ballet), was sent to Brazil by the United States government to start up the National Ballet of Brazil. While on his way to the airport, he was shocked to hear news of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. 
In conjunction with the civil rights movement, Dr. King's death inspired Mitchell to forgo his plans in Brazil. Instead, he would found a classical ballet school for the children of Harlem, the poor and predominantly black New York neighborhood where he was raised. Luckily, Karel Shook, the first ballet teacher and a former ballet master at Dutch National Ballet, agreed to join him in founding the school. At the time, Shook was the best and only teacher of European descent willing to train African Americans in classical technique.
Ballets de cour
The court ballet was a gathering of noblemen and women, as the cast and audience were largely supplied by the ruling class. The festivities, which were descendants of festivals, processions and mummeries dating back to the Middle Ages, looked more like a modern-day parade, than what people today would identify as a ballet performance. Where early court ballet differed from its predecessors, is that it was a secular, not religious happening. It was a carefully crafted mixture of art, socializing, and politics, with its primary objective being to exalt the State. Because these celebrations occurred long before the proscenium stage had been invented, and were instead executed in large halls with audience members stacked up on three sides of the performance, early court ballet’s choreography was constructed as a series of patterns and geometric shapes that were intended to be viewed from overhead. Once the performance was through, the audience was encouraged to join the dancers on the floor to participate in a, “ball” which was designed to bring everyone in the hall into unanimity with the ideas expressed by the piece. As they developed through time, court ballets began to introduce comedy, went through a phase where they poked fun at manners and affectations of the time, and they moved into a phase where they became enamored with pantomime. At the time of the court ballet’s birth, a similar art form appeared in Italy called opera. The difference between the two crafts, is that the developing phenomenon in Italy focused on the singing aspect of performance, whereas in France, movement was front and center.
History of ballet
The ballerina became the most popular dance performer in Europe in the first half of the 19th century, gradually turning the spotlight away from the male dancer. In many performances, ballet heroes were played by a woman, like the Principal Boy in pantomime.
Dance in California
California is rich in dance history. In classical ballet, California is home to the oldest professional ballet company in the United States. The San Francisco Ballet, founded as the San Francisco Opera Ballet in 1933, predates both American Ballet Theater and New York City ballet. Barbara Crockett founded the Sacramento Ballet in 1954 and hosted the first festival for the Pacific Western Region of Regional Dance America in 1966. In modern dance, Ruth St. Denis established her second school in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles in 1940 while Lester Horton created the Horton Dance Group in 1934, also in Los Angeles. Ann Halprin founded the San Francisco Dancers’ Workshop in 1950 and continues to live and work in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Bay Area in also home to Alonzo King's Lines Ballet and Oberlin Dance Collective.Crockett-Deane Ballet
Ballet West
Ballet West is an American ballet company based in Salt Lake City, Utah. It was founded in 1963 as the Utah Civic Ballet by Willam F. Christensen, the company's first artistic director, and Glenn Walker Wallace, who served as its first president. Christensen had previously established the first ballet department in an American university at the University of Utah in 1951.
History of ballet
Jean-Baptiste Lully, an Italian violinist, dancer, choreographer, and composer, who joined the court of Louis XIV in 1652, played a significant role in establishing the general direction ballet would follow for the next century. Supported and admired by King Louis XIV, Lully often cast the king in his ballets. The title of "Sun King" for the French monarch, originated in Louis XIV's role in Lully's "Ballet de la Nuit" (1653). The fourteen-year-old Louis XIV danced five roles in this 12-hour ballet. This Ballet was lavish and featured a scene where a set piece of a house was burned down, included witches, werewolves, gypsies, shepherds, thieves, and the goddesses Venus and Diana. Lully's main contribution to ballet were his nuanced compositions. His understanding of movement and dance allowed him to compose specifically for ballet, with musical phrasings that complemented physical movements. Lully also collaborated with the French playwright Molière. Together, they took an Italian theatre style, the "commedia dell'arte", and adapted it into their work for a French audience, creating the "comédie-ballet". Among their greatest productions, with Beauchamp as the choreographer, was "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme" (1670).
Ninette de Valois
In 1965, de Valois produced and choreographed the first full-length work created for the new Turkish State Ballet. Titled "Çeşmebaşı" ("At the Fountain"), the ballet was the first to feature music composed by a Turkish Composer, Ferit Tuzun, and its choreography incorporated elements of Turkish folk dance. Further ballets followed, and the ballet company continued to develop. Today, ballet continues to be a thriving art form in Turkey, with the ballet school that Valois established now forming part of the State Conservatory for Music and Drama at the Ankara State Conservatory.
