Following the French fashion, theatres and opera houses sprang up across Europe during the s, positioning ballet dancers as part of a cosmopolitan community of performers, nobles and intellectuals.
By mid-century, several choreographers were developing ballet as a story-telling medium, with the familiar gods and heroes, but also nobles and princesses, peasants and romantic trysts.
Women contributed to this age of experimentation, although they remained in the minority. In an age when few women ventured into the public spotlight, danseuses were a fascinating and often highly regarded novelty. Poetry was written in their praise, gossip exchanged, and paintings commissioned by earnest admirers; Frederick the Great kept a portrait of Barbara Campanini in his study.
The French Revolution and the wars that followed profoundly altered ballet, sweeping away the lingering, courtly trappings of baroque dance. Dancers shed their heeled shoes and heavy brocades in favour of light, looser-fitting outfits that allowed them a wider range of movement.
The era became synonymous with dazzling feats. The introduction of soft slippers encouraged multiple pirouettes and higher leaps, and a new trick — posing en pointe — was pioneered by dancers like Fanny Bias and Amalia Brugnoli. While ballets based on mythological themes persisted, choreographers increasingly focused on character, realism and nationalist values.
New works, inspired by Romantic themes, transported audiences to the medieval past or exotic locales like China, Arabia or Mexico. Aided by innovative scenic effects, ballet by the s was an enchanting realm of Gothic ruins and distant lands, enticing an ever-growing audience. In , the Paris premiere of La Sylphide introduced a distinctive Romantic style of dancing: a theatrical vision in which femininity, landscape, folk elements and the supernatural fluidly combined.
The new style, popularised by Marie Taglioni as the eponymous sylph, was one of airy restraint and softened arms, and was marked by the use of pointe work as an artistic element, rather than a show of virtuosity. However, their appeal was equalled by an extraordinary vogue for national dances. The great Romantic ballerinas, including Fanny Elssler, Fanny Cerrito and Taglioni herself, danced a dazzling array of balleticised czardas, polkas, mazurkas and boleros.
The period remains synonymous with the poetry and fire of these intrepid female celebrities. By the s, ballet was flourishing around the globe as an essential ingredient of popular entertainment. In Britain alone, dozens of new venues for ballet opened across the country. Some staged divertissements, pantomimes or narrative ballets based on well-known works like La Sylphide and Paquita. Early classical ballets such as Giselle and La Sylphide were created during the Romantic Movement in the first half of the 19th century.
This movement influenced art, music and ballet. It was concerned with the supernatural world of spirits and magic and often showed women as passive and fragile. These themes are reflected in the ballets of the time and are called romantic ballets. This is also the period of time when dancing on the tips of the toes, known as pointe work , became the norm for the ballerina.
The romantic tutu, a calf-length, full skirt made of tulle, was introduced. The popularity of ballet soared in Russia, and, during the latter half of the 19th century, Russian choreographers and composers took it to new heights. The movements of the dancers were designed to express the story telling and characters. That is how ballet became an essential part of the opera dramatisation. It was included in operas as interludes called divertissements.
A big role in this development played French dancer and balletmaster Jean-Georges Noverre and composer Christoph Gluck. Dance, music and scenery were brought together to support the plot. Venice was also a centre of dance. Dancers travelled there for cultural exchange. In Hungary professional ballet troupes performed throughout the country.
In the 19th century, female ballet dancers were more popular. Ballerinas played male roles in the story. Viena became an important center for teaching ballet. Ballet moved away from the just aristocratic audience. Some famous ballerinas experimented with a new formal element of a ballet called pointe technique.
In that way, ballerina got the ideal stage figure. This became very important for the expansion of ballet, because as the popularity of ballet grew in the French Courts, it trickled out to the courts in Germany, Spain, Portugal, Poland, and many others. The first professional ballet companies and troupes began forming and touring Europe to perform ballets for royalty and aristocratic audiences. The history of ballet gets very interesting during the s due to significant change and growth from new ideas.
The focus became mostly on the ballerina, even having females portray male roles. As the 19th century was a period of significant social change, the themes of new ballets changed too, moving away from the royal and aristocratic and into romantic ballets.
Several ballerinas also began experimenting with dancing en pointe, bringing pointe shoes to ballet in the early s. This was significant because up until then, pointe shoes were seen as a type of ungraceful stunt.
This undoubtedly brought a new sense of allure and excitement to ballet, fostering admiration for the obvious difficulty of dancing on your toes. The pointe shoe would soon become an icon of both graceful movement and technical skill.
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