- Ballets de cour
Ballets de cour ("Court ballet") is the name given to
ballet s performed in the 16th and 17th centuries at court.Jean-Baptiste Lully is considered the most important composer of music for ballets de cour and was instrumental to the development of the form. During his employment by Louis XIV as director of theAcadémie Royale de Music he worked withPierre Beauchamp ,Molière ,Philippe Quinault and MademoiselleDe Lafontaine , (the first professional female dancer andPremiere danseuse of theParis Opera Ballet ) to develop ballet as an art form equal to that of the accompanying music.Beauchamp, "superintendent" of the ballet and director of the
Académie Royale de Danse codified the "five positions" based on the foundations set down byThoinot Arbeau in his 1588 "Orchesographie". Emphasising the technical aspects of dance Beauchamp set out the first "rules" of ballet technique. The emphasis on "turned out" legs, light costumes, female dancers and long dance sequences (all first seen inL'Europe galante (1697)) with light, flexible footwear was a turning point in ballet practice that lead toPre romantic ballet era.Pierre Rameau expanded on Beauchamp's work in "Dancing master " 1725 further detailing carriage of the body, steps and positions.The ballets de cour developed into the
comédie-ballet and then theopéra-ballet during the course of the 18th century. This was a fully operatic form that included ballet as a prominent feature of the performance.Jean-Philippe Rameau 'sLes Indes galantes (1735) is considered to be the work that signaled the divergence of social (ballroom) dance and ballet.ee also
*
History of ballet
*History of dance
*Ballet timeline
*Baroque dance
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.