Ballet For Dummies

Scott Speck, Evelyn Cisneros

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781119643180
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Dance
• Edition: 1

Whether you want to participate in ballet or just watch it, the ballet experience can excite and inspire you. Ballet is among the most beautiful forms of expression ever devised: an exquisite mix of sight and sound, stunning, aesthetics, and awesome technique.

Ballet For Dummies is for anyone who wants to enjoy all that the dance forms offers – as an onlooker who wants to get a leg up on the forms you're likely to see or as an exercise enthusiast who understands that the practice of ballet can help you gain:

• More strength
• Greater flexibility
• Better body alignment
• Confidence in movement
• Comfort through stress reduction
• Infinite grace – for life

From covering the basics of classical ballet to sharing safe and sensible ways to try your hand (and toes) at moving through the actual dance steps, this expert reference shows you how to:

• Build your appreciation for ballet from the ground up.
• Choose the best practice space and equipment.
• Warm up to your leap into the movements.
• Locate musical options for each exercise.
• Look for certain lifts in a stage performance.
• Tell a story with gestures.
• Picture a day in the life of a professional ballet dancer.
• Identify best-loved classic and contemporary ballets.
• Speak the language of ballet.

Today you can find a ballet company in almost every major city on earth. Many companies have their own ballet schools – some for training future professionals, and others for interested amateurs. As you fine-tune your classical ballet technique – or even if you just like to read about it – you'll become better equipped to fully appreciate the great choreography and many styles of the dance. Ballet For Dummies raises the curtain on a world of beauty, grace, poise, and possibility!

P.S. If you think this book seems familiar, you're probably right. The Dummies team updated the cover and design to give the book a fresh feel, but the content is the same as the previous release of Ballet For Dummies (9780764525681).

Part 1

Ballet Dancing from the Top

IN THIS PART …

You’ve seen ballet before. You’ve marveled at its beauty and grace. You’ve wondered what on earth was going on. Now you’re about to watch it through different eyes — and maybe even prepare to do it yourself.

In this part, we ease you into this strange art form. We show you what ballet is, and even give you a little history. We tell you what you need to look good — both in the studio and onstage. And we tell you about music, ballet’s great inspiration.

This is the part where you don’t even have to sweat. (Well, except for the part about abs.) No nitty. No gritty. Just fun.

Chapter 1

Curtain Up! Welcome to the Ballet

IN THIS CHAPTER

Ballet beginnings

What you need to get started

Dancing like a pro — for fun and enjoyment

Welcome to world of ballet — a universe of beauty and grace, aerial pyrotechnics, heroes, villains, and a fairy or two. Where the sound of tapping toes melds with the luscious strains of a full orchestra. Where true love always triumphs, evil is destroyed, and everybody has great legs.

This is the world of ballet. And by the way — don’t be put off by the fact that all the guys are wearing tights. It’s art, man, art!

Ballet for Life

Whether you want to participate in ballet or just watch it, the ballet experience can excite and inspire you. Ballet is one of the most beautiful forms of expression ever devised: an exquisite mix of sight and sound, stunning aesthetics, and awesome technique.

Though the professional ballet world may or may not be for you, the practice of ballet certainly can be. Ballet can give you more strength and flexibility, better alignment, and infinite grace — for life. It can counteract the aging effects of gravity, reduce stress, and prevent injury. And until you’ve tried moving your body to some of the most beautiful music ever written, you’ve missed one of the greatest joys life has to offer.

Imagine waking up after 100 years of sleep, released from a curse, and finding your true love. You may feel inspired to attempt such superhuman feats as the one depicted in Figure 1-1 (after a good stretch, of course). In fact, you may even be exuberant enough to do it three times, like Princess Aurora and Prince Desiré in Sleeping Beauty. That’s what we love most about ballet — above all, it can bring ecstasy into your life.

© Marty Sohl

FIGURE 1-1: The exuberance of ballet: Evelyn Cisneros and Anthony Randazzo in Sleeping Beauty.

In the Beginning …

The ballet moves in this book have a long tradition — longer than most things on earth. In ballet, an understanding of that tradition is extremely important. In this section, we acquaint you with the winding road that led to the beautiful art form you can experience today.

Just like music, dance has existed since prehistoric times. Rhythmic chanting — usually meant to appease the gods or to while away the time between woolly mammoth sightings — soon became accompanied by body movement. After all, what’s more natural than swaying to the beat?

Some of the earliest organized dances took place in ancient Greek dramas, which sometimes incorporated a dancing chorus. Even then, it paid to know how to move your feet. The tradition made its way to Italy, where theatrical dancing became enhanced by manual gestures, or mime. (You can read more about mime in Chapter 16.) This tradition was kept alive for centuries by minstrels who sang, tumbled, juggled, and reveled their way through the Dark Ages.

Court dancing for fun and profit

It was during the High Renaissance in northern Italy that court ballroom dancing was born. (The words “ballet” and “ball” are both derived from the Italian word ballare, meaning “to dance”.) Performed by the nobility, court dances became all the rage. They spread to France — where they reached their height at the court of King Louis XIV.

King Louis, the Sun King (or “Twinkle Toes,” as he was almost certainly not known), was an accomplished dancer himself, as you can see in Figure 1-2. He established the first official school of ballet, known today as the Paris Opera Ballet. That’s why, to this day, all ballet vocabulary is in French.

FIGURE 1-2: King Louis XIV, the Sun King, in a ballet pose of his time.

Whereas the first performers were kings, noblemen, and other slackers dancing for their own enjoyment, ballet eventually became much more structured and elaborate, demanding strong legs, great balance, and increasingly virtuosic technique. Professional ballet was born.

If you were to suddenly wake up at a dance performance in the year 1680, two things would strike you: The dancers, as they accidentally slammed into your suddenly materialized body, and the fact that everyone onstage was a guy. Ballet was for athletes; it was unbecoming (so people thought) for women to participate in such bold and daring moves.

The first women didn’t appear professionally until 1681 — and when they did, they wore big hoop skirts, high heels, and wigs. Eventually, someone got the idea that a ballerina could be much more effective with her legs visible. So beginning in the early 1700s, women began dancing in shorter and shorter skirts, and without hoops, heels, or wigs.

The Paris Opera and pointe work

The more of their bodies they revealed, the more popular ballerinas became. But in order to truly win the favor of the audience, one more element was needed. Something so strange, so masochistic, that you would never believe it in a million years. We’re talking, of course, of dancing on the tips of their toes — en pointe.

The thought behind this bizarre concept was this: If a woman could point her feet unnaturally down at a 90-degree angle and stand really high off the ground, balancing on the very tips of two or three toes, she would appear to be floating.

And that was a good thing — this was the Romantic era, and most ballets of the time involved spirits, fairies, and supernatural creatures, like women whose day job involved being dead. Floating above the surface of the stage just seemed the right thing to do.

This feat of the feet was possible with the help of special shoes, known today as pointe shoes. And the first ballerina who pulled if off was Marie Taglioni (see Figure 1-3) — daughter of a famous choreographer at the Paris Opera.

Dancing en pointe did the trick — thereafter, women not only became the equals of the men onstage, but actually dominated ballet for well over a century.

FIGURE 1-3: Marie Taglioni, the first ballerina to dance en pointe.

As time passed, pointe shoes became stronger and more supportive, allowing ballerinas to stay up longer and dance more complicated steps. Today pointe work is a substantial area of any balle...