Iranian National Ballet Company
The history of ballet in Iran started in 1928 when Madame Cornelli, a Russian immigrant who fled the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, started giving dance lessons in Tehran. There was no methodical ballet training; the classes consisted of various exercises to make the body supple and to cultivate the students' awareness of rhythm and musicality. Part of each class was devoted to character or folk dances. A later dance teacher was Madame Yelena (Avedisian), and Sarkis Djanbazian who respectively in 1933 and 1938 organized dance classes in the city of Tabriz and Qazvin. These newcomers expanded the European influenced dance scene in Iran by holding performances and dance classes of various style, including classical ballet, European folk dancing, the European partner dancing, etc.
Women in dance
Ballet also began to develop in London, thanks mainly to the efforts of two women. Polish-born Marie Rambert (1888–1982) who had also gained experience with the Ballets Russes founded the Ballet Club (later the Rambert Dance Company) in 1926 introducing new choreographers such as Frederick Ashton. Even more influential, Ninette de Valois (1898–2001) spent three years with the Ballets Russes before creating London's Vic-Wells Ballet in 1931 (later becoming the Royal Ballet) where Alicia Markova (1910–2004) was the first prima ballerina, starring in ballets from the Mariinsky's classical productions. Markova left to form her own touring company in 1937. Ten years later Margot Fonteyn (1919–1991) became the company's prima ballerina. The height of her fame came in 1961 when she embarked on a partnership with Rudolf Nureyev, first in "Giselle", until she retired in 1979.
Ballet blanc
The next year, 1832, Marie Taglioni appeared in the title role of "La Sylphide", the story of a wood nymph (a sylphide) who tempts a Scottish farmer, James, to abandon his rural sweetheart and follow her into the woods, in pursuit of ethereal beauty. Dance historians consider this work, as the first fully-fledged "ballet blanc", to be the beginning of the Romantic movement in ballet. The name of the genre is derived from the white costume designed by Eugène Lami for Taglioni, which became the recognized dress for dancers of the academic school. The skirt of the Romantic tutu is either mid-calf or ankle length in design. Despite the introduction of Romantic elements of otherworldly spirits, the dancing in "La Sylphide" was of the purely classical school.
Baroque
The classical ballet also originated in the Baroque era. The style of court dance was brought to France by Marie de Medici, and in the beginning the members of the court themselves were the dancers. Louis XIV himself performed in public in several ballets. In March 1662, the Académie Royale de Danse, was founded by the King. It was the first professional dance school and company, and set the standards and vocabulary for ballet throughout Europe during the period.
Les noces
The ballet premiered under the musical direction of Ernest Ansermet at the Ballets Russes with choreography by Bronislava Nijinska on 13 June 1923, in Paris. Several versions of the score have been performed, either substituting orchestra for the percussion and pianos or using pianolas in accordance with a version of the piece that Stravinsky abandoned without completing.
Royal Swedish Ballet
The Royal Swedish Ballet is one of the oldest ballet companies in Europe. Based in Stockholm, Sweden, King Gustav III founded the ballet in 1773 as a part of his national cultural project in response to the French and Italian dominance in this field; he also founded the Royal Swedish Opera and the Royal Dramatic Theatre. All of these were initially located in the old theatre of Bollhuset. The troupe was founded with the opening of the Royal Swedish Opera, which has served as its home since that time.
Northern Ballet
Northern Dance Theatre, the name by which the company was originally known, was founded in 1969 by Canadian-born Laverne Meyer; a dramatic dancer whose formative years were spent with Bristol-based, Western Theatre Ballet, the first ever British dance company to be based outside London. The company's first performance was on 28 November 1969 at the University Theatre, Manchester, with the orchestra being supplied by musicians of the Royal Northern College of Music.
Royal Danish Ballet
The Royal Danish Ballet is an internationally renowned classical ballet company, based at the Royal Danish Theatre in Kongens Nytorv, Copenhagen, Denmark. It is one of the oldest ballet companies in the world and originates from 1748, when the Royal Danish Theatre was founded. It was finally organized in 1771 in response to the great popularity of French and Italian styles of dance. The company was founded with the opening of the Royal Danish Theatre, which has served as its home since that time.The Royal Danish Ballet school was founded in 1771 under the French ballet teacher Pierre Laurent (1730-1807), Then Vincenzo Galeotti developed it and August Bournonville founded his methodology for the school.
History of ballet
In the late 17th century Louis XIV founded the Académie Royale de Musique (the Paris Opera) within which emerged the first professional theatrical ballet company, the Paris Opera Ballet. The predominance of French in the vocabulary of ballet reflects this history. Theatrical ballet soon became an independent form of art, although still frequently maintaining a close association with opera, and spread from the heart of Europe to other nations. The Royal Danish Ballet and the Imperial Ballet of the Russian Empire were founded in the 1740s and began to flourish, especially after about 1850. In 1907 the Russian ballet in turn moved back to France, where the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev and its successors were particularly influential. Soon ballet spread around the world with the formation of new companies, including London's The Royal Ballet (1931), the San Francisco Ballet (1933), American Ballet Theatre (1937), the Royal Winnipeg Ballet (1939), The Australian Ballet (1940), the New York City Ballet (1948), the National Ballet of Canada (1951), and the National Ballet Academy and Trust of India (2002).
