Baroque dance is dance of the Baroque era, closely linked with Baroque music, theatre, and opera.
Jazz dance is a performance dance and style that arose in the United States in the mid 20th century. Jazz dance may allude to vernacular jazz about to Broadway or dramatic jazz. The two types expand on African American vernacular styles of dance that arose with jazz music. Vernacular jazz dance incorporates ragtime moves, Charleston, Lindy hop and mambo. Popular vernacular jazz dance performers include The Whitman Sisters, Florence Mills, Ethel Waters, Al Minns and Leon James, Frankie Manning, Norma Miller, Dawn Hampton, and Katherine Dunham. Dramatic jazz dance performed on the show stage was promoted by Jack Cole, Bob Fosse, Eugene Louis Faccuito, and Gus Giordano.
Ballet is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form of dance with its own vocabulary. Ballet has been influential globally and has defined the foundational techniques which are used in many other dance genres and cultures. Various schools around the world have incorporated their own cultures. As a result, ballet has evolved in distinct ways.
The Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts, founded in 1915 by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn in Los Angeles, California, helped many perfect their dancing talents and became the first dance academy in the United States to produce a professional dance company. Some of the school's more notable pupils include Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Lillian Powell, Charles Weidman, Jack Cole, and silent film star Louise Brooks. The school was especially renowned for its influence on ballet and experimental modern dance. In time, Denishawn teachings reached another school location as well - Studio 61 at the Carnegie Hall Studios.
The Bournonville method is a ballet technique and training system devised by the Danish ballet master August Bournonville.
Travesti is a theatrical term referring to the portrayal of a character in an opera, play, or ballet by a performer of the opposite sex.
The basse danse, or "low dance", was a popular court dance in the 15th and early 16th centuries, especially at the Burgundian court. The word basse describes the nature of the dance, in which partners move quietly and gracefully in a slow gliding or walking motion without leaving the floor, while in livelier dances both feet left the floor in jumps or leaps. The basse danse was a precursor of the pavane as a dignified processional dance. The term may apply to the dance or the music alone.
Dance position is a position of a dancer or a mutual position of a dance couple assumed during a dance. Describing and mastering proper dance positions is an important part of dance technique.
Carlo Blasis was an Italian dancer, choreographer and dance theoretician born in Naples. He is well known for his very rigorous dance classes, sometimes lasting four hours long. He danced in France, Italy, London and Russia. Blasis insisted that his students learn theories and definitions of dance steps. He trained all of Enrico Cecchetti's teachers and it is thought that Blasis's influence in his training is what led Cecchetti to create the Cecchetti method of ballet.
Pierre Beauchamp or Beauchamps was a French choreographer, dancer and composer, and the probable inventor of Beauchamp–Feuillet notation. His grand-father was called Christophe and his father, a violinist of the king's chamber, was simply called Louis. Following a custom of the time, Pierre Beauchamp was named Pierre after his godfather Pierre Vacherot, tailor of the queen's pages and a relative of the Beauchamps family.
Ballet d'action is a hybrid genre of expressive and symbolic ballet that emerged during the 18th century. One of its chief aims was to liberate the conveyance of a story via spoken or sung words, relying simply on quality of movement to communicate actions, motives, and emotions. The expression of dancers was highlighted in many of the influential works as a vital aspect of the ballet d'action. To become an embodiment of emotion or passion through free expression, movement, and realistic choreography was one chief aim of this dance. Thus, the mimetic aspect of dance was used to convey what the lack of dialogue could not. Certainly, there may have been codified gestures; however, a main tenant of the ballet d'action was to free dance from unrealistic symbolism, so this remains an elusive question. Often, props and costume object were involved in the performance to help clarify character interaction and passions. An example would be the scarf from La Fille mal gardée, which represents the love of the male character and which the female character accepts after a coy moment. Props were thus used in harmony with dancer movement and expression. Programs for plays were also a place to explain the onstage action; however, overt clarifications were sometimes criticized for sullying the art of the ballet d'action.
La Bayadère is a ballet, originally staged in four acts and seven tableaux by French choreographer Marius Petipa to the music of Ludwig Minkus. The ballet was staged especially for the benefit performance of the Russian Prima ballerina Ekaterina Vazem, who created the principal role of Nikiya. La Bayadère was first presented by the Imperial Ballet at the Imperial Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia, on 4 February [O.S. 23 January] 1877. From the first performance the ballet was universally hailed by contemporary critics as one of the choreographer Petipa's supreme masterpieces, particularly the scene from the ballet known as The Kingdom of the Shades, which became one of the most celebrated pieces in all of classical ballet. By the turn of the 20th century, The Kingdom of the Shades scene was regularly extracted from the full-length work as an independent showpiece, and it has remained so to the present day.
