This document provides a summary of the history of ballet, beginning with Catherine de Medici in the 16th century who initiated the development of ballet in France. Key figures and works that advanced ballet as an art form are discussed, including Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Pierre Beauchamp, Jean-Georges Noverre, and Marius Petipa. The romantic era saw the rise of ballerinas like Marie Taglioni and Fanny Elssler. Iconic ballets from this period like La Sylphide and Giselle are examined. The document traces the evolution and spread of ballet through France, Russia, Denmark and

1. welcome to dance history.
sydney skybetter | skybetter@nyu.edu | @sydneyskybetter

2. everyone has an angle.
History is not objective. Also: my French pronunciation sucks.

3. let’s just say it starts with
Catherine de Medici.
(1519-1589)
✤ Italian born, married into the
French court.
✤ Murdered over 70,000
Huguenots.
✤ Rumored to have eaten babies.
✤ Initiated the development of
ballet.

4. Ballet de Polonais (1573)
✤ Catherine de Medici figured-dance showpiece to celebrate the coronation of her son.
✤ Featured dance stylings of Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx.

5. Ballet Comique
de la Reine Louise
(1581)
✤ Beaujoyeulx appropriated
mythological themes to
affirm Henry III’s throne.
✤ The work was a fracking
spectacle the likes of
which the world had
never seen: it had a
unified aesthetic and plot.
✤ Featured a palace, a
garden, a townscape, a
groto, an organ, a gilded
vault, numerous chariots
and floats.

6. slouching towards Louis XIV.
✤ Catherine de Medici
✤ Henry III (son of Catherine)
✤ Louis XIII (son of Henry III)
✤ Louis XIV (son of Louis XIII)

7. Ballet de la Nuit (1653)
✤ Debuts a 14 year-old Louis XIV as Apollo the sun king (le roi soleil),
featuring music by Jean-Baptiste Lully.
✤ 12 hour work featuring 45 entrees, including beggars, werewolves,
cripples, shepherds, Venus, Diana, three ballets-within-a-ballet, a
demonic sabbath, monkeys, and a burning house.

8. Pierre
Beauchamp
✤ Born into family of French
dancing masters.
✤ Dancing master to Louis XIV.
✤ Invented Beauchamp–Feuillet
notation, and codified the five
balletic positions.
✤ Lead dancing master of the The
Académie Royale de Danse.

9. Jean Baptiste
Lully
✤ Born Italian citizen, became a
court dancer to Louis XIV, then
promoted to premier composer
and producer.
✤ Stabbed himself in the foot
with a baton. Died of gangrene.
It was awful.

10. Molière
✤ Introduced an intermediary
form between the court ballet
and the proscenium ballet
called the comedies-ballet.
✤ Oft writerly collaborator of
Lully and Beauchamp.
✤ Died in a fit of tuberculotic
irony, and had a lung
hemorrhage while acting the
role of a hypochondriac on
stage.

11. This is kinda what it all looked like.
✤ (From Le Roi Danse, directed by Gérard Corbiau.)

12. towards the proscenium...
✤ With more dancing masters graduating from the Academie Royale de
Danse, a professional class of dance artists emerged, and the technical
distance between the “amateur” and “professional” started to grew.
✤ Figured dancing lost favor towards individual athleticism and
virtuosity.

13. towards the proscenium...
✤ Louis XIV stopped dancing in 1670, per his incredible corpulence, and
the era of the court ballet in the halls of power was over.
✤ Professionals take performance roles, and a new dancerly spectatorship
emerges that distinguishes between watcher and watchee.
✤ WWSFS? (What Would Susan Foster Say?)

14. Académie Royale de Danse (1661)
✤ Inaugerated a new class of professional dancers, eventually becoming
the Paris Opéra.

