| Ballet (French ballet, Italian balletto, Latin ballo means “I dance”), is a type of theater art which consists of the expression in dancing and musical forms. The term “ballet” serves mainly for denoting the European Ballet, developed during the 16th – 19th centuries, but in the 20th century it started to expand, in particular with reference to eastern dancing presentations.
BALLET (from French balleto and latin ballo - I dance), has two meanings: 1. A type of theater art - a musical art in which the artistic form is created by means of choreography, a dancing-plastic language. 2. A ballet performance.
The origin of Ballet: Ballet, the higher level of choreography (from Greek word choreia - dancing and grapho — I write) in which the dancing art rises to the level of a musical-scenic performance, originated as aristocratic art in the 15th -16th centuries. The term “Ballet” appeared in Renaissance Italy in the 16th century and it meant as not the performance, but the dancing sequence. Ballet is a man-made art in which the dance, the main expressive medium of ballet, is closely related with the music, with a dramatic base - libretto, with theatre design, with the work of costume designers, light men etc. Ballet is diverse: with a plot - a classical narrative multi-event ballet, a drama ballet; without a plot - a ballet-symphony, a ballet - mood, miniature. As per genre, the ballet can be humorous, heroic or folklore. The 20th century has brought new forms into ballet: jazz ballet and modern ballet.
Sources of dance: Dance appeared as a way of expressing the feelings by means of movement, gestures, plastics and mimicries and accompanied by various aspects of life of the ancient people (crop festival, wedding ceremony, celebrations of religious cults). From the Ancient Greek Dionysian cult developed the ancient theatre, later scenic dance and its muse of Terpsichore became a part of it. During the Hellenism period, the art of pantomime was developed, which also grew in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance (in the comedies dell’Arte, harlequinades).
Ballet in the period of the Renaissance, baroque and classicism: Particularly in Italy the process of the staging of dance happened very intensively, where already in the 14th -15th centuries there were the first dancing masters and on the basis of folk dances the aristocratic ball dance was composed. In Spain the plot dancing scene was named as Mauritian dancing, in England - the mask. In the middle of the 16th and at the beginning of the 17th century appeared figurative dances, organized like a composition of geometrical figures (ballo-figurato). The Ballet of Turkish women, performed in 1615 in the court of dukes in Medici in Florence is very famous. Mythological and allegorical characters take part in the figurative dancing. Since the beginning of the 16th century horse ballets are famous, in which the horsemen parade on horses under music, singing and reciting (Tournament of winds, 1608, Fight of the beauty, 1616, Florence). Sources of the horse ballet lead to the knighthood tournaments of the middle ages.
The first ballet performance, uniting the music, words and dance and pantomime, is Circe, or the comedy ballet of the queen, which was performed in the court of Ekaterina Medicis (Paris) by the Italian ballet master Baltazarini Di Belgioioso in 1581. Since then, the genre of the court ballet began to develop in France (masquerades, pastorals, dancing variety shows and interludes). The ballet of the 16th century was a magnificent show in the baroque style with the performance of ceremonious Spanish dances - pavanes, sarabands. In the days of Louis XIV, the performances of court ballets reached their highest magnificence, including the visual effects giving the character of an enchanting spectacle to the show. Louis XIV was himself not a stranger to the muse of dancing, in 1653 he played the role of the Sun in the Ballet of the night, since then he was called the “King-sun”. In the same ballet danced the composer Z.B.Lulli, starting his career as a dancer.
Dance began to turn into ballet when it was started to be controlled by certain rules. For the first time, they were formulated by the ballet master Pierre Boshan (1637-1705), who while working with Lulli, headed the French Academy of dance in 1661 (the future theater of the Parisian opera). He wrote the canons of a noble manner of dance in which the principle of the turnaround of the feet (en dehors) was founded. Such positions gave the chance for the human body to move freely in each direction. It divided all the movements of the dancer into groups: knee-bends, jumps (swerving, entrechat, pull-ups, the ability to remain in the jump - elevation), rotations (pirouettes) and the positions of body (attitudes, arabesques). Performance of these movements was conducted on the basis of the five positions of the feet and the three positions of the hands (port de bras). All the steps of classical dance are derived from these positions of the feet and hands. In this way it started the formation of the ballet, developed before the 18th century, from interludes and variety shows into independent art.
The history of ballet in the 20th century is characterized by the processes of the assimilation of the traditions of Russian classical ballet with the European ballet collectives. The modern style, elements of folklore, household, sports, jazz lexicon metaphoric, without plot, symphony, free rhythmic plastic dance have become the leading tendencies. In the second half of the 20th century postmodern dance was developed, expressive mediums of which included the use of cinema and photo projections, light and sound effects, electronic music and happenings (the participation of spectators in the ballet) There was the genre of contact choreography when the dancer “contacts” with the items on the stage and the scene. One-act ballet-miniature (short story, ballet-mood) dominates. Great Britain, the USA and France were the countries with the most developed choreographic culture.
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Modern (contemporary) ballet is getting increasingly popular these days. Contemporary ballet combines classical ballet with modern dance, and is often based on modern plays. There are rumors that the Russian "Bolshoi Theater" will soon have a ballet play about Putin and Saakashvili (Georgian President).