Ballet is a formalized form of dance with its origins in the Italian Renaissance courts of 15th and 16th centuries. Ballet spread from Italy to France with the help of Catherine de' Medici, where ballet developed even further under her aristocratic influence. An early example of Catherine's development of ballet is through 'Le Paradis d' Amour', a piece of work presented at the wedding of her daughter Marguerite de Valois to Henry of Navarre. Aristocratic money was responsible for the initial stages of development in 'court ballet', as it was royal money that dictated the ideas, literature and music used in ballets that were created to primarily entertain the aristocrats of the time. The first formal 'court ballet' ever recognized was staged in 1573, 'Ballet des Polonais'. In true form of royal entertainment, 'Ballet des Polonais' was commissioned by Catherine de' Medici to honor the Polish ambassadors who were visiting Paris upon the accession of Henry of Anjou to the throne of Poland. In 1581, Catherine de' Medici commissioned another court ballet, Ballet Comique de la Reine, however it was her compatriot, Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx, who organized the ballet. Catherine de' Medici and Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx were responsible for presenting the first court ballet ever to apply the principles of Baif's Academie, by integrating poetry, dance, music and set design to convey a unified dramatic storyline. Moreover, the early organization and development of 'court ballet' was funded by, influenced by and produced by the aristocrats of the time, fulfilling both their personal entertainment and political propaganda needs.
The Académie Royale de Danse, founded by Letters Patent on the initiative of King Louis XIV of France in March 1661, was the first dance institution established in the Western world. As one of King Louis’ first official edicts after the death of royal adviser Jules Mazarin, the “Letters Patent of the King to Establish a Royal Academy of Dance in the City of Paris” represented a critical step towards the young King's wielding of consolidated personal power. Structurally, the Académie consisted of thirteen dancing masters selected by King Louis XIV for being the “most experienced in the Art [of dance].” This "experience" was determined by each dancer's history of success in previous royal productions of ballets de cour. Most famously, eight of the selected dancing masters performed with King Louis XIV during his portrayal of Apollo, the Sun King, in LeBallet de la nuit (1653). Although the object of the Académie was to reflect, analyze and normalize matters of dance, no document relating to its activity or to this theorization has survived. The Académie Royale de Musique, founded in 1669 as the Académie d'Opéra, was a closely related opera and ballet company, and although the two institutions never merged, members of the dance academy were also associated with the opera. Little by little, recruitment of dancers into the royal entourage gave way to recruitment into the ballet-corps of the Opéra. This slowly altered the Académie's profile, making it and its members more dedicated to dance training alone. By 1775, the Académie was nearing the end of its life. On joining the Académie, Jean-Georges Noverre, one of ballet d’action’s most influential choreographers, commented on its ineffectiveness in making meaningful contributions to the dance world. But Noverre’s dismissive remarks concerning the organization cannot be taken at face value, since on a number of accounts, his statements are polemical, biased and misleading. It is often claimed that the Académie ceased to exist after 1778, merely because a list of the thirteen members was no longer published after this date, or alternatively after 1789, with the coming of French Revolution and the abolition or nationalization of royal institutions. In a tribute to his deceased brother Maximilien published in the Courrier des spectacles , Pierre Gardel, the head choreographer at the Paris Opéra at that time, writes that “these positions, which came with a pension [of 500 livres], passed in turn to the most distinguished dancers. Citizens [Auguste] Vestris and [Pierre] Gardel, currently at the Théâtre de la République et des Arts, are the last to have enjoyed these.” It appears then that the Académie was indeed defunct by 1798. The opera and ballet company has survived and today is known as the Opéra National de Paris.
The positions of the feet in ballet is a fundamental part of classical ballet technique that defines standard placements of feet on the floor. There are five basic positions in modern-day classical ballet, known as the first through fifth positions. In 1725, dancing master Pierre Rameau credited the codification of these five positions to choreographer Pierre Beauchamp. Two additional positions, known as the sixth and seventh positions, were codified by Serge Lifar in the 1930s while serving as Ballet Master at the Paris Opéra Ballet, though their use is limited to Lifar's choreographies. The sixth and seventh positions were not Lifar's inventions, but revivals of positions that already existed in the eighteenth century, when there were ten positions of the feet in classical ballet.
In dance and gymnastics, a turn is a rotation of the body about the vertical axis. It is usually a complete rotation of the body, although quarter (90°) and half (180°) turns are possible for some types of turns. Multiple, consecutive turns are typically named according to the number of 360° rotations.
Bruce Alan Brown is a professor of musicology at the USC Thornton School of Music Los Angeles, California.
Sandra Noll Hammond is a dancer, teacher, dance historian, and educator. Internationally recognized for her studies of the development of ballet technique and training from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries, she is the author of two books on ballet technique and of numerous published articles, lectures, and papers presented at dance workshops and scholarly conferences.
Kathleen Kuzmick Hansell, née Kuzmick, is an American musicologist and organist. Amongst her publications are pioneering research on the role of dance in 18th century opera and critical editions of opera scores by Mozart, Rossini, and Verdi.
Gennaro Magri was an Italian dancer, choreographer, pedagogue, and writer. Although the exact dates of his birth and death are unknown, it is assumed that Magri was born in Naples, Italy during the 1730s, and died in Madrid. Magri is best known for his work surrounding grotesque dance, a style of theatrical dance characterized by comedy, athleticism and acrobatics, whose roots lie in the Italian street tradition of Commedia dell’arte.