15. genealogy of
ballerina drama
✤ Françoise Prévost, a dancer with
Louis XIV and star of the Paris
Opéra, originates Les Caractères de la
Danse (Types of the Dance, 1726).
Effectively the death of court ballet.
✤ Plot: Soloist enacts a rococo plot
involving a shepherd, the god
amour, etc, to all and sundry
“popular” music.
✤ Prévost taught the solo to Marie
Camargo and Marie Sallé while they
were students at the Opéra, and
they all hated each other.

16. Marie Camargo
(1710-1770)
✤ Brilliant technician who took scissors to
her skirt so that her cabrioles would be
more visible. After decades of very, very,
very conservative “costuming,” this is a
revolution in performance garb.
✤ Invented caleçons de precaution (“panties
of precaution”), a precursor to the tutu.
✤ Paved the way for petit allegro.

17. Marie Sallé
(1707-1756)
✤ In contrast to Camargo, Sallé was a
brilliant actress and mime that brought
characters alive within a dancerly
context.
✤ Dared to perform without a pannier,
skirt, or bodice, but controversially
performed her Pygmalion (1734) in a
“Greek” tunic for the sake of realism.
✤ Anticipated Noverre’s balletic reforms
and theatrical conventions to come.
✤ Because of her non-conformance with
gender norms, she was accused of
frigidity, among other things.

18. Noverre and
Ballet d’Action
✤ Salle’s Pygmalion was
performed all over Europe,
including by a young Jean-
Georges Noverre (1727-1810).
✤ Took Salle’s work as a guide,
and wrote “Letters on Dancing
and Ballets,” a popular dance
manual.
✤ Took over the Paris Opéra in
1776, an appointee of Marie
Antoinette.

19. "Destroy the masks and
we shall gain a soul!"
The No(verre) Manifesto (Ballet d’Action)
✤ No to masques! Let the dancers be expressive.
✤ No to insane plots! Stage action should be logical and coherent.
✤ No to independent collaborators! All artistic personnel should work
together.
✤ No to tonnelets! Costumes should be sensible and timely.

20. et cetera.
✤ Noverre
✤ Gaétan Vestris (danced with
Noverre, helped popularize his
ideas. First to dance w/out mask.)
✤ Jean Dauberval (pupil of ✤ Auguste Vestris (“God of the
Noverre, and took over Dance,” was a lead dancer at the
the Paris Opéra with...) Paris Opéra for almost 40 years).
✤ Maximilien Gardel (Soloist at the
Opéra...)

21. Dauberval
✤ Left the Paris Opéra for Grand
Théâtre de Bordeaux in 1789.
✤ Choreographed La Fille Mal
Gardée two weeks before the
storming of the Bastille.
✤ Incorporated “peasant” dress
and folk steps with balletic
technique.

22. La Fille Mal
Gardée
✤ Plot: Girl loves boy. Girl’s
mother attempts to arrange
marriage with some other rich
boy. There are histrionics and
chicken dances. Also: a happy
ending.

23. This is not the original La Fille Mal Gardée, like,
at all. But you get the idea.
✤ (Choreography by Alicia Alonso after Dauberval,
with Ballet National de Cuba.)

24. revolutionary war sucks for dance.
✤ Pierre Gardel (Maximilien’s brother, 1758- 1840) takes over at the Opéra,
and produces all sorts of patriotic tripe.
✤ On the plus side, there is a forced departure from aristocratic
conventions and support, leading us to....

25. ROMANTICISM!
✤ Ballet starts appropriating from other art forms, including (but
definitely not limited to) Romantic poetry and literature.
✤ Notion of “romanticism” is at odds with the notion of
enlightenment / aristocratic rationalization of everything. Think
chaos and strong feeling versus order and refinement.
✤ Preoccupation of the exotic, oriental “other” and women as
supernatural characters.

26. La Sylphide (1832)
(is not Les Sylphides)
✤ First major romantic ballet.
✤ Choreographed by Filippo
Taglioni, with his daughter Marie
Taglioni in the lead.
✤ Plot: Scottish (exotic!) farmer
(James) falls in love with a magical
sylph (magical!) on the morning of
his wedding (irony!). Farmer
chases sylph. Evil witch gives
farmer scarf to trap sylph. Scarf
kills sylph. Farmer’s fiancee
marries best friend (twist!). Evil
triumphs.

