How Ballet Music Became Classical Music - Book Report/Review Example

Response Reading: Ballet Musical Style Within a musical context, there are numerous styles and techniques used by artists in expressing their ideas and skills. One of such styles is Ballet, which originated in France during the Renaissance period. Interestingly, Ballet comprise of 5 basic steps of leg movements. Based on my background knowledge and contents of the reading, I realized that Ballet is characterized by toe dancing. However, this is not a unique characteristic of Ballet because there are other Asian dance styles using the toe dancing technique.

After going through the reading, I acquired new concepts relating to Ballet that I did not know. Previously, I thought that Ballet is uniquely characterized by toe dancing. However, toe dancing was not incorporated into Ballet until the mid 17th Century. Real Ballet is characterized by the angular positioning of legs in reference to the floor. Ballet dancers must rotate one leg from the hip outward until both feet make an angle of 180o with the dance floor (Smith 23). This means that vertical resistance to force of gravity is the unique characteristic of Ballet as opposed to toe dancing.

In addition, new thoughts came to my mind regarding certain concepts of the reading. Historically, Ballet was developed in France during the 13th Century. However, this musical style was more adopted in Italy compared to France. In this case, I am intrigued by the transfer of Ballet from the founding culture to Italy. My though is that maybe France and Italy shared closely similar musical cultures during the Renaissance period when Ballet was introduced into the entertainment scene. This could explain why Ballet became more widely applicable in Italian courts compared to those in France at the time.

One concept that reinforced my personal experience is that fact that Ballet have gone through tremendous transformation to date. Actually, this style experienced neglect and almost became obsolete in France during the 19th Century. Luckily, Ballet was revived when new male dancers from Russia took to the stage. Since the revival, Ballet underwent substantial modifications in terms of theme and style. Unlike traditional Ballet, modern versions incorporate stylistic concepts of popular music like jazz and rock (Smith 28).

Work CitedSmith, Caddy. The Ballet Rousses and Beyond: Music and Dance in Belle-Époque Paris. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Print.