Baroque dance developed from the late sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century court ballet, ballet de cour, and survived into eighteenth-century opera ballet until it was eventually displaced by the dramatic innovations of Marie Sallé and Jean-Georges Noverre. Although it disappeared entirely from European stages with the emergence of the nineteenth-century romantic ballet, the baroque made a return in the twentieth century through a series of “baroquisms” in modern dance and ballet, as well as through historical reconstructions of a scholarly and theatrical nature. There is evidence of a serious attempt to reconstruct baroque dance as early as 1910 in Germany. The creation of original or speculative baroque movement languages, however, was more prevalent until mid-century. Modern dancer Alexander Sacharoff, for example, choreographed and performed solos such as Au temps du grand siècle/Pavane royale in 1919, and Kurt Jooss choreographed Pavane on the Death of an Infanta in 1929. Oskar Schlemmer was influenced by early seventeenth-century burlesque ballet costume design in his experimental Triadic Ballet (1922). Bronislava Nijinska choreographed Les Fâcheux for the Ballets de Monte Carlo in 1924 and danced the male lead herself. Martha Graham choreographed Imperial Gesture in 1935 and José Limón choreographed The Moor's Pavane, based on Othello with a Henry Purcell score, in 1949. In all of these cases, something understood as the marker of period style was incorporated into a twentieth-century concept of dance modernism.

Chinese dance is a riot of identities – court, folk, ethnic and dynastic. It has a glorious history and is a topic on its own. It draws inspiration from martial arts and “the art of sex” as the quintessential man of letters and leisure Li Yu wrote: “When people teach girls to sing and dance, they do not really teach them how to sing and dance but how to be sensual. If you want her body to be so, then you must have her dance.” Several legendary sensual dancers rose to be Senior Consorts and Empresses during the Han (206 bc–ad 220) and Tang (618–960) dynasties. Yang Yuhuan, the most beautiful woman in Chinese history, was a sensual dancer. She captivated the Tang emperor Xianzong (685–762), became his favourite consort and came to shape Chinese history. The splendid history of court dance, like Chinese dance itself, waits to be researched. Chinese dance absorbed its properties and values from many cultures, especially Central Asia, during the Han and Tang dynasties. This pattern of assimilation continued as the Mongols conquered China in 1279 and the Manchus in 1644. It developed rapidly after the Opium War (1839–42)when China began to have direct intercourse with the world beyond greater Asia. This exposure not only dramatically changed China's history but also the very fibre of Chinese culture. Dance in the form of ballet is a great example of such cultural change.

Another ballet book?

Not exactly. A Companion, a book to accompany you when you go to see ballet or when you want to know something, find a name, a date, a work; it is a book to read and a book to consult, not on everything in ballet, not a complete book, not even a complete history. A book with essays that revisit aspects of this beloved and detested art form, a book that is needed as much as ballet is needed. Yes, “needed”, as we need our bodies. Ballet shows us what the trained human body can do to make flesh become art. Ballet, the art of the body, puts our physical presence into form, into fantasy and into a deeper reality. “Needed” because in the nineteenth century ballet became a uniquely feminine enterprise, and to an extent it has retained this aspect in the twenty-first century. The great ballerina floats before us, telling us something about ourselves, our genders, our fears, hopes and, above all, prejudices. The artificiality and conventions of ballet protect our nervous sensibilities but also indirectly assault them.

Ballet is part of our history and our heritage and if we deny our past we will not comprehend the present nor grasp the future. Either in life or in dance. Ballet has a history, which reflects and refracts the social order in which it arises. A courtly society demands an art form in which the king can dance and his court revolve around him. A revolutionary society proclaims its ideals in dance; a conservative one does the same. Ballet, adored and reviled often for similar reasons, belongs to our contemporary cultural landscape as much as any other performance art. Ballet tells us about ourselves and the world we inhabit; it holds up a mirror and projects wishes and desires; it expresses our ideals and mocks our vanities; it demolishes certainties and tests limits; it creates values and sets standards; it invents the past as much as the future.

On any given morning of the year, if you were to ask a ballet dancer, “What are you going to do today?” the answer most probably would be, “First, I'll take class.” “Taking class” means the daily regimen of formalised exercises to refine, strengthen, maintain, and prepare the dancer's body for performance. This is the leçon or lesson – a process based on a codified, although ever-evolving, academic theatrical dance technique, done under the supervision of a ballet instructor. This chapter will discuss early ballet technique and training, with particular focus on developments in the eighteenth century, when the codification, the instruction, the academies and the performing companies – the professionalisation of ballet – became well established, setting the tone for decades to come and influencing the art into our own day.