27. This is the La Sylphide by Bournonville... It’s the
only version that survived... apologies...
✤ (Erik Bruhn & Carla Fracci from 1962)

28. Marie Taglioni
✤ - Her "style" of ballet is called
"Danse Ballonné," characterized
by lightness and leaps.
✤ - Characterized by Théophile
Gautier (writer, defender of
Romanticism) as the "Christian"
dancer.
✤ Trained daily by her father, who
was arguably the first truly
sadistic ballet master.
✤ Brought dance en pointe to new
levels of artistry.

29. Fanny Elssler
(GASP! A RIVALRY!)
✤
Brought to the Opéra to be a foil
to Marie Taglioni in 1834.
✤ Originates a solo called “La
Cacucha” (a “Spanish” dance
with tight footwork). On the
basis of its success, then
appropriates wildly from Poland
and Italy.
✤ Dubbed the “Pagan” dancer by
Gautier.

30. enter Giselle (1841)
✤ Libretto by Gautier, choreography by Perrot (Grisi’s husband) and Coralli
(resident ballet master), with Giselle played by Carlotta Grisi. (GASP! A RIVALRY!)
✤ Plot: Peasant girl falls in love with nobleman in peasant drag (Albrecht). Girl
discovers his secret, goes #&$%ing crazy and kills herself. Girl becomes a willi
who, unlike her bloodsucking fiend friends doesn’t hate men. Girl saves boy’s life
from dance to death.

31. Why are the willis
trying to murder me?
✤ Per the stories of Heinrich
Heine (source material for
Giselle) willis are the spirits of
virgin girls who die before they
get married, enjoy dancing
naked in town squares, and
sucking the blood of young
men.
✤ Just so we’re clear: the willis
are sexually frustrated, angry
virgin vampires.

32. Terrible video quality, but here’s Alicia Alonso
explaining Giselle’s mad scene.
✤ (Giselle, choreographed by Alicia Alonso after Perrot
and Coralli.)

33. The willis in full man-killing force, tossing
Hilarion into a lake.
✤ (Kirov Ballet’s Giselle, choreographed by Petipa.)

34. Things get transnational.
✤ Alumni of the Opéra ✤ August Bournonville (studied
go abroad, and Paris’
under Auguste Vestris at the
dominance in ballet
Opéra) takes over the Royal
is challenged.
Danish Ballet. Opa! Bournonville
technique.
✤ His La Sylphide (1836) is one of the
✤ Charles Didelot (studied canonical works of romantic
under Noverre and ballet.
Dauberval at the Opéra) and
takes over the Imperial
Ballet. Opa! Russian balletic
tradition.
✤ His Flore et Zephyr (1796)
used wires to fly ballerinas
across the stage... Think
Streb in Russia. (Kirstein,
136)

35. The Franco Prussian war sucks for dance.
✤ The Paris Opéra is shut down around 1870 as Germany bombs France. Yet in Russia, a stable monarchic
power remains in the hands of the tzars, and Didelot, Elssler, Taglioni (anybody who was anybody)
dances there eventually.
✤ Prevalence of women-centered ballets decreases male performers and roles, often resulting in balletic
“girlie” shows. On the plus side, less lethal stage lighting!
✤ Digression: Business models of dance; aristocratic support versus prostitution?

36. Marius Petipa and the Über-Classical Ballet.
✤ Marius Petipa (danced with Vestris in Bordeaux) moved to St. Petersburg in
1847. Takes over the Imperial School at St. Petersburg in 1849.
✤ Created the contemporary notion of a “classical” ballet, with its emphasis on
order and form (over emotion), pas de deux structure (pas, male variation,
female variation, coda), and divertissements.