Ninette de Valois
The oldest ballet in the Royal Ballet repertoire, "Job" is regarded as a crucial work in the development of British ballet and was the first ballet to be produced by an entirely British creative team. The ballet was produced and choreographed by Valois, with a commissioned score entitled "Job, a Masque for Dancing", written by Ralph Vaughan Williams, with orchestrations by Constant Lambert and designs by Gwendolen Raverat. The libretto for the ballet was written by Geoffrey Keynes and is based on William Blake's engraved edition of the Book of Job from the Hebrew Bible. Consisting of eight scenes, the ballet is inspired by Blake's engravings and so de Valois choreographed the ballet using predominantly mimed actions to create a simple decorative effect.
Russian ballet
The first ballet company was the Imperial School of Ballet in St. Petersburg in the 1740s. Sergey Diaghilev, (1872-1929), an enormously important figure in the Russian ballet scene, founded the ballet company Ballets Russes in the 1909. Diaghilev intervened in every aspect of ballet - direction, production, lighting, scenery, and performance. He headquartered his ballet company in Paris. A protégé of Diaghilev, George Balanchine, founded the New York City Ballet in 1948. Today, the Kirov Ballet company (now known as the Mariinsky Ballet) and the Bolshoi company are two world-renowned Russian ballet companies that tour the world.
National Ballet of China
In 1954, the first ballet school in China, Beijing Dance School, was established, and in the following years ballets such as "Swan Lake" and "Romeo and Juliet" were performed. Later in 1959 the National Ballet of China was founded as the Experimental Ballet Company of the Beijing Dance School. Two persons made their mark on both the school and the company - Dai Ailian who was the principal of the school and one of the ballet company directors, and Pyotr Gusev who instituted the Russian training system that formed the technical foundation for the company.
Ninette de Valois
Also in 1927, in May, W. B. Yeats, poet and co-founder of the Abbey Theatre, suggested to de Valois while she was visiting Dublin the establishment of a ballet school in the city, and from around November, she took responsibility for the setting up and the programming of the Abbey Theatre School of Ballet in Dublin. This, the first of perhaps five Irish national ballet school projects during the 20th century, ran until June 1933, and 7 of the 16 final students continued in active dancing, with 2 founding the next national ballet project, the "Abbey School of Ballet."
Russian culture
The original purpose of the ballet in Russia was to entertain the imperial court. The first ballet company was the Imperial School of Ballet in St. Petersburg in the 1740s. The Ballets Russes was a ballet company founded in the 1909 by Sergey Diaghilev, an enormously important figure in the Russian ballet scene. Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes' travels abroad profoundly influenced the development of dance worldwide. The headquarters of his ballet company was located in Paris, France. A protégé of Diaghilev, George Balanchine, founded the New York City Ballet Company in 1948.
Novelette (ballet)
Novelette is a solo modern dance work choreographed by Martha Graham to an existing piece of music, Op. 99, No. 9 from Robert Schumann's "Bunte Blätter", also known as "Colored Leaves". The ninth movement from the piano solo, also titled "Novelette", is a three-minute long piece in B-minor. The ballet premiered on April 18, 1926 at New York's 48 Street Theater in the first independent concert presented by Graham.
Italian ballet
Italian ballet is the training methods and aesthetic qualities seen in classical ballet in Italy. Ballet has a long history in Italy, and it is widely believed that the earliest predecessor of modern-day ballet originated in the Italian courts of the Renaissance. Two predominant training systems are used to teach Italian ballet today: the Cecchetti method, devised by Enrico Cecchetti, and that of the La Scala Theatre Ballet School.
Ballet
Ballet started to decline in France after 1830, but it continued to develop in Denmark, Italy, and Russia. The arrival in Europe of the Ballets Russes led by Sergei Diaghilev on the eve of the First World War revived interest in the ballet and started the modern era.
History of dance
By the 18th century, ballet had migrated from the French and Italian royal courts to the Paris Opéra under the careful direction of composer/dancer Jean-Baptiste Lully. Lully sought to develop ballet into a more serious art. Under his influence, ballet was turned into a recognized art that was performed by professional dancers rather than courtiers.