At the outset, it is important to acknowledge that the historical traces of the development of ballet technique and training, as well as of ballet repertoire, are relatively rare. Unlike its sister arts, music and drama, ballet did not develop a comprehensive and universally accepted way to leave written or notated records capable of reflecting the complexities of its technique and choreographies, although in the early eighteenth century there was one valiant attempt at notation. Prior to the early nineteenth century, there were no detailed accounts of systematised training practices for professional dancers, although there are many tangential sources about training exercises from earlier periods and many later sources for corroborative material.

The Paris Opéra stood as perhaps the most influential house for ballet in nineteenth-century Europe until the ascendance of the Imperial Russian Theatres in the 1880s. Its stage attracted the talents of the great choreographers and dancers of Europe, and its audiences witnessed some of the most important phenomena in nineteenth-century ballet: the rivalry of Vestris and Duport in the first decade; the birth of the romantic style in the cloister scene of Robert le diable in 1831; the controversial failure (accompanied by the derisive whistles of the balletomaniac Jockey Club) of Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser in 1861. At the Opéra, audiences not only insisted that ballets be included within opera, but exalted independent ballets, sometimes praising them more highly than the operas with which they shared the stage. The house's directors, with their generous budgets and top-notch teams of choreographers, composers, designers and librettists, oversaw the creation of new ballets at a steady pace – including such staples of today's repertoire as the other-worldly Giselle (1841), the heroic Le Corsaire (1856) and the comic Coppélia (1870) – and by popular demand exported many of them to other houses in Milan, Copenhagen, Moscow and Philadelphia, to name a few.

Revolutionary festivities and cultural disruption

During the French Revolution of 1789 a deep change in the representation of social communication and interaction took place. The spectrum of the new sociability reached from refashioning the national costume that replaced the old dress codes of the guild and social hierarchies to the republican, informal way of addressing each other, from imitating Roman slave haircuts to rituals of fraternisation, from frugal banquets in the open to name-giving ceremonies of newborn babies (Brutus was one of the preferred choices), from the revolutionary catechism that spread ancient Roman models of virtue to the introduction of a new, republican calendar. All these measures were intended to mark a break not only with the Ancien Régime before 1789 but with history as it had been known.

The French Revolution understood itself as a “regeneration”, a return to a social order that was close to nature. A stable political order was the goal and certainly not a permanent revolution. But the Revolution, particularly after the execution of the king, had become a threatening crisis. To the horror of many politicians, post-revolutionary France proved extremely mobile and unsettled. The movement cultures and body performances of this time can be seen as an attempt to contain the “too much” of social movement by controlling the individual body within the mass. Hence the painter David and the choreographer Gardel saw themselves confronted with the problem of convincing passionate crowds to move within ordered forms, to make a moving, yet manageable, organised, yet innocuous, collective body out of an unruly mass that threatened to explode at any moment.

On 24 May 1847 Marius Petipa, a young French-born dancer and ballet master, landed in St Petersburg. He was not the first dance artist to brave the long journey to Russia and the rigours of a Russian winter, nor even the only Petipa; only five months later, his own father signed a contract to teach the senior classes at the Imperial Ballet School. Like so many other danseurs, Petipa fils was drawn to the “Venice of the North” because of decreasing opportunities for male dancers in the West and the unusually generous terms of an imperial contract, in his case, 10,000 francs a year and “half a benefit” for the position of premier danseur. He accepted the offer with alacrity, little imagining that he would remain in Russia until his death in 1910, marry twice there (both times to Russian ballerinas), raise a family and rule the Imperial Ballet from 1869, when he became chief ballet master, to his retirement in 1903.

Petipa's long stewardship of the company had an incalculable effect on Russian ballet. He presided over the shift from romanticism to what is usually termed ballet “classicism”, laid the foundation of the modern Russian school by marrying the new Italian bravura technique to its more lyrical French counterpart and helped transform an art dominated by foreigners and identified with the West into a Russian national expression. Petipa choreographed scores of ballets and innumerable dances, codifying their structure while expanding the lexicon of their movements, and created several generations of distinguished dancers.

