Academic literature on the topic 'Ballet dancing in art'

The spaces in which amateur and professional dancers practiced their art greatly changed during the Covid-19 pandemic due to the closures of theaters and dance studios, yet dance continued to bring people together online. This article studies the media presence of the Paris Opera Ballet (POB) between March 2020 and May 2021 to analyze how the aesthetic and moral concept of grace has evolved. During this difficult year, dance took on a therapeutic role as POB dancers offered free online classes and performed in video work, in addition to taking on a political role as discussions about racism in ballet sparked public debates.

Russian émigré Alexey Brodovitch, best known for leading a radical shift in magazine design in the United States during his twenty-four-year tenure (1934–58) as art director of Harper’s Bazaar, also pursued innovative practices in other fields of art, design, and education. His ballet photography, made during rehearsals and performances of touring dance companies in New York City from 1935 to 1938, explored unusual methods of capturing dancers in motion. Brodovitch’s images would eventually come to be celebrated for their unconventional approach, but at the time, Brodovitch was not sure of his direction. Recent archival discoveries suggest that Brodovitch reframed this graphic “problem” into curriculum for his classes at the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art, inspiring students to delve into a number of experimental photographic techniques and pioneering the teaching of such practices in American classrooms.

Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes came to an end with his death in 1929, but it has since been an endless source of fascination and inspiration for dancers, dance historians and fans. It would seem that every aspect of the Ballets Russes has been exhaustively explored and documented – from the art, the music and the choreography, to the personalities who created them. The names of Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina and Vaslav Nijinsky are legendary, and many others (Michel Fokine, George Balanchine, Ninette De Valois, Marie Rambert) went on to influence and define the art of ballet for much of the 20th century. But what of the hundreds of dancers who actually gave life and form to the Ballets Russes? Who were they? Where did they come from? How long did they spend with the company? The following listing of more than 400 performers is a comprehensive record of the dancing artists who performed with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.

The Ballerina Tamara Karsavina’s career as a writer deserves attention and warrants a further assessment of her legacy. She left an impressive body of writing that documents her history and describes ballet’s specific and complex vocabulary of movement. I focus on Karsavina’s writing about ballet technique so as to shed light on her teaching approach and dance values through a contrast with those of her near contemporary in the Imperial Ballet School and Company, the famed pedagogue Agrippina Vaganova. Particular emphasis is given to Vaganova’s Basic Principles of Classical Ballet, Russian Ballet Technique and to Karsavina’s extensive writings in The Dancing Times.

Some descriptions of ballets performed at the late Valois court in France draw upon accounts of choreographic and equestrian maze-like performances extending back into early antiquity. Common elements include a convoluted complexity in the dancers’ movements, repeated reversals, and a series of patterns variously reformed after regular interruptions. The practice of medieval dances at Easter upon the labyrinth designs of one or more French cathedrals may also have exercised an influence on Renaissance dancing. A sonnet by Ronsard describing a labyrinthine ballet invites at least two metaphysical interpretations. Neoplatonic theories of magic are apparently reflected in the choreography by Balthazar de Beaujoyeulx for his Balet Comique de la Royne. Labyrinth dances in Ben Jonson's masques are associated with Orphic cosmogony. The description of an angelic labyrinth dance in Milton's Paradise Lost leads to historical and theoretical questions concerning the intermittent persistence of the phenomenon.“Here's a maze trod indeed Through forth-rights and meanders!“— The Tempest

ABSTRACTIn 1913, at the Théâtre des Arts in Paris, a controversial but highly successful ballet choreographed a circus-style pantomime to the music of Fauré's Dolly Suite. With its apparently incongruent relation of dance to music, the ballet displayed, as one reviewer put it, ‘criticisms in action’. This article investigates how we might conceive the production as an act of musical and cultural criticism, by examining its close relation with contexts such as early comic film, music-hall entertainment, the children's literature market, medical and anthropological theories, and surrealist thought. The ballet implicitly challenged conventional interpretations of Fauré's music as reflecting a particular perception of childhood – one which was rather too close to the sentimental attitudes vehemently dismissed in contemporaneous literature. The production was an important manifestation of an emergent understanding of the ‘childlike’ in early twentieth-century French culture – as a condition enlightened by irrationality, with important physiological traits.

Abstract Relatively early in the composition of Les Troyens Berlioz declared his intention to include a "pas d'alméées with the music and dancing exactly like the Bayadèères' ballet which I saw here sixteen or seventeen years ago." Despite Berlioz's claim that he had "gone into it" and "there is no anachronism," historical evidence would suggest that the presence of Indian dancing girls in Dido's Carthage is actually highly inauthentic and anachronistic. Indeed, Berlioz's immediate inspiration for the ballet in question was not ancient history but, rather, a group of Indian dancers and musicians who had visited Paris in 1838. An investigation of the context of the bayadèères' performances and the reception of the dancers and their music reveals that issues of authenticity and anachronism were a constant preoccupation for their French audiences, most of whom had previously encountered bayadèères only through the exoticizing lens of Western representations. Berlioz's own references to the bayadèères are examined in relation to contemporary reviews and the text of a highly self-reflexive play that was performed as a prologue and that shaped audiences' responses to the bayadèères' performances at the Thééââtre des Variéétéés in Paris. Although Berlioz is generally thought to have abandoned his intention to embody the 1838 bayadèères in Les Troyens, I argue that he actually retained aspects of his original Indian inspiration in the act IV ballet; moreover, an awareness of the impact of the bayadèères' performances on Berlioz and his contemporaries greatly informs our appreciation of the contribution of the act IV ballet to the wider imperial subtext of Les Troyens. If, rather than simply dismissing anachronism, we are willing to embrace it as a concept fundamental to Berlioz's opera, the act IV ballet——often cut in recent productions——can be newly appreciated as occupying a significant role in the historical dialectic of Les Troyens as a whole.