Joan Denise Moriarty
Irish Theatre Ballet was the first professional dance company in Ireland for some time. The Abbey Theatre School of Ballet had been run by Ninette de Valois with the support of W.B. Yeats from 1927-1933, and was not just a school but a performing company, with de Valois herself often dancing in its productions. A later "Abbey School of Ballet" was founded by two of its dancers, and continued with performances into the 1950s (but was primarily a school). Two more projects were launched by students of de Valois. First, in 1936, Sara Payne launched her Ballet School and Company, which performed eight ballets between then and 1942. Then in 1939 Cepta Cullen launched the Irish Ballet Club, which performed 14 ballets up to 1944. Finally, Patricia Ryan launched the National Ballet School in 1956, and added a formal Ballet Company in 1959, and these operated until the forced merger with Irish Theatre Ballet, and the subsequent closure of them all.
Ballet boot
Ballerinas began dancing "en pointe" in the Romantic era, with the first recorded performance in 1832 by Marie Taglioni, in "La Sylphide". The soft satin slippers that were used took many decades to develop into the stiff-tipped pointe shoes that we have come to recognize in the 20th and 21st centuries, which allow for a greater range of virtuosic technique. Aside from the ballet "pointe" shoe, another common ancestor to ballet boots and shoes is a Viennese fetish boot (circa 1900), which sported a dramatic 11-inch (28-centimetre) heel; the heel was actually longer than the sole of the shoe, thus making standing and/or walking impossible. Having grown in popularity since the 1980s, ballet boots and shoes are now available worldwide and for online purchase.
Ballet in Turkey
In 1965, the ballet season featured a ballet called “Çeşmebaşı”, referring to the fountain found in the centre of the village square of every Turkish village. It was the first attempt to create a ballet with music composed by a Turkish musician, which had elements of Turkish folk dance music. It was truly the first Turkish ballet. The State Ballet company is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2017. Until the year 2010, the State Ballet had staged almost all of the great creations of the Classical Ballet Repertoire.
European dances
The 16th century Queen of France Catherine de' Medici promoted and popularized dance in France. Catherine helped develop the "ballet de cour." The production of the "Ballet Comique de la Reine" in 1581 is regarded by scholars as the first authentic ballet.
Ninette de Valois
In 1947, Valois established the first ballet school in Turkey. Formed as the ballet school of the Turkish State Opera and Ballet in Istanbul, the school was later absorbed into and became the School of Music & Ballet at Ankara State Conservatory, a department of the Hacettepe University.
Music in Paris
The first and most famous ballet school in France, the "École de danse de l'Opéra national de Paris", the school of dance of the Paris opera, was founded in 1669 for adult dancers, and began taking children as students beginning in 1776. Virtually all of the main dancers of the Paris ballet are graduates of he school. In 1987 the ballet school was relocated from the Opera house to the suburb of Nanterre.
Classical ballet
In the 17th century, as ballet's popularity in France increased, ballet began to gradually transform into a professional art. It was no longer performed by amateurs, but instead ballet performances started to incorporate challenging acrobatic movements that could only be performed by highly skilled street entertainers. In response, the world's first ballet school, the Académie Royale de Danse, was established by King Louis XIV in 1661. The Academie's purpose was to improve the quality of dance training in France, and to invent a technique or curriculum that could be used to transform ballet into a formal discipline. Shortly after the Academie was formed, in 1672, King Louis XIV established a performing company called the Academie Royal de Musique de Dance (today known as Paris Opera), and named Pierre Beauchamp the head dancing-master. While at the Academie Royal, Beauchamp revolutionized ballet technique by inventing the five positions (first, second, third, fourth and fifth) of ballet, which to this day remain the foundation of all formal classical ballet technique.
History of ballet
Many leading European professional ballet companies that survive today were established at new theatres in Europe's capital cities during the mid- to late- 19th century, including the Kiev Ballet, the Hungarian National Ballet, the National Theatre Ballet (Prague) and the Vienna State Ballet (formerly the Vienna State Opera Ballet). These theatres usually combined large opera, drama and ballet companies under the same roof. Composers, dramatists, and choreographers were then able to create works that took advantage of the ability to collaborate among these performance troupes.
Joffrey Ballet
In fall 1987 the Joffrey Ballet premiered a reconstructed version of Igor Stravinsky's seminal ballet "The Rite of Spring" in the city of Los Angeles. The original ballet debuted in 1913 in Paris, France and was choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky. Dance experts Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer spent eighteen years gathering research on the original ballet in order to properly reconstruct it. Eighty percent of the original costumes were located and reconstructed for the performance, and Hodson and Archer were able to consult with Nijinsky's rehearsal assistant Marie Rambert on the original choreography, before her death in 1982.
Classical ballet
There are stylistic variations related to an area or origin, which are denoted by classifications such as Russian ballet, French ballet, British ballet and Italian ballet. For example, Russian ballet features high extensions and dynamic turns, whereas Italian ballet tends to be more grounded, with a focus on fast, intricate footwork. Many of the stylistic variations are associated with specific training methods that have been named after their originators. Despite these variations, the performance and vocabulary of classical ballet are largely consistent throughout the world.
