Hundreds of years ago, everyday people danced to enjoy themselves when they gathered, whether it was at the cross-roads between villages or in the village green. It was a time when people lived more rurally, and so when they got together, it was usually on the one day off a week they had, so it was a joyous time. Additionally, important occasions or seasonal events were noted with dance by many cultures, such as weddings, births, funerals, harvest season, etc.
In the 1500’s in the royal courts of Italy and France, these folk dances became more formalized into court dances, where only the royalty participated. With the intermarrying between French and Italian royalty, the Italian Catherine de Medici introduced Italian masque dances to the French royal courts in 1581, where upon France became the center of dancing in Europe. During the reign of the French king Louis XIV, dance was brought to such a high level that for the first time it became an art form for the stage, a performance to be enjoyed by a viewing audience. Eventually the art form of ballet required more and more physical training, and Louis XIV founded the Royal Academy of Dance in 1669. Soon these ballets were so demanding and the training required so rigorous, they could no longer be performed by royalty, and were performed only by professionals in royal theater settings as part of plays or operas.
As they refined the dancing, it developed into the early discipline of ballet and later spread back to Italy, and to other European countries such as Denmark, and eventually to Czarist Russia. With its origins so long ago in the French courts, the ballet terminology was French, and to this day it remains French. Because Louis XIV was quite a dancer, many of those early dances showed great attention to the dancing of men, and on their ability for jumps and swift footwork in those jumps.
Music was always played by live musicians. Early characters in the dancing included princes and princesses, gods, fairies and angels, in what they called Romantic themes. The kings and queens of the day became patrons of the arts, providing the large amount of money to create these new ballets, with extravagant costumes, headpieces, sets, new scores, live music, lighting and dancers. In the late 1600’s and 1700’s the true professional dancer came into his or her own, and ballet productions grew from short pieces to full-length ballets that told an entire story. In the 1700’s, as dance became more for ordinary citizens rather than limited to just the royalty, the entertainment quality became important, and the themes shifted from the aristocratic to the everyday. To achieve the sense of floating, women danced on their toes, which led to the development of pointe shoes, so the dancers appeared to be suspended above the floor and free from earth. Some dancers became real stars. Dancers toured all around Europe, the audiences grew enormously, and dance schools spread everywhere.
After the repression of the French revolution and the rule of Napoleon, dance entered the Romantic Period, where purity, magic, love, heroism, sacrifice, otherworldliness were exalted. It was during this time that ballet tended to focus more on the dancing of the women. One of the most famous ballets of the romantic period is Giselle.
Eventually the development of ballet reached what was called the Classical Period in the mid 1800’s, where women wore tutus and pointe shoes and men were there to lift them and make them look pretty. Still there was often a scene in those ballets where the early inspirations for ballet, the folk dances, were danced simply and joyously by dancers playing villagers. There was also usually a group of dancers who danced as the background to the scene or as a “frame” to the leading dancers. That group is called the “corps de ballet”, and they also perform the dances in groups. Famous ballets from this period include Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, and Don Quixote.
In the 1900’s, as the world became a smaller place, dance developed in many new directions, into tap, jazz, modern and contemporary ballet. Influences on these evolving dance forms included traditional dance styles not just from Europe but also Africa and Asia. One of the most recently created new dance forms is hip-hop, which is how most young people today in this country first get to know dance. Please understand, this introduction to dance you are reading has focused soley on dance in Western Europe. There are long traditions of dance and its evolution in Africa, in Asia, the Pacific Islands, and even in Native American societies that predate those in Europe and evolved in a completely different way, but nonetheless enriched the world of dance as we know it today.
What Festival Ballet Providence presents to audiences in theaters is for entertainment, and done at a professional level; people pay to attend and expect to see a high level of ability. The professional dancers at Festival Ballet Providence have trained for years, are in top physical condition. In addition to being athletes they are most certainly artists. Sometimes the dances (or ballets) performed are from the older period called classical or romantic period of ballet, and sometimes they are much more modern, contemporary and up to date. Sometimes they tell a story and sometimes they express a feeling, or even might be just a dance for the beauty of the movement itself. Sometimes dances can be political, emotional, make one cry or make one laugh aloud. Hopefully the performances make you think about something beyond your normal daily life experience. Even though some are very old, they have lasted a long time because they are especially beautiful, dramatic or comical and so audiences can still enjoy them. Since Festival Ballet Providence’s theater audiences pay to see the performances, we feel we should deliver performances that are professional quality. Similarly, other professionals, from dancers on MTV to Broadway dancers to tap dancers and dancers in shows in Las Vegas, work to give you the best performances they can. Many start dancing as young children, but if there is the drive and determination and passion to become a professional dancer, it can be achieved at most any age.
Outside the theater, anyone can dance for any reason, from just having fun, to dancing at a party, to tell a story, or to express the way you feel sometimes. For equipment, all you really need is your body! Some people may take dance lessons, maybe someday to be a professional dancer, or maybe just to have fun learning something different from school studies. Basically, dance is movement, to a specific rhythm, in space. It can tell a story, relate a feeling, or just be pure movement without reason. To make it interesting, it’s usually nice to have some variety, such as fast or slow sections, sections that use lots of space or very little space, movements that are high, some that are low to the ground, some that are linear, some that curve and circle, etc. Some parts can repeat. Sometimes bodies can be stiff, sometimes very fluid. Sometimes only moving arms, or only moving legs or only the head. If appropriate it can even have sounds or speaking! Or even singing! Dance can relate to the other arts as well. Costumes, sets or simple accessories can be made to make the dance richer, but they are not necessary.
