Transcript Ballet and Modern Dance

Ballet and Modern
Dance
Italian Beginnings
Italian
Beginnings
 Gugliemo Ebreo (William the Jew),
teacher of dance to the nobility, wrote a
study of dance that includes first
examples of choreography.
 Dance moved from court feasts to
ballrooms to the theatres.
Intermezzos: dances performed between
acts of classical drama or operas
 Balletti: originally referred to dance in
ballrooms, came to refer to dance in
theatres.
Evening Ball for the Wedding of the
Duc de Joyeuse c.1581
Le Balet Comique De La Reine
Performance commissioned by Catherine de Medici at the Valois
Court of Henri III
Le Balet Comique De La Reine
 1581: First ballet -- Le Balet Comique de la Reine aka
Circe composed by Balthazar Beaujoyeulx
 Court entertainment for wedding festivities at the
French Valois Court
 Three geometrical dance entries carefully woven into
the plot of the production
 First conscious effort to blend verse, music, dance,
scenic elements and costume into a unified and
coherent theatrical statement.
Ballet de
Cours: Court
Ballet
at Versailles
Louis XIV performing in a ballet
Ballet de Cours: Court Ballet
at Versailles
 Ballet as Western civilization knows it is an
invention of artists associated with the French court
of the Sun King, Louis XIV
 The king's own dancing master and perhaps the
first great French dancer, Pierre Beauchamps, was
head of the Dance Academy.
 Court composer Jean-Baptiste Lully oversaw all
productions.
 The ballet de cour dancers traced inventive patterns
on the stage as one component of an elaborate stage
presentation.
 The codification of technique helped to create the
later dance vocabulary and the self-contained ballet.
Romantic Ballet
 A trend toward a greater degree of selfexpression began early in the 18th century.
 Marie Camargo introduced new steps to
the vocabulary and raised her skirt several
inches to show off her technique.
 Emphasis on en pointe dancing.
 19th century ballerinas, Marie Taglioni,
Carlotta Grisi, Fanny Cerrito ,Lucile Grahn
and Fanny Elssler symbolize the essence
of Romantic ballet, a style that stresses
above all else an ethereal and floating
lightness. Title roles were created in such
works as La Sylphide and Giselle that
exploited their airiness and “otherworldliness”
Romantic
Ballet
'Pas de Quatre' by Jules Perrot
"as danced at Her Majesty's
Theatre, London July 12th, 1845
by the four eminent danseuses
Carlotta Grisi, Marie Taglioni,
Lucille Grahn and Fanny
Cerrito"
in command performance for
Queen Victoria.
Ballet d’Action:
Story Ballet
 Ballet tells a self-contained story.
 French choreographers in the vanguard:
 Pierre Rameau codified the five absolute positions of
the feet and encouraged a livelier, less earthbound
style of dancing
 Jean-Georges Noverre, the father of the ballet
d'action, urged a full range of facial and bodily
gestures be used to express emotion.
 Milanese Carlo Blasis’ Code of Terpsichore, a manual
of instruction became the standard ballet handbook
throughout Europe
Ballet d’Action: Story Ballet
Russian Ballet
Russian Ballet
 Marius Petipa came from Italy to St. Petersburg in 1847.
 As ballet master of the Imperial Maryinsky (now the
Kirov) Ballet, Petipa created the core of the Russian
repertoire with such works as Don Quixote, Swan Lake,
The Nutcracker, and Sleeping Beauty.
 Important composers such as Tschiakovsky
collaborated with Petipa.
 Rigorous training for dancers from a young age ensured
brilliant technique.
Marius Petipa
1819-1910
Sleeping Beauty
Diaghilev’s Ballets Russe
 Preeminent Ballet Company of first three decades of
20th C.
 Led by Serge Diaghelev (1872-1927), the company
toured Europe and the Americas.
 Choreographers included Fokine, Massine, Nijinsky
and Balanchine.
 Dancers included Pavlova, Nijinsky and Karasavina.
 Scenic designers included Leon Bakst and Pablo
Picasso.
 Composers included Stravinsky, Debussy, and Satie
 When company disbanded after Diaghelev’s death in
1929, many artists moved to America and England.
Diaghilev’s Ballets Russe
Anna Pavlova
1881-1931
Vaslav Nijinsky
1880-1950
New York City Ballet
 After the Ballets Russes disbanded, Balanchine was
asked by Lincoln Kirstein to form a ballet company in
America.