Ballet originated in the Italian Renaissance courts and was brought to France by Catherine de' Medici in the 16th Century. During ballet's infancy, court ballets were performed by aristocratic amateurs rather than professional dancers. Most of ballet's early movements evolved from social court dances and prominently featured stage patterns rather than formal ballet technique.
History of ballet
In 1489 Galeazzo, Duke of Milan, married Isabella of Aragon in Tortona. An elaborate dance entertainment was arranged for the celebrations by the Italian dance master Bergonzio di Botta. The dances were linked by a slim narrative concerning Jason and the Argonauts, and each corresponded to a different course for the dinner. Tristano Calco of Milan wrote about the event, and it was considered so impressive, that many similar spectacles were 
organized elsewhere.
Ballet in Turkey
The history of the art of classical ballet in Turkey only goes back about 60 years, however, classical ballet performances in Turkey date from two centuries before. The General Superintendent of the Ottoman Military Bands, Donizetti Pasha, was invited to Istanbul in September 1828 and introduced the principles of classical western music as well as some samples of operas and ballets to the Ottoman Palace of Mahmud II.
Neoclassical ballet
Balanchine found a home for his neoclassical style in the United States, when Lincoln Kirstein brought him to New York in 1933 to start a ballet company. He famously decided to start a school, where he could train dancers in the style he wanted, and so the School of American Ballet was founded in 1934. Many of his most famous neoclassical ballets were choreographed in the United States, on both his school eventually his own company, the New York City Ballet, which he founded in 1948 and still exists today. Well-known neoclassical ballets like "Concerto Barocco", (1941), "Four Temperaments", (1946), "Agon", (1957), and "Episodes", (1959) were all choreographed in New York.
Ballet
The Royal Academy of Dance method, also referred to as the English style of ballet, was established in 1920 by Genee, Karsavina, Bedells, E Espinosa, and Richardson. The goal of this method is to promote academic training in classical ballet throughout Great Britain. This style also spread to the United States, and is widely utilized still today. There are specific grade levels which a student must move through in order to complete training in this method. The key principle behind this method of instruction is that basic ballet technique must be taught at a slow pace, with difficulty progression often much slower than the rest of the methods. The idea behind this is if a student is to put in a large amount of effort into perfecting the basic steps, the technique learned in these steps allow a student to utilize harder ones at a much easier rate.
History of ballet
Professional ballet troupes began to organize and tour Europe, performing for aristocratic audiences. In Poland, King Władysław IV Vasa (1633–1648) hosted Italian opera productions, which included ballet performers in some scenes. The famous European ballet-masters who worked for the Polish court include Louis de Poitiers, Charles Duparc, Jean Favier, Antoine Pitrot, Antonio Sacco and Francesco Caselli.
History of ballet
Ballet performances spread to Eastern Europe during the 18th century, into areas such as Hungary, where they were held in private theatres at aristocratic castles. Professional companies were established that performed throughout Hungary and also toured abroad. The Budapest National Theatre increasingly serving a role as a home for the dancers.
Orientalism
The Orient motivated several major ballets, which have survived since the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. "Le Corsaire" premiered in 1856 at the Paris Opera, with choreography by Joseph Mazilier. Marius Petipa re-choreographed the ballet for the Maryinsky Ballet in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1899. Its complex storyline, loosely based on Lord Byron's poem, takes place in Turkey and focuses on a love story between a pirate and a beautiful slave girl. Scenes include a bazaar where women are sold to men as slaves, and the Pasha's Palace, which features his harem of wives. In 1877, Marius Petipa choreographed "La Bayadere", the love story of an Indian temple dancer and Indian warrior. This ballet was based on Kalidasa's play "Sakuntala". "La Bayadere" used vaguely Indian costuming, and incorporated Indian inspired hand gestures into classical ballet. In addition, it included a 'Hindu Dance,' motivated by Kathak, an Indian dance form. Another ballet, "Sheherazade", choreographed by Michel Fokine in 1910 to music by Nicholas Rimsky-Korsakov, is a story involving a shah's wife and her illicit relations with a Golden Slave, originally played by Vaslav Nijinsky. The ballet's controversial fixation on sex includes an orgy in an oriental harem. When the shah discovers the actions of his numerous wives and their lovers, he orders the deaths of those involved. "Sheherazade" was loosely based on folktales of questionable authenticity.
History of ballet
Several well-known ballet methods are named after their originators. For example, two prevailing systems from Russia are known as the Vaganova method after Agrippina Vaganova, and the Legat Method, after Nikolai Legat. The Cecchetti method was invented by Italian dancer Enrico Cecchetti (1850–1928), and the Bournonville method, which was invented by August Bournonville (1805–1879), is employed chiefly in Bournonville's own country of Denmark.