37. Sleeping Beauty (1890)
✤ Choreography by Petipa, with music
by Tchaikovsky.
✤ Plot: Princess Aurora is cursed by
the witch Carabosse to die. Lilac
fairy commutes sentence to sleeping
for 100 years until a prince kisses
her. There is sleeping. Then Prince
Désiré (subtle, no?) is hunting with
his dude friends when the Lilac fairy
reveals Aurora. There is kissing, a
marriage, and lots of caractère
dancing.

38. Entrance and Rose Adagio from Sleeping Beauty
✤ Margot Fonteyn performing with The Royal Ballet,
with choreography by Petipa.

39. La Bayadère (1877)
✤ Choreography by Petipa, with music
by Minkus.
✤ Plot: “Indian” temple dancer
(Nikiya) loves “Indian” warrior
(Solor). The lead “Brahmin” loves
Nikiya... intrigues ensue... Nikiya is
bitten by a snake... dies... Solor takes
some opium, dreams of Nikiya, and
is about to marry another woman
when the “Gods” kill everyone.
Nikiya and Solor are reunited in
death.
✤ Blackface.

40. Solor’s Variation from La Bayadère
✤ Baryshnikov’s Gold Medal winning performance at
the Moscow International Ballet Competition.

41. Nikiya’s Death from La Bayadère
✤ Choreography by Nureyev after Petipa, at the Paris
Opéra.
✤ Anyone else reminded of Giselle? Also: note that the
sets look like Louis XIV’s...

42. Swan Lake
(1895, redux)
✤ Choreography by Petipa and Ivanov
(second balletmaster in the Imperial Ballet),
music by Tchaikovsky.
✤ Plot: Boy (Prince Siegfried) goes huntin’ for
swans with his dude friend Benno. A swan
(Odette) turns into a girl, and boy falls in
love. To break swan spell, he has to marry
her. Boy is pressured into marriage by his
mother, and Odile (who he confuses for
Odette due to the evil Rothbart) does many
fouettés. He declares love to the wrong
woman. Drama drama drama. Odette and
Siegfried throw themselvs in a lake. Plus
side: united in life after death.

43. and then there’s
the queer angle...
✤ Many, many queer readings of Swan Lake.
Even though this originates from a time
before “homosexuality” existed,
Tchaikovsky felt cursed by his
“buggeromania,” and he (and his
collaborators) were variously obsessed with
the totally insane / gay Bavarian king
Ludwig II, who in turn, was obsessed with
swans. And so on.

44. but PS...
✤ Petipa was the first to choreograph 32
fouettés, executed by rock star Pierina
Legnani.

45. Pas de Quatre (primo classicism)
from Swan Lake
✤ American Ballet Theater performing choreography
by Ivanov and Petipa.

46. Black Swan Pas de Deux
✤ Choreography by Alicia Alonso, after Petipa, on the
Ballet Nacional de Cuba.
✤ PS- Alonso was nearly blind by the time was
recorded.

47. Enter Михаил Михайлович Фокин! (Fokine.)
✤ Had radical notions of ballet, and you’ve heard them all before:
- No to needless spectacle.
- No needless tutus or pointe shoes.
- No needless fouettés. Characters move how they “should” move.
(Note: fine for swans. Little more problematic for people of color.)
✤ Danced under Petipa, but not for long....

48. Excerpt from from The Dying Swan (1907)
✤ Pavlova performing choreography by Fokine.
✤ Note post-Swan Lake queer resonances and reduced
“story.”

49. Diaghilev
hold on to your queer hats.
✤ Aesthete aristocrat who worked
at the Imperial Theater,
“discovered” Fokine, and invited
him to become the lead
choreographer of his new
venture, the Ballets Russes.
✤ Sought imperial funding, but
upon being denied, sought
funding from wealthy
individuals. One of the first
historical dance companies to
have an individual donor
program. (Digression: business
models + the male image.)

50. Diaghilev
hold on to your queer hats.
✤ Drew on the Wagnerian notion
of gesamtkunstwerk, signifying
the collaboration and unification
of all artistic collaborators.
(Noverre anyone?)
✤
Brought the young company
(featuring Nijinsky, Karasavina,
and Pavlova) to Paris in 1909,
where ballet had been a
backwater for 100 years.

