Ballet

Chronicles of Popular Ballet

This is not just any dance but a mystical story in itself that will take onlookers to another realm of dynamism. Ballet is set to the wonderful stories of legends and fairytales which makes it important to familiarize the narrative to gain a better understanding of what it is all about.

Ballet is specific in its forms and techniques. This can be performed alone or as part of an opera which is best known for its point work, grand pas de deux and high leg extensions. Many have noticed that it has a striking similarity with fencing because of their development during the same periods of history, but more likely, since both arts had common requirements in terms of balance and movement.

Below are timeless favorite accounts that have been interpreted on stage through ballet:

In 1843, Mendelssohn composed the music for William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream. George Balanchine, a choreographer, did not had a hard time working with it. He intensively studied Mendelssohn’s creation for 20 long years before selecting what will be included in the dance. In 1962, Balanchine finally finished and premiered the ballet. It was his first wholly choreographed ballet in the United States.

As a commission by Vladimir Petrovich Begichev, intendant of the Russian Imperial Theatres in Moscow, Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake was composed in 1875. Similar to the Nutcracker, this was unsuccessful after its first year of performance. Conductors, dancers and audiences alike thought Tchaikovsky's music was too complicated and hard. The production’s original choreography by German ballet master, Julius Reisinger, was uninspiring and unoriginal. Much is unknown about the original production of Swan Lake – no notes, techniques or instruction concerning the ballet was written down. It wasn’t until after Tchaikovsky’s death that Swan Lake was revived. Much of the Swan Lake we know of today was a revision by the famous choreographers Petipa and Ivanov.

World renowned chorepgrapher, Marius Petipa, instructed Peter Tchaikovsky to compose the music for Alexandre Dumas’ adaptation of ETA Hoffman’s tale “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.” It was in 1892 that they held their first performance but it was a total failure. Surprisingly, since that time, this has been the most widely performed ballet in the world. The reason being, in 1954, George Balanchine, yet another world renowned choreographer, created a new production of The Nutcracker. If you’ve seen The Nutcracker, it was most likely a version based on Balanchine’s.

Coppélia is a very famous humorous ballet. Its music was composed by Delibes and choreographed by Arthur Saint-Léon. The story was written by Arthur Saint-Léon and Charles Nuitter after E.T.A. Hoffman’s Der Sandmann. Coppéliapremier in 1870 was an immediate success – it was a great relief from the heavy, more sad ballets of that time. Coppélia was the last triumph of the Paris Opera before its precious title of “the leading city of dance” slipped through the cracks.