Polish National Ballet
In 1628 a traveling Italian opera troupe created the first ballet performance in Poland. Ballet scenes were then often incorporated into operas held at the court theater. For many years it was foreign dancers who performed. Eventually in 1765 the first permanent ballet company was formed, on the initiative of the king Stanisław II August. The company functioned with some interruptions in the Saxon’s Opernhaus (opera house), the first Polish public theater. A 1766 book on ballet by the famous ballet master of France Jean-Georges Noverre was dedicated to the Polish king.
French ballet
Molière was a well-known comedic playwright during that time period. He and Beauchamps collaborated for the first time in 1661, which resulted in the invention of "comédie-ballet". His invention of "comedies-ballets" was said to be an accident. He was invited to set both a play and court ballet in honor of Louis XIV, but was short of dancers and decided to combined the two productions together. This resulted in "Les Facheux" in 1661. This and the following "comédie-ballets" were considered the most important advance in baroque dance since the development of Renaissance geometric figures. One of the most famous of these types of performances was "Le Bourgeois gentilhomme", which is still performed today and continues to entertain audiences. The idea behind a "comédie-ballet" was a combination of spoken scenes separated by balletic interludes; it is the roots for today’s musical theatre. Many of Molière's ballets were performed by Louis XIV. According to Susan Au, the king's farewell performance was Molière's "Les Amants magnifiques" in 1670. Not only were these types of performances popular in the courts, but they helped transition from courtiers being the dancers to using actors and professional dancers, soon to be known as ballerinas. The "comédie-ballets" helped to bring understanding between the court and the commoners as the transition from court ballets to a more common place ballet occurred.
With Molière writing the dialogue and directing, Beauchamps choreographing the ballet interludes, and Lully composing the music and overseeing the coming together of all the dancers and actors, these three giants of men worked together to create many beautiful pieces of art for King Louis XIV.
History of ballet
One strain of the Romantic movement was a new exploration of folklore and traditional ethnic culture. This influence was seen in the emergence of European folk dance and western portrayals of African, Asian, and Middle East peoples on European stages. In ballets from this period, non-European characters were often created as villains or as silly divertisements to fit the orientalist western understanding of the world. The National Opera of Ukraine, a performing arts theatre with a resident opera company, was established in Kiev in 1867. It also included a small resident troupe of ballet dancers, who would perform mainly folk-style dancing during opera productions. By 1893, this grew to a troupe large enough to stage large ballets. Folk dancing and ballets with Ukrainian stories were among the early productions.
Turn board
Ballet is a type of performance dance that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread, highly technical form of dance with its own vocabulary based on French terminology. It has been globally influential and has defined the foundational techniques used in many other dance genres. Becoming a ballet dancer requires years of training. Ballet has been taught in various schools around the world, which have historically incorporated their own cultures to evolve the art.
Flower Festival in Genzano
The ballet premiered 19 December 1858 in Copenhagen and was danced in its entirety by Denmarks' Royal Ballet until 1929 when it was dropped from the repertoire. The "pas de deux" was extracted from one of the ensemble dances and lived on in Denmark's Royal Ballet School until Harald Lander, director of the Royal Ballet, once again brought it to the stage in 1949. It is considered one of Bournonville's most perfect compositions. It has to be seen in the Festival of Flowers in Genzano which is a transition to naturalism (one of the stages of Auguste's style) and is characterized as a masterpiece of Bournonville's international virtuosity, so it is a clear example of the Danish style, typical of the Danish school with a very strong and quite good technique, giving greater importance to the feet, that is why he makes use of the vividness and variety of the jumps, the softness of the feet, the speed and brilliance of the small battery. It should be noted that the original ballet disappeared shortly after its premiere because it did not last in time, but in 1875, Bournonville remade a divertiment, in which he kept the deux pas he had used in the montage he had already made in Vienna Festival of Flowers, which remains in the repertoire until 1929 but in 1949 Harald Lander (director of the Royal Ballet) took him to the stage. That is why the entire ballet has not been found but the fragment rescued. It is considered one of Bournonville's most perfect compositions. It is often performed in ballet finery to show the Bournonville style.
Lviv State Choreographic School
History of ballet
History of ballet
The 18th century was a period of advance in the technical standards of ballet and the period when ballet became a serious dramatic art form on par with the opera. Central to this advance was the seminal work of Jean-Georges Noverre, "Lettres sur la danse et les ballets" (1760), which focused on developing the ballet d'action, in which the movements of the dancers are designed to express character and assist in the narrative. Noverre believed that: ballet should be technical but also move the audience emotionally, plots need to be unified, the scenery and music need to support the plot and be unified within the story, and that pantomime needs to be simple and understandable.
