Home | Beauty

The Origins of Classical Ballet

Ballet is a beautiful form of dance that has captivated audiences for many years. Typically performed in a theatre, ballet is a powerful art that combines beauty and grace to tell a story. Ballet dancers must work very hard for many years to become good enough to perform in a professional ballet company, but this doesn't stop many little girls from dreaming that they can become the next prima ballerina.

Since so many French names are given to ballet postures, for instance the plie, most people think that the dance itself began in France. Actually ballet is known to go back as far as 15th century Italy. These movements performed during the Renaissance led to the French development of ballet as we now know it. The Queen's Ballet Company was the very first and was located in France.

As the years passed the beautiful dances began to be performed in gorgeous and complicated costumes, and intricate sets and props were introduced. Royalty fell in love with the ballet as it became more popular. The costumes became more elaborate and within a few hundred years dancing on toes began. Since there were no block toe shoes yet, the dancers could only hold a pose for a few seconds at a time.

In the 1800s the romantic style of ballet was ushered in, thanks in part to the ballet La Sylphide. La Sylphide made much use of the toe dancing technique and brought about many changes to ballet. Many people wonder where the traditional tutu came from, and that can be accredited to the ballet Giselle, where the ghostly spirits all wore the tutu.

Women were the feature of the romantic ballet, and ballerinas were even coming out of the United States. During this time ballet was also very popular in Russia and Denmark. However, in France the ballet was seeing a decline. Throughout this time ballet was seen as being very other worldly, with the ballet steps being very mythical and not resembling the way a human would move.

In the twentieth century however, ballet began to see a shift where the moves started to resemble human movement, thanks in part to the many different styles of dance that were becoming increasingly popular. This change has continued until today where many ballets incorporate different styles of dance as inspiration.

These days ballets have evolved as a combination with another style of dance to produce a new symphony in the art of dance. This process began in 1944, when a ballet called Fancy Free was introduced. This ballet used jazz dance with the ballet steps to create a revolutionary dance form.

With time, ballet has evolved and changed in many forms. While connoisseurs of the traditional ballet have remained steadfast, the new avatars have also. A well executed ballet by professionals continues to enthral audiences despite the fact that most of us cannot even dream of performing most of the steps and moves of a ballet dancer.

Article Source: http://www.uberarticles.com/articles

About the author: Nadya Petronas is the proprietor of Ballet @, a fantastic website to visit when you are searching for the latest knowledge, accurate up to date advice and commentary aboutBallet. For more articles on Ballet why not visit: www.balletat.com/articles Click here for other unique ballet articles.

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, which means you may freely reprint it, in its entiretly, provided you include the author's resource box along with LIVE VISIBLE links (without "nofollow" tags).