51. Schéhérazade (1910)
✤ Choreographed by Fokine, with
music by Rimsky-Korsakov.
✤ Plot: A “shah’s” wife falls for her
“negro” Golden Slave. Orgies and
sexy massacres ensue.
✤ Nijinsky is a big golden hunk of
meat. The audience’s “gaze” is
queered.

52. Schéhérazade
✤ Choreography by Fokine, on dancers from the
Mariinsky and Bolshoi Ballets.
✤ PS- Note: the intercourse in the background is not the
conversational kind.
✤ Note the diminishment of codified balletic technique,
(yet later there is figured dancing and fouettés?)

53. Petroucha (1912)
✤ Choreographed by Fokine, with
music by Stravinsky. (Kirstein,
194)
✤ Plot: Magician (Cecchetti) has
three puppets: the pathetic
Petrouchka (Nijinksky), a
ballerina (Karasavina) and a
“moor” (Orlov). Petrouchka loves
the Ballerina, but is killed by the
moor, and then haunts the
magician.
✤ Read: Petrouchka as Nijinsky,
magician as Diaghliev.
✤ Blackface.

54. Petrushka (with extra sambo action)
Petrushka (part deux)
✤ Choreography by Fokine, and starring Nureyev.
✤ PS: Silly sambo thinks the coconut is a god!
Hahahahaha!

55. Le Spectre de la Rose
(1911)
✤ Choreographed by Fokine, music
by Stravinsky, libretto by
Gautier. (Remember him?)
✤ Plot: A young girl (Karasavina)
returns home from a ball with a
rose given to her by an admirer.
The spirit of the rose (Nijinsky)
does a dance as she falls asleep
and jumps out the window.

56. Le Spectre de la Rose
✤ Choreography by Fokine, starring Nureyev.

57. Exit Fokine.
Enter Nijinsky.
✤ Fokine exited the company as
Nijinsky and Diaghilev grew, er,
closer. Nijinsky became the lead
choreographer for the Ballet
Russe.

58. L'après-midi d'un faune
(1912)
✤ Choreography by Nijinsky,
music by Debussy. (Kirstein, 198)
✤ Invoked archaic greece, with all
dancers moving in a "Greecian"
manner.
✤ Plot: A faun sees 7 bathing
nymphs. He dances with one of
them, who drops her scarf. Then:
masturbation.

59. L'après-midi d'un faune
(1912)
✤ Inspired Queen’s music video for
“I Want to Break Free” (1991)

60. L'après-midi d'un faune
✤ From the film “Nijinsky,” with choreography by
Nijinsky, starring George de la Peña.
✤ Balletic technique is nearly invisible.

61. Le sacre du printemps
(1913)
✤ Choreography by Nijisky, (crazy
impossibly hard) music by
Stravinsky. (Kirstein, 206)
✤ Invoked archaic Russia, with all
dancers moving in a "primitive"
manner. Auto-orientalism?
✤ Plot: Pre-Russian tribe celebrates
spring by sacrificing a virgin to
the Gods with a dance to the
death.
✤ Audience response: riots in Paris.

62. Le sacre du printemps
✤ Choreography by Nijinsky, reconstructed on the Joffrey
Ballet.
✤ Balletic technique, inside out.
✤ Reminiscent of Giselle and Schéhérazade?

63. meanwhile, stateside, there were all sorts
of queer goings ons....

64. Loïe Fuller
✤ Illinois born, Fuller radically
reconfigured notions of dancerly
performance and stage lighting.
✤ Created (and patented) her own
chemical compounds, gels, and
stage technologies.
✤ Toured Europe with her
entourage of lady dancers. It was
romantic.