Still Life at the Penguin Cafe
The ballet's debut production in 1988 was performed by The Royal Ballet at Covent Garden, in England. The ballet was conceived by David Bintley (at that time resident choreographer at Covent Garden), who approached Simon Jeffes about the music that was to be used in the choreography. The music for the ballet was drawn from several musical pieces composed by Jeffes before the ballet was conceived, composed during the period 1981 to 1987. Most of the pieces were originally written for small ensembles, consisting of, for example, violin, cello, guitar and piano. Jeffes orchestrated the pieces for the ballet, and in the Royal Ballet production, they were performed by a full orchestra. The ballet was filmed in 1988 by London Weekend Television and commercially released. The name of the ballet is derived from that of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra, which was Simon Jeffes' ensemble.
Ballet Manila
Ballet Manila School started as a spin-off from the “Lisa Macuja Summer Workshop” which was originally conducted in the summer of 1995. Previously, the classes were held at the old Ballet Manila Studio which was located in Quezon city. The pilot class performed their first piece entitled Etudes on June 1996. The company officially opened its own summer workshops in April 1997, this time at the permanent facility, where the first enrollees were thirty six students. 
The Ballet Manila School has direct links with the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet in St. Petersburg, Russia. Here, the students are trained in the vaganova ballet methodology. The classes held at this school are split into five levels from 3 levels for girls, namely beginner, intermediate and finally to advance. The boy’s levels however are only split into beginners and advance classes. From the time that the school opened, it has held several auditions wherein the company offers full and half scholarships to those who would successfully pass the screening. In previous years ballet was predominantly still viewed as a female art form until recently wherein more people are now more appreciative of ballet which opened the opportunity for more male dancers to enroll at the institution.
Dance
The ballet developed out of courtly dramatic productions of 16th- and 17th-century France and Italy and for some time dancers performed dances developed from those familiar from the musical suite, all of which were defined by definite rhythms closely identified with each dance. These appeared as character dances in the era of romantic nationalism.
Babek (ballet)
A series of performances followed the world premiere in Baku during 1986. After a successful season during the same year, the ballet fell into oblivion and was never re-staged in Azerbaijan. Nima Kiann, the founder and artistic director of Les Ballets Persans discovered the forgotten ballet and invited the choreographers to revive the ballet in order to be included in the world premiere production of the newly established Les Ballets Persans in Sweden. Thus, Babek was introduced for the first time in the West and for a European audience sixteen years after its world premiere in Baku. Staging of Babek in Stockholm was also the first presentation of the art form of Azerbaijanian ballet outside the country after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Olga Smirnova (ballet)
Born in St Petersburg, Smirnova comes from a family with no connections with ballet. Her mother encouraged her to take up the art at the Vaganova Academy where she studied under Lyudmila Kovaleva. The academy, which some consider as the source of modern ballet, is over 260 years old. She participated in the academy's tours across Europe and Japan, performing in the 2004 presentation arranged jointly with the Royal Ballet School. In 2011, immediately after her graduation, she was recruited by the Bolshoi and spent just one day in the corps de ballet before taking on solos. Having joined the company as a soloist, she was promoted to first soloist in her first season and to leading soloist at the end of her second season in 2013. In 2011, while still a student at the Vaganova academy she appeared in London at the London Coliseum to commemorate Galina Ulanova, who is said to be one of the greatest of ballerinas. For the commemoration routine, which was choreographed by A. Messerer and accompanied by Dvořák's "Melody", Smirnova danced with S. Strelkov. She also danced, in June of that year, at Diana Vishneva's benefit performance at the Mariinsky theatre. The following month she was in Beijing, partnered by the Bolshoi's principal dancer Semyon Chudin, performing "Grand Pas Classique" (choreography by V. Gsovsky) to music by the 19th century French composer Daniel Auber.
Ninette de Valois
As with ballet in the British Isles, de Valois exerted a great deal of influence on the development of ballet in Turkey, which had no prior history with the art form. The Turkish Government invited her to research the possibility of establishing a ballet school in the country, and she subsequently visited the country in the 1940s, going on to open a school following the same model as her Sadler's Wells Ballet School in London. Initially, very few people took the project seriously, but the school did become firmly established and led to the development of the Turkish State Ballet.
History of ballet
Diaghilev and composer Igor Stravinsky merged their talents to bring Russian folklore to life in "The Firebird" and "Petrushka" choreographed by Fokine. Diaghilev's next choreographic commissions went to Nijinsky. His First ballet was "L'apres-midi d'un Faune" (Afternoon of a Faun) to music by Debussy. It was notable for its two dimensional shapes and lack of ballet technique. It caused controversy by depicting the faun rubbing the scarf of one of the maidens on himself, in simulated masturbation. The most controversial work of the Ballets Russes however, was "The Rite of Spring", choreographed by Nijinsky with music by Stravinsky. The ballet's modern music, pigeon toed stomping and theme of human sacrifice shocked audiences so much they rioted.
