The History Of Ballett ( Part 1)

Ballet was born about five hundred years ago in Renaissance Italy,where such rich and powerful merchant-princes as the Medici of Florence and the Sforza of Milan employed professional dancing masters to supervise the production of pageants and other spectacles. These court dance displays, called Balletti, became a regular feature of every lavish entertainment . Great pageants, with hundreds of performers ,took place everywhere,both indoors and in the open air. Such displays required little technical skill from the dancers-who,in any case ,were dressed so elaborately that they could manage only the simplest movements.Thus,Renaissance Italy's choreography-was a s much a matter of geometry as of dancing. It consisted almost entirely of working out complicated patterns of group movement, a little like the contermarching of soldiers on parade.


In 1494,King Charles VIII of France marched into Italy at the head of his army and claimed the throne of Naples. While there, both the king and his courtiers were so delighted by the dance Pageants given in their honor that they soon set about importing Italian dancing masters and musicians into France. Court ballet became popular, and remained for more over than hundred years. The court become obessed with dancing;and the greatest enthusiast of all was King Louis XIV. He danced in his first ballet at the age of 12 and went on playing leading parts -such as apollo ,jupiter or Mars until ,in his early thirties,he got too fat to dance. Louis lavished immense sums of money on staging ballets,and he employed men of genius to produce them,realizing that it would bring him even greater prestige.


In England , a rather different kind of court entertainment evolved : The masque. Although it made use of dancing, it was dominated by the poet or dramatist rather than the dancing master. Jean Baptiste lully ,an italian musican and dancer in service of Louis XIV,was among the first to compose a complete musical score especially for ballet. Early ballet music had always been arranged from various pieces by a number of different composers. Declamation and songs,written by a poet,were used to tell the story. Thus,its early days,ballet shared many of the features of what was later to become the seperate distinct art of Opera.