Background. The rapid development of contemporary art has intensified the scientific thought in relation to the theory and history of dancing art. Domestic art criticism pays much attention to the problems of dancing functioning in contemporary culture; periodicals publish theoretical and methodological works, general critical reviews of ballet performances. In historical plane, the majority of publications contain information about outstanding artists – performers and choreographers of various times and stylistic trends. However, the evolution of a dance as a socio-cultural and artistic phenomenon, the specifics of its functioning in different epochs and in different regions to a great extent remains unknown. Objectives. The purpose of this study is to identify the peculiarities of dancing art development in the ancient world, its functions and the influence of dancing on the development of “mousikē” creativity of the Antiquity. Methods. The research uses the following methods: the analytical method, which directed on consideration of individual elements of “mousikē” art, expressive means of dancing and its interaction with all parts of artistic-syncretic action, characteristic features of ancient art; the method of classification applied for definition of functions of a dance in the syncretic art of the ancient world; the method of generalization consumed to analyze the facts collected and the logical transition from a singular to general judgment, knowledge, and evaluation. Results. Art as a socio-cultural phenomenon in various cultural-historical periods reflects the specifics of the spiritual sphere of social life. In this regard, the art of the ancient world can be a vivid example. Unlike other types of art, ancient dancing did not leave behind so many artifacts as the classic examples of ancient art – monuments of sculpture, architecture and literature did. Even when methods of fixing language and music were found, dancing as a language of movements remained within the “oral tradition” for quite a long time. It is proved that the art of the ancient world was artistically syncretic. It is a well-known fact that music and dancing are based on rhythm. Rhythm contributed to the interconnection of “mousikē” arts, it was a core that combined words, singing, music, dancing and dramatic action. The implementation of monotonous movements in a single rhythm contributed to uniting the community together to achieve a collective goal. The great social significance of dancing is also confirmed by the fact that almost all-important events in the life of an ancient man were accompanied by dancing: birth and death, war, hunting, etc. In his treatises, the great philosopher, Plato, prescribed all the sacred songs and dances that, in his opinion, were the means of real implementation of the law, that is, they had a specific social function. For a long time dancing was an indispensable component and obligatory attribute of ceremonial and religious rituals. Such celebrations were characterized by magical significance, which in turn formed a magical function of dancing. Also, ancient philosophers had a special attitude to “mousikē” forms of creativity as a means of education. Confucian doctrine put forward the issue of moral and ethical perfection of the individual, whose one of the effective means was considered “mousikē” creativity. Confucius developed the forms of “mousikē” influence not only theoretically, but also applied them in practice. The greatest justification and great importance of the educational function of dancing as an integral element of “mousikē” art was in ancient Greece. Since the VIIth century B. C. the upbringing by the way of “mousikē” art was widely cultivated in Sparta. It is known that the Spartans provided “mousikē” creativity a great state and educational value. Teaching the skills of “mousikē” creativity was part of the general youth education system. In addition, in ancient culture, dancing was an integral part of tragedy and comedy, the then contemporary genres of theatrical art, and had an entertaining aesthetic function. Conclusions. Based on the foregoing, one can conclude that dancing was of great importance in the art of the ancient world. Dances were the object of discussions of writers, philosophers and religious leaders of that time; the rhetoric of that period about the art of dancing were either of ethical-applied or theoretical character and often used dance images as metaphors. The source of dancing art development were ritual dances of magical character, which eventually turned into an important part of artistic and syncretic creativity of the “mousikē” art of Antiquity. Dancing as a reflection of an emotional state of the ancient man through rhythmic moves traditionally got special magic meaning, it was a mandatory attribute of ceremonial and religious rituals. By dancing marked all the significant events in the life of an individual and society of the ancient time. Dancing in the ancient world was an integral part of the spatial-temporal action, but it had a variety of functions. Great social significance of dancing is confirmed by the fact that the teaching the skills of “mousikē” creativity was part of the general education system of the youth of Greece, Sparta and China. In ancient culture, dancing was an integral part of the then genres of theatrical art – tragedy and comedy, had an entertaining aesthetic function. The professionalization of music and dancing art led to the emergence of dancing genres that were theatrical and stage-oriented; as a result, the aesthetic function of dancing in the art of the ancient world was reinforcing gradually. Thus, the dancing had various aspects of functioning in “mousikē” forms of creativity in the ancient world from ritual and magic to aesthetically entertaining ones.

"The reign of Louis XIV marks an important milestone in the development of dance and art. Convinced that visual arts and music would significantly contribute to a monarch’s authority, image, and glory, the “Sun King” coordinated artistic activities through establishing a significant number of royal academies. Through the Académie Royale de Danse the art of dancing was given a proper language and notation system for the first time in history. On the other hand, the Académie Royale de Musique was tied to the birth of a national operatic style. Opera was the perfect tool for an idealistic and majestic projection of a nation’s monarch. Keywords: baroque dance, Louis XIV, dance notation systems, ballet de cour, royal academies, Jean-Baptiste Lully, music, opera. "