Dance Your Way Through The Years

“Wow look how beautiful this ballet is, I wonder how long it’s been around.”

2011...1400

Ballet has been around for 600 years. Today ballet is French, but it hasn’t always been. Ballet was founded in Northern Italy. It has been passed down for centuries, in many styles and in many ways.

In the 1400s, ballet was not as we know it today. It was NOT French. It was Italian. Ballet came from Northern Italy.

“In 1533 Catherine de Medici married the future King Henri II of France and introduces Italian dancing to the French court”. (The Ballet Companion by Eliza Gaynor Minden page #292). She taught the French the techniques; twirling, leaping, positions, and so much more. That’s how it all started. The French never knew about ballet up until then.

In the late 1500s France started to kick off ballet, but they needed help from the Italians. Throughout the late 1600s and 1700s ballet was mostly included in the Italian Opera.

By the time the 1800s came along. The ballerinas started to go up on their toes and started to perform the beautiful ballet on pointe. Then in the 19^th century Carlota Grisi became the first greatest ballerina. She worked hard by putting extra effort in ballet and making ballet her passion. “Giselle the most famous ballet of the Romantic ballet, was devised by the French writer, Théophile Gautier, for Carlotta Grisi, whom he admired inordinately, likening her to 'a tea-rose about to bloom”

( http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O106556/print-carlotta-grisi-in-act-ii/)

Well there you have it the timeline of ballet. As ballet changed throughout the years, the language of ballet also began.

The language of ballet is interesting. Sure it is never in English, but there is a reason why. English was not known to be “formal.” Now when I heard that English was not known to be “formal” it made me start to think, why? But then it came to me, since ballet was a formal dance, that English wasn’t fancy enough.

There is a lot that goes on behind the scenes of ballet, costumes, make up, hair, and most of all rehearsing. It would be impossible to know everything about ballet. However, we do know enough to pass down stories and continue the beautiful dancing.

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