In 1892, when The Nutcracker premiered at the Maryinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, it received mixed reviews. Like other Imperial Russian ballets, it featured flashes of brilliance from a talented cast, but it had a rather ordinary plot about a girl who receives a magical Christmas gift. Even the Tchaikovsky score failed to win unequivocal approval because it was more symphonic than the music that usually accompanied a ballet at the time. No one suspected The Nutcracker would eventually become the most popular and most often performed ballet in the world. This transformation from the least respected of the three Tchaikovsky ballets (the other two are Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty) into the most visible and lucrative of all classical ballets, is a story of virtual immigration. There are no borders at which ballets must clear customs and The Nutcracker never actually left its homeland, as other immigrants do; nonetheless, like all successful transplants, it thrived in a new location by adapting in creative and unexpected ways. Through all the changes, the ballet has retained much of its “genetic material” – the Tchaikovsky score, a version of the original libretto, some ideas and steps from the original Lev Ivanov choreography and the aura of its distinguished ballet heritage.

Tchaikovsky's belief in the purity of ballet as well as its link to childhood lies at the core of his intent in and approach to composing ballet music. According to friend and music critic Herman Laroche, the composer welcomed writing for the ballet because, “in that magical world, it was pure fairy tale expressed by pantomime and dance”. Laroche added, “Tchaikovsky could not stand realism in ballet.” Tchaikovsky reserved ballet as the ideal genre for complete submersion into a child's fantasy world and so his Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker are all fantastic tales that draw the audience into a magical world of swan maidens, sorcerers, fairies, mouse kings, princes and princesses. In this chapter, I will show how Tchaikovsky's music for these ballets is the key that unlocks the door to a fairy-tale world. For pantomime and dance, the visual tools used to convey these stories cannot alone evoke the fantasy. It is Tchaikovsky's music, especially in his masterful choice of instruments and ways of deploying them, that transports his audience to a world of fantasy and magic.

Balanchine has been likened to Mozart and Shakespeare for his universal appeal and prolific creative output and to Picasso and Matisse for his contributions to twentieth-century art. His friend and collaborator Igor Stravinsky, not famous for complimenting his peers, declared that “The world is full of pretty good concert pianists, but a choreographer such as Balanchine is, after all, the rarest of beings”. In the years since Balanchine's death in 1983 his ballets have remained a staple of New York City Ballet programmes each season and are widely performed by other companies as well, many of them led by former Balanchine dancers who work hard to recreate “Mr B's” ballets as faithfully as possible. It is rare for a choreographer to have this many works still in performance (to say nothing of the continuing influence of his school of technique – a streamlined version of classical ballet notable for its speed, energy, clarity, restylings of some of the original dance positions and emphasis on music as the heart of ballet).

What was so extraordinary about Balanchine as a working artist? First, he approached choreography as a craft akin to cooking or carpentry. He worked easily with what was available, adjusting his choreography to a dancer's strengths and was never fazed by the notion that a ballet might disappear forever after its performance. Moreover, Balanchine made ballets quickly and was, as a result, prolific, creating hundreds of ballets over the course of his life. He needed, most of all, to be in the studio working directly with his dancers and he found joy in the process of, as he liked to say, “assembling”.

Is the Sylphide just a dream? Does she only exist as a supernatural being, split between dream and reality, in the thoughts of a romantic hero? Or is she a woman of flirtatious flesh and boiling blood?

There she is with her fragile wings, sitting right next to James in his armchair, shining in her pale whiteness and pointing a symbolic finger under her chin. She is so close that he could feel her fairy breath if he only woke up from his wedding nap in the armchair. When he actually does open his longing eyes, she immediately begins her unspoiled and natural dance of joy – only to vanish up the chimney without any warning the next minute&

As the spectator watches the Sylphide flying around in her beloved Scottish forest, she seems most of all to be an unreachable fairy-tale creature, collecting butterflies and looking at birds nests, just for the fun of it. As she loses her wings and her eyes go blind, with her hands creeping down her trembling arms in catastrophic fear, she is no longer a supernatural creature. At this moment, she is transformed into a mortal creature, conquered by gravity, dying in front of the man whom she loves above anything else in the world.

Silence. Tears. Curtain.

In New York, on 2nd November, 1943 Alicia Alonso, a Cuban ballerina, danced the title role of Giselle replacing a sick Alicia Markova in a performance of Ballet Theatre.

In 1943, a Cuban ballet dancer was a rarity, even more if she starred in a work considered the epitome of the European Romantic tradition. Though Cuba was immensely popular in the United States in the 1940s, it was by no means associated with ballet. Since the early 1920s, Hollywood and Broadway had made Americans familiar with images of Cuba as an exotic destination offering exuberant women, hot rhythms, beaches, casinos and endless nights of romance and alcohol. I'll See You in Cuba (1920), The Cuban Love Song (1931), Girl from Havana (1940) and Week-End in Havana (1941) were among the era's numerous films and musicals with Cuba as their subject or background. Cuban songs topped American charts while rumbas, congas, cha-cha-chas and mambos took centre stage in dance halls from New York to Los Angeles.