 In 1933 the School of American Ballet accepted its first
students.
 A succession of companies evolved to become the New
York City Ballet in 1948.
 Balanchine created a body of works unequaled in
stylistic range and emotional variety - Balanchine collaborated with Stravinsky and moved
ballet to a purer, abstract expression
 NYCB stars include Suzanne Farrell, Jacques
d'Amboise, Edward Villella, and Peter Martins.
New York City Ballet and
George Balanchine
1904-1983
Modern Dance
Isadora Duncan
1878-1927
Denishawn:
Ted Shawn and Ruth St. Denis
1891-1972
1879-1968
Denishawn:
Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn
 Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts, dance
school and company founded in 1915 by Ruth St. Denis
and her husband, Ted Shawn;
 Fostered such performers as Martha Graham, Doris
Humphry, and Charles Weidman
 St. Denis turned to Oriental dances for ideas about
dance as spiritual art; later cofounded of Authentic
School of Oriental Dancing, called Natya, in New York
City
 Shawn pioneered the role of male dancer, training male
dancers and creating dances based on Native American
and Western folklore. Founder of Jacob’s Pillow
Festival
Martha Graham
1894-1991
Martha Graham
 “Martha Graham was to modern dance what Pablo
Picasso was to modern art.”
 In a career spanning 70 years, Martha Graham created 180
dance works using a variety of motifs including:
 Fusion of abstract gestures to psychological symbols
(Primitive Mysteries)
 American mythic heritage (Appalachian Spring)
 Classical tragedy (Medea, Clytemnestra)
 Technique includes: emphasis on the center of the body,
not its extremities; angular stances; explosive, stylized
gestures, spare and abstract stage settings
 Trained or influenced every important modern dancer-José Limón, Paul Taylor, Merce Cunningham, and Twyla
Tharp --and made America the center of modern dance.
Appalachian
Spring
Music by Aaron Copeland
Choreography by Martha
Graham
Katherine Dunham
b. 1909
Katherine Dunham
 Anthropologist (PhD, U of Chicago), dancer,
choreographer and educator
 Ethnic dance research in the Caribbean led her to found
in 1940 the first all-black concert dance troupe, Les
Ballets Negre, to perform 'Tropics and le Jazz Hot'
 Choreography combined black island dances with ballet
and theatrical effects.
 1945 the Dunham School of Dance was opened in New
York City.
 Choreographed opera (Aida, Treemonisha), Broadway
(Cabin in the Sky), and film (Stormy Weather)
 1965-67 Senegal’s Cultural Minister
 Ran inner-city school in East St. Louis teaching
performing arts to gang members
Katherine
Dunham
FUSION
American
Ballet
Theatre
American Ballet Theatre
 The Ballet Theatre presented its first performance on
Jan. 11, 1940.
 Struck a balance between tradition and
experimentation.
 Led for 40 years by Lucia Chase and Oliver Smith, ABT
commissioned works by such leading choreographers
as Anthony Tudor, Agnes DeMille and Jerome
Robbins.
 Celebrated performers have included Alicia Alonso,
Rudolph Nureyev, Natalia Makarova, Antony Tudor,
and Mikhail Baryshnikov, its artistic director from 1980
to 1989.
Dance Theatre of Harlem
Dance Theatre of Harlem
 Arthur Mitchell, the first black dancer to perform with
the New York City Ballet, founded the Dance Theatre
of Harlem in 1971
 Began with 30 children in a church basement--two
months later, 400 children were attending classes
 The interracial company won a new audience for ballet
and opened opportunities for young black dancers
 Repertory expanded to encompass classical, modern,
and ethnically oriented works
 "Dancing Through Barriers" is designed to make
children worldwide aware of dance.
Alvin Ailey
1931-1989
Alvin Ailey
 Born in Texas in 1931, Ailey spent his formative years
going to Sunday School --see Revelations
 Trained with Lester Horton, Katherine Dunham and
Martha Grahman, Stella Adler among others
 1958, Ailey founded his own company, the Alvin Ailey
American Dance Theater, company dedicated to
enriching the American modern dance heritage and
preserving black cultural expression.
 First American dance company invited to the Soviet
Union.
 1969, Ailey founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance
Center now training 3500 students a year