65. some queer details...
✤ Like Nijinsky, Fuller created a
new, abstract space freed
from gender norms. (“One
can scarcely believe she’s a
woman!”)
✤ Though her work deviated
from balletic norms, she used
scores by Wagner, Beethoven,
and other “serious”
composers.
✤ Started a school and taught
improvisation. (#fail)
(Digression: new business
models.)

66. Danse Serpentine
✤ Choreography by Fuller.
✤ PS: This is apparently really her, per the Library of
Congress.

67. Isadora Duncan
✤ San Francisco born, Duncan
created a radical system of
movement that drew on
“natural” gesture, musicality,
and originated in the solar
plexus.
✤ By radical, I mean she was a
breast-bearing socialist bisexual
killed in a freak accident
involving an amilcar and a too-
long scarf. True story.
✤ Started numerous schools in
Europe and on the West coast.
(#fail)

68. Ruth St. Denis
✤ One of the most thorough
American appropriators, St.
Denis made “Indian” dances,
“Oriental” dances,
“Egyptian” dances, and so
on, with admirable religiosity.
✤ Au: "these dances made no
claim to authenticity, they
aimed to capture the spirit
rather than the letter of the
cultures they depicted."

69. Ruth St. Denis
✤ Radha (1906): St. Denis
"celebrated a ritual of the five
senses," per Krishna's milkmaid
lover. (Zero authenticity, strict
coney island.)
✤ Met Ted Shawn in 1914, who
became her dancing partner /
husband (#fail). They created
Denishawn, with Louis Horst as
the musical director, and taught
yoga, ballet, clogging, and
various pseudo-spiritual
practices (#fail).

70. Ruth St. Denis
✤ Xochitl (1920) was an "Aztec-
Toltec dance drama" starring
Martha Graham as a maiden
defended her virtue from a
lusty Mexican aristocrat. (Ted
Shawn).
✤ Founder of "musical
visualization," with by Doris
Humphrey. (ie their
collaboration Soaring (1920)
which used a large scarf and
colored lights.)

71. Documentary on the Early Moderns
✤ Featuring Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis.

72. Ted Shaun has a secret.
✤ Denishawn dissolves in the
1930s due to financial
difficulties. Also: Ted is gay.
✤ Formed “Ted Shawn and His
Men Dancers" which
simultaneously emphasized
the athleticism of modern
dance while claiming a sort of
uniquely American
masculinity.

73. From documentary, “The Men Who Danced”
✤ Choreography by Ted Shawn.

74. Meanwhile in Germany:
Laban and Ausdrucktanz!
(expressive dance)
✤ Utopic dance theorist (1879–
1958 ) who laid the
groundwork for Laban
Notation, expression of inner
self through outer movement.
✤ Started a school / commune
in Zürich.
✤ Created the notion of a
“movement choir,” which
was rigorously appropriated
by the Nazis (and was kinda
a Nazi himself.)

75. Mary Wigman
✤ Pupil of Laban, innovator in
“expressionist” dances.
✤ Choreograped
“Hexentanz” (“Witch Dance”)
to “non-Western”
instrumentation.
✤ Beginnings of an abject
aesthetic?

76. Documentary footage, including Hexentanz
✤ Choreography by Mary Wigman.

77. Kurt Joos
✤ Pupil of Laban, (co-)founder
of “tanztheater.”
✤ Choreographed “The Green
Table” or, “A Dance of Death
in Eight Scenes,” with music
by Frederick Cohen.

78. Excerpt from The Green Table
✤ Choreography by Kurt Jooss, performed by the
Joffrey Ballet.

79. Conclusions
good grief 80 slides later
✤ Dance performance has ✤ Dance is not now and has
adapted to various economic never been politically neutral
models, ranging from or ahistorical. From Louis
aristocratic court dances with XIV to The Green Table, dance
imperial theaters to a and politics have been
“companies” with “schools.” thoroughly enmeshed and /
or at historical odds.
✤ Ballet history co-mingles
with Orientalism and racist ✤ So what is it to you?
assumption of “ethnic”
identities.

80. thank you.
sydney skybetter | skybetter@nyu.edu | @sydneyskybetter