Whence
Ballet
Music & dance

Where does Ballet come from?

Ballet comes from the Renaissance courts of northern Italy. In the 1400s, dancing masters there created dances for the lavish weddings of noble families, and the art then moved to France, which gave it the French vocabulary dancers still use.

Dancing masters of Italian courts

Ballet grew out of court pageantry in Renaissance Italy, where aristocratic weddings were lavish celebrations, and its steps were adapted from court dances. Domenico da Piacenza, born around 1400, is the first known dancing master to have left dance instructions; he worked at the court of Ferrara and composed dances for noble weddings in 1455. Early ballet had no tutus, ballet slippers or pointe work. Women danced in gowns reaching the ankle, and the audience joined the dance towards the end.

From Catherine's France to Louis XIV

Catherine de' Medici, an Italian aristocrat who married the future Henry II of France, brought her enthusiasm for dance to the French court and paid for its entertainments. Courtiers danced in these court ballets, which mixed dance with verse, song, music and scenery. Louis XIV, who often danced in them himself, founded the Académie Royale de Danse in 1661, and in 1669 the opera academy that became the Paris Opéra. The Opéra's dancers were professionals from the start.

Why people say France or Russia

Ballet's steps have French names because the technique was codified and taught in Paris: Louis XIV's dancing master Pierre Beauchamp is credited with the five basic positions of the feet. Yet the word is Italian underneath. French ballet comes from balletto, a diminutive of ballo, 'a dance'. Russia's fame came later. Its Imperial Ballet, founded in the 1740s, flourished after about 1850, and there Marius Petipa created The Sleeping Beauty (1890) to Tchaikovsky's music.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org › History of ballet ↗ · en.wikipedia.org › Domenico da Piacenza ↗ · britannica.com ↗ · etymonline.com ↗

More Music & dance

Pipe organ
Music & dance

Pipe organ

📍 Alexandria, Egypt

The pipe organ began in Alexandria in the 3rd century BC, when the Greek engineer Ctesibius built the hydraulis, a 'water organ' that used water pressure to push air through its pipes. It was the world's first keyboard instrument.

Hip hop (music)
Music & dance

Hip hop (music)

📍 The Bronx, New York City, USA

Hip hop grew up in the 1970s, and its best-known birthday is 11 August 1973: a back-to-school party in a Bronx apartment block, where Jamaican-born DJ Kool Herc played two copies of the same record on two turntables to stretch out the drum break the dancers loved.

Tango
Music & dance

Tango

📍 Río de la Plata (Buenos Aires & Montevideo)

Tango was born in the 1880s in the port cities of Buenos Aires and Montevideo on the Río de la Plata. In the early 1900s it was often danced by two men, because there were more men than women on the dance floor.

More from Europe

Gummy bears
Food

Gummy bears

📍 Bonn, Germany

Gummy bears were first made in Bonn in 1922 by the confectioner Hans Riegel, who shaped his fruit gums like the 'dancing bears' then seen at German fairs. They only caught on in the USA in the 1980s.

Cassette tape (Compact Cassette)
Invention

Cassette tape (Compact Cassette)

📍 Hasselt, Belgium

The audio cassette was designed at Philips' factory in Hasselt, Belgium, by Lou Ottens's team; he sized it with a wooden block that fitted his jacket pocket. Unveiled in Berlin in 1963, it was licensed to other makers for free.

Robot (the word)
Word

Robot (the word)

📍 Prague, Czechia

'Robot' comes from Czech robota, 'forced labour'. It first appeared in Karel Čapek's play R.U.R., published in Prague in 1920, and Čapek credited his brother Josef with inventing the word.