Ballet

Ballet began as court spectacle in the Italian Renaissance and was carried to France through aristocratic marriage festivities; the Ballet Comique de la Reine (Paris, 1581) is conventionally cited as the first integrated ballet de cour. Under Louis XIV the form was institutionalized: he founded the Académie Royale de Danse in 1661, and his ballet master Pierre Beauchamp codified the five basic positions of the feet and the principle of turnout (en dehors) that still anchor classical technique. In 1672 the dance academy was folded into the Académie Royale de Musique (today the Paris Opera), shifting ballet from the ballroom toward the proscenium stage. The Romantic era (c.1830–1850), exemplified by La Sylphide (1832) and Giselle (1841), introduced pointe work, the ethereal 'white' ballet, and the ballerina as central figure. The Classical era crystallized in Imperial Russia, where Marius Petipa choreographed the full-evening story ballets (The Sleeping Beauty 1890, Swan Lake revival 1895, The Nutcracker 1892) that define the repertory. In the 20th century George Balanchine's Apollo (1928) is widely regarded as the first Neoclassical ballet, stripping narrative for speed, line, and music; he founded the School of American Ballet (1934) and New York City Ballet (1948). Contemporary ballet, from the late 20th century onward (William Forsythe, Jiří Kylián, and others), fuses the classical vocabulary with modern and contemporary idioms.

For four centuries ballet has functioned as both an aristocratic art of state and a touchstone of Western concert dance, supplying the foundational vocabulary—positions, turnout, port de bras, pointe—on which jazz, contemporary, and much commercial dance build. National schools developed distinct pedagogies that remain in active use: the Russian Vaganova method (Agrippina Vaganova, codified in Basic Principles of Classical Ballet, 1934), the Italian Cecchetti method (Enrico Cecchetti; Cecchetti Society founded in London, 1922), the Danish Bournonville school, the French school of the Paris Opera, the American Balanchine method, and the syllabus-and-examination system of the Royal Academy of Dance (RAD, founded in London 1920). These methods differ in epaulement, arm carriage, and approach to allegro, and students and companies are often identifiable by the school in which they trained.

Ballet is danced to composed concert and theatrical scores rather than to a fixed dance rhythm; tempo, meter, and phrasing are set by the music and the choreography. The Romantic and Classical repertory drew on purpose-written scores by composers such as Adolphe Adam (Giselle), Léo Delibes (Coppélia, Sylvia), and above all Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, whose Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, and The Nutcracker remain central. The 20th century brought collaborations with Igor Stravinsky (The Firebird, The Rite of Spring, Apollo, Agon) and Sergei Prokofiev (Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella). Class itself is conducted to piano accompaniment structured around the standard exercise sequence (plié, tendu, adagio, allegro), with the accompanist matching tempo and meter to each exercise.

Classical ballet rests on turnout (rotation of the legs outward from the hips), the five positions of the feet and arms codified under Beauchamp, an aspiration to verticality and lightness, and a precise vocabulary of named steps performed in French terminology (plié, tendu, jeté, pirouette, arabesque, grand allegro). Pointe work, in which female dancers (and some male dancers) support themselves on the tips of reinforced shoes, entered in the Romantic era. The training methods diverge in detail—Vaganova emphasizes a coordinated, expressive upper body and plush plié; Cecchetti prescribes set daily exercise sequences and economical, anatomically grounded movement; Balanchine favors speed, extreme extension, and off-balance attack; RAD and the French school each set their own graded syllabi—but all share the same underlying classical grammar.

Ballet is taught and performed worldwide, from vocational academies feeding major companies (Paris Opera Ballet, the Bolshoi and Mariinsky, The Royal Ballet, New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre) to recreational and pre-professional schools using the RAD, Cecchetti, Vaganova, or Balanchine syllabi. The repertory spans the surviving Romantic and Petipa classics, the Neoclassical canon, and a continuous stream of new contemporary-ballet creation. Ballet training also serves as a technical foundation for dancers who go on to jazz, contemporary, and commercial work, and the form has wide cultural reach through touring productions, filmed performances, and the seasonal ubiquity of The Nutcracker.