Romantic Genre of Ballet - Essay Example

The most popular ballerinas in those days include Maria Taglioni, Carlotta Grisi, and Fanny Cerrito. At first, the stories from Greek mythologies were used for the ballet but in the Romantic genre the subjects changed and they started dealing with the conflicts between reality and illusion, flesh and spirit, love stories. Thus, the breeze of the new era was blowing everywhere which touched the ballet also.

The growing importance of Female ballerinas:

Women dancers for the first time learned to dance on their toes. Pointe technique, which requires the performer to dance on the tips of her toes, was a hallmark of Romantic ballet, as was the layered gauze skirt known as the tutu. [2] Marie Taglioni, at first wore a filmy calf-length costume that later on became the standard for ballet costumes. One of the special characteristics of romantic ballet is that women achieved greater importance in the ballet, greater importance than even the men. The purpose of male dancers remained just for lifting the ballerinas i.e., female dancers to show how lightweight they are. The first Romantic Ballet was created by Italian choreographer Filippo Taglioni. Marie Taglioni, in the ballet “La Sylphide,” danced the part of the Sylphide, a supernatural figure who was loved and then destroyed by a mortal man. She was a sensational personality and she had the grace of, a perfect romantic dancer. In that period in French opera, ballet became an effective weapon for achieving grand success. The ballets such as La Sylphide (1832), Giselle (1841), and Coppélia (1870), had typical Romantic storylines. In the n romantic, era the ballets generally used to focus on otherworldly beings. The Australian dancer Fanny Elsser popularized an earthier character.

Gothic Style:

Some people think that romantic ballet used to be very light and soft. The style used for the romantic ballet would be a gothic touch of the substance of the romantic ballet style was derived from Gothic folklore, the remnant of old superstitions and corruptions of historical facts.” [3] Witches and vamps were used to show the symbolic negative shad of human nature. The spirits and supernatural figures also would pave the romantic ballet in this context Felicia Hardison Londre, Margot Berthold while informing about the existence of the spirits in the romantic ballet say, “The Nineteenth-century interest in spirits and supernatural elements was reflected also in the ballet and the opera.” [4]

Ballet out of Paris

Even though the ballet started declining in Paris in some perpetrated world they had been cherished. In Denmark Danish choreographer August Bournonville ascertained a training system and created a large body of works. He created his version of La Sylphide in 1836. Many of these ballets are performed even today by The Royal Danish Ballet and companies. Like Denmark, in Russia also the romantic genre of ballet was cherished particularly in the late 19thcentury. In those days the Russian Ballets were choreographed by the French choreographer Marius Petipa. He perfectly set full-length evening long story ballet combined with mimed sense. The milestone work in his career was two ballets, one is “Sleeping Beauty” (1890), and “Swan Lake.” Thus, the influence of the   romantic genre of ballet spread everywhere in the world and many ballets were created and carved their names in the history of Balle Citation.