Sunday, April 25, 2010

BALLET IN RUSSIA

Ballet can be traced back to the 18th century, in St. Petersburg where Empress Anna Ivanovna created the first dancing school in 1738. Jules Perrot led the Petersburg ballet from 1848-1859 and he is known for creating “narrative” in Russian ballet. Saint-Léon led the ballet for 10 years after Perrot. Saint-Léon overemphasized the dancing aspect of ballet and left the story line lacking.
Ballet began to become more familiar during the decades of 1818-1910 when Marius Petipa worked in the Imperial Theaters. Marius was a dancer and came to St. Petersburg in 1847 his ambition was to become a choreographer and a ballet master to the Imperial Ballet. this was achieved with his ballet "Pharoah's Daughter" and he became a balletmaster in 1862. Petipa choreographed beautiful ballets with as much as 5 acts in them. Petipa combined Perrot and Sait-Léon’s styles to create a ballet that was both spectacular dancing with as well of a story line. Petipa’s ballets are still used in classical ballet today in dances such as Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty. Under Petipa’s leadership, there became more focus on the female dancer, this new focus eventually became the result of the Pointe Technique. Pointe allows a dancer to rise onto the tips of their toes and balance in a posed position and eventually dance. Petipa created the adagio, where a woman is standing on pointe and is turned be her partner(go to Gerald Arpino Video time: 0:50 for example). He also created brilliant allegro variations (solos) to show off his new type of dancers, those who dance on Pointe.
A new type of ballet was born in the Soviet Union in the 1930’s and dominated in the Soviet dance theaters for 20 years. It was Drambalet or Dramatic Ballet. Dramatic Ballet had a narrative that was easier to understand and made ballet more abstract. Russian ballet had been set aside by new choreography.

SCHOLL, TIM. "Ballet." Encyclopedia of Russian History. Ed. James R. Millar. Vol. 1. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2004. 117-119. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 25 Apr. 2010.

Clarke, Mary, and Clement Crisp. The Ballet Goer's Guide. London: Michael Joseph Ltd, 1981. 335. Print.

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