Rising to fame as a ballet dancer and becoming one of the most celebrated Giselles of the twentieth century, Alonso undermined Americans’ stereotypical images of Cuba and Cubans. She also challenged the assumption that ballet belonged to Europeans. Asked about the reactions that her nationality elicited at the beginning of her career, she said: “A lot of people were astonished. I danced the more classical works, like Giselle and Swan Lake. In my first visits to England and France, the audience could not believe that a Latina represented classicism. In England, a critic even asked me how I had the courage to dance Giselle. Regardless of their disbelief, I achieved success”.

In the dance treatises of the fifteenth century choreographies were first recorded in Western Europe: dance became literary and philosophical as well as a physical skill and oral tradition. These treatises laid the foundation for the future structure of European dance. The main dance genres recorded in the treatises, ballo, bassadanza, and basse danse in the fifteenth century, pavane, galliard, branle, almain, balletto, bassa, brando and cascarda in the sixteenth century, were the dances of the upper levels of society: the courtiers and nobility, those who wielded power, as well as the wealthy merchants and trading families. Important state occasions, marriage celebrations, official visits by neighbouring rulers or ambassadors, annual religious festivities and theatrical events were all marked by formal balls or dancing at which members of the elite performed. Often these dance events took place in public spaces, on a stage erected in the main piazza in front of thousands of spectators. At other times the space in which the dancing was conducted was more private, being the main hall of a palace. But even on these occasions the dances performed were part of the official ceremonies and rituals, contributing to the presentation of the image of a ruler as a powerful and magnificent prince, whose authority could not be challenged. When a ruler and the leading members of his court danced in public before his subjects he was displaying his magnificence, and in doing so he was displaying his power. The Italians in particular were obsessed with protocol and ceremony, and one of the chief means of indicating rank was by spatial relationships among people.

Weaver's life

Weaver was born on 21 July 1673 at Shrewsbury in the county of Shropshire, where his father (also called John) was a dancing master. The family moved to Oxford shortly after John junior's birth. It is probable that he was sent back to Shrewsbury at about the age of ten to attend the eponymous school. He followed in his father's footsteps as a dancing master in the town until 1700 when he moved to London to work as a dancer in the theatres of the capital. Two years later he staged The Tavern Bilkers at Drury Lane Theatre, claiming later that it was “the first Entertainment that appeared on the English Stage, where the Representation and Story was carried on by Dancing, Action and Motion only”. He also worked closely with Queen Anne's dancing master, known simply as Mr Isaac, in notating the dances devised by the latter for court occasions. He enjoyed a mutually supportive relationship with the other major metropolitan dancing master of the period, Thomas Caverley. Important for his career as a writer was his friendship with Sir Richard Steele the Irish-born journalist and playwright who with Joseph Addison edited The Spectator (1711–14). Steele commissioned several articles on dancing for his periodical from Weaver, gave helpful publicity to his history of dancing (1712) and may also have had a hand in getting the book published in the first place. In 1707 Weaver had returned to Shrewsbury, where his wife Catherine, whom he had married in 1696, died in childbirth in 1712.

Noverre's life

Jean-Georges Noverre was born in Paris on 27 April 1727 and died in Saint- Germain-en-Laye on 19 October 1810. He had an abrupt and demanding temperament, made many enemies and stirred up a variety of fierce artistic controversies during his long career. More than any other choreographer before him, he turned ballet into an independent art form and means of expression. Diderot called him “le génie”, the one who would save dance, and Voltaire named him “Prométhée de la danse”.

Noverre's mother, Marie Anne de la Grange, is thought to have been born in Lausanne, although P. J. S. Richardson suggested that she was born in Picardy. His father, Jean Louys, was a Swiss soldier. Like Rousseau, Noverre's Swiss origins created suspicion about his loyalty to France, although he always considered himself a Frenchman. His father expected him to be a soldier, but the boy insisted on dancing and eventually followed his own instincts. Still a child, he went to Paris to study with M. Marcel and then with the famous Louis Dupré. His critical eye quickly led him to question why the arms had such a circumscribed use, and to wonder why masks, high heels, panniers and over-blown wigs were popular in ballets as they constrained all movements of the head, arms, legs and face.