Our Ballet Dancing ornament is 6.5 inches long, including the 3 inch gold cord hanging loop. The young Ballet Dancer is standing with her arms over her head. She is wearing a pink ballet costume with a ruffled cap sleeves, a tight fighting bodice with iridescent glitter highlights in the shape of an X on the front of the bodice and around the neck. The costume also has a short ruffled skirt with iridescent glitter highlights. The young ballerina is also wearing pink ballet slippers.
History of Ballet.
Ballet is a form of theatrical entertainment. It consists of a series of solo and group dances performed to music, telling a story or expressing a mood or idea, usually without the aid of words.
The typical ballet makes use of elaborate costumes, scenery and lighting effects. The person who invents and arranges the dancing is called the choreographer. Many ballets have music written especially for them. There are theater performances which consist solely of a full program of separate ballets. Other forms of entertainment, notably the opera, often include ballet interludes.
The ballet originated in Italy about 1450. At that time it was a series of sophisticated social dances whose steps were often combined with other steps devised by the choreographer. Ballet flowered in Italy during the next hundred years and about 1550 was carried to France when the Italian princess, Catherine de Medici, married the King of France. The most famous ballet of that time was called Ballet Comique de la Reine. Dances alternated with sung or spoken verses. Ballets were used in opera from its beginning. They were placed either in the middle of the acts or in the intermissions.
During the 1600’s, professional ballet dancers appeared, first male, then later female. Marie Salle, a woman dancer in 1734, created the first completely mute ballet, the so called pantomime ballet. Her greatest successor was Jean Georges Noverre. Around 1830, the romantic ballet won world wide fame through some preeminent dancers, among them Marie Taglioni and Fanny Elssler.
History of Russian Ballet.
The Russian Imperial School of Ballet was founded about 1735. It achieved supremacy through its many good teachers. Outstanding choreographers came from abroad and gave the Russian ballet a high reputation. After a period of decline, Michel Fokine revived it. Under the management of Sergei Diaghilev, Fokine gathered a special dance company, which was welcomed with enthusiasm in Paris in 1909. It included such great dancers as Nijinsky and Anna Pavlova. It toured America in 1916.
After Diaghiliv’s death in 1929, new dance companies came to life, among them the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.
History of American Ballet.
Ballet appeared in theaters and other show places in the United States during the 1800’s. Occasionally European ballet companies toured the country. The first great ballet events in America were the appearances of Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe and some independent Russian dancers, In 1933, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo came to this country and enhanced the public’s interest in the art of ballet. The first ballet with an American plot, “Union Pacific,” was seen soon after. The first significant American born ballet company was the Ballet Theatre. American dancers joined these and other organizations in such numbers that they became primarily American companies. In large cities, ballet programs began to run for whole seasons.
Other notable Ballet companies include the leading ballet company of Great Britain, “Sadler’s Wells Ballet,” which made its first tour of the United States in 1949. Also in that year, France sent its Ballet of Paris to the United States for the first time. The Ballets Jooss of Essen, Germany, is one of the most famous ballet companies in Europe.
Famous Ballets.
Many ballets have held their attraction year after year. “Giselle” has remained a favorite for over a hundred years. “Les Sylphides,” set by Fokine to music of Chopin and “Scheherazade,” to the music of Rimsky Korsakov, are two other well known ballets. Igor Stravinsky wrote the music for two famous ballets, “Petrouchka” and “Firebird.” Several ballets, such as “The Nutcracker,” danced to the music of Tschaikovsky, have long been popular with children as well as adults. Debussy wrote the music for “The Afternoon of a Faun,” in which the great Russian dancer, Nijinsky, created a new style of ballet dancing. In the 1930’s and 1940’s, a number of ballets were built around American themes. Among them were “Billy the Kid,” “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” “Filling Station,” “Rodeo” and “Fancy Free.”