French ballet
Beauchamps was a ballet-master who was deeply involved with the creation of courtly ballets in the 1650s and 1660s. However, Beauchamps began his career as the personal teacher to Louis XIV. Beauchamps is also credited with coming up with the five fundamental foot positions from which all balletic movements move through. Beauchamps techniques were taught throughout France in secondary schools as well as by private teachers. Contemporary dancers would astonish Beauchamps at their ability to have 180-degree turnout. Beauchamps dancers wore high-heeled shoes and bulky costumes which made turnout difficult and slight. One of the first things that Lully and Beauchamps worked together on was "Les Fêtes de l’Amour et de Bacchus", which they called "opéra-ballet". The "opéra-ballet" is a form of lyric theatre in which singing and dancing were presented as equal partners in lavish and spectacular stagings. The "Les Fêtes de l’Amour et de Bacchus", one of their first and most famous collaborations, consisted of excerpts from court ballets linked by new "entrées" stages by Beauchamps. Customarily, King Louis and courtiers danced in the court ballets; however, in this new form of entertainment, the "opéra-ballet", all of the dancers were professionals. Beauchamps not only collaborated with Lully, but he also had the great privilege to partner with Molière during his lifetime.
Ballet
Ballet originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Under Catherine de' Medici's influence as Queen, it spread to France, where it developed even further. The dancers in these early court ballets were mostly noble amateurs. Ornamented costumes were meant to impress viewers, but they restricted performers' freedom of movement.
Jillian La Valette
Jillian started ballet dancing at six years old, and took lessons wherever the family lived. Jillian’s conversion to ballroom dancing came quite late (in dance terms). It occurred when she went on her own to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) when she was 16. She went there to live at the Bradley School of Dancing, for ballet training.
Canadian Ballet Festival
The inaugural festival in 1948 in Winnipeg brought together three ballet companies. In addition to the fledgling Winnipeg Ballet, the festival included the Toronto-based Volkoff Canadian Ballet, and a Montreal-based modernist troupe under Ruth Sorel. Kay Armstrong, with the British Columbia School of Dancing planned on performing which would have established her as the only Canadian choreographer with an original ballet. However, when the promised travel subsidy was withdrawn, Armstrong's troupe couldn't afford to participate.
Classical ballet
Ballet technique is the foundational principles of body movement and form used in ballet. A distinctive feature of ballet technique is "turnout;" which is the outward rotation of the legs and feet emanating from the hip. This was first introduced into ballet by King Louis XIV because he loved to show off the shiny buckles on his shoes when he performed his own dances. There are five fundamental positions of the feet in ballet, all performed with turnout and named numerically as "first" through "fifth" positions. When performing jumps and leaps, classical ballet dancers strive to exhibit "ballon", the appearance of briefly floating in the air. "Pointe technique" is the part of ballet technique that concerns "pointe work", in which a ballet dancer supports all body weight on the tips of fully extended feet on specially designed and handcrafted "pointe shoes". In professional companies, the shoes are made to fit the dancers' feet perfectly.
List of Russian ballet dancers
The original purpose of the ballet in Russia was to entertain the royal court. The first ballet company was the Imperial School of Ballet in St. Petersburg in the 1740s. The Ballets Russes was a ballet company founded in the 1909 by Sergey Diaghilev, an enormously important figure in the Russian ballet scene. Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes’ travels abroad profoundly influenced the development of dance worldwide. The headquarters of his ballet company was located in Paris, France. A protégé of Diaghilev, George Balanchine, founded the New York City Ballet Company.
Royal Danish Ballet
From the outset, the Royal Danish Ballet employed some of the leading French and Italian dancers and choreographers. Within a few years of its founding, in 1771, the Royal Theater Ballet School or Royal Danish Ballet school was established to provide native dancers, of which one of the first was Anine Frølich. One of its early masters, Vincenzo Galeotti, is considered the veritable founder of the company. He was master of the company from 1775 to 1816, and introduced ballet d'action and prepared for the advent of romantic ballet. Galeotti is credited with choreographing "Amors og Balletmesterens Luner (The Whims of Cupid and the Ballet Master"), which is still part of the company's repertoire and is the world's oldest ballet still performed with its original choreography.
History of ballet
The Romantic movement in art, literature, and theatre was a reaction against formal constraints and the mechanics of industrialization.[22] The zeitgeist led choreographers to compose romantic ballets that appeared light, airy and free that would act as a contrast to the spread of reductionist science through many aspects of daily life that had, in the words of Poe, "driven the hamadryad from the woods". These "unreal" ballets portrayed women as fragile unearthly beings, ethereal creatures who could be lifted effortlessly and almost seemed to float in the air. Ballerinas began to wear costumes with pastel, flowing skirts that bared the shins. The stories revolved around uncanny, folkloric spirits. An example of one such romantic ballet is "La Sylphide", one of the oldest romantic ballets still performed today.