Marli's blog: Live, Love Ballet Dance

The second dance on my list is ballet dance. I did ballet for 2 years as a school subject.

History
The history of ballet began in the Italian Renaissance courts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It then spread to the French court of Catherine de' Medici where it was further developed. The creation of classical ballet as it is known today occurred under Louis XIV, who in his youth was an avid dancer and performed in ballets by Pierre Beauchamp and Jean-Baptiste Lully. In 1661 Louis founded the Académie Royale de Danse (Royal Dance Academy) which was charged with establishing standards for the art of dance and the certification of dance instructors. In 1672, Louis XIV made Lully the director of the Académie Royale de Musique (Paris Opera) in which the first professional ballet company, the Paris Opera Ballet, arose. Early ballets preceded the invention of the proscenium stage and were performed in large chambers with the audience seated on tiers or galleries on three sides of the dance floor.

Despite the great reforms of Jean-Georges Noverre in the eighteenth century, ballet went into decline in France after 1830, though it was continued in Denmark, Italy, and Russia. It was reintroduced to western Europe on the eve of the First World War by a Russian company, the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev, who ultimately influenced ballet around the world. Diaghilev's company became a destination for many of the Russian-trained dancers fleeing the famine and unrest that followed the Bolshevik revolution. These dancers brought back to their place of origin many of the choreographic and stylistic innovations that had been flourishing under the czars.

In the 20th century, ballet had a strong influence on broader concert dance. (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Styles
Romantic ballet
Romantic ballet is defined by an era during the early to mid 19th century (the romantic era) in which ballets featured themes that emphasized intense emotion as a source of aesthetic experience.(Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Classical ballet
Classical ballet is based on traditional ballet technique and vocabulary.(Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Neoclassical ballet

Neoclassical ballet is a style that utilizes classical ballet technique and vocabulary, but deviates from classical ballet in its use of the abstract. In Neo-Classical Ballet, there often is no clear plot, costumes or scenery. Music choice can be diverse and will often include music that is also neo-classical..(Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Contemporary ballet
Contemporary ballet is a form of dance that opens up the doors to for any style to influence a work made utilizing ballet technique. Contemporary Ballet can take on a wide variety of aesthetics, incorporating pedestrian, modern, jazz, or ethnic forms, so long as a the roots of classical ballet are apparent. It allows for open ended exploration and experimentation, but a good way to determine if a work is contemporary ballet as oppose to contemporary dance, is to ask the question, is ballet training needed to perform this as it was intended?. (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Pictures