History of Dance

History of Dance

Period Dress, Costume, and Adornment

Dress for the street was very different from the ballroom, for both men and women.

Taglioni's white muslin dress from La Syliphide designed by Eugene Lami, became the 19th century romantic ballet costume. Fashionable of the period demanded dresses made in this ethereal-looking style and adorned with ribbons















Taglioni

Romantic Ballet-Why it was loved?

In the 19th Century, as more people became employed in factories and the industrial age expanded, the romantic ballet offered a brief interlude of fantasy. It transported audiences to a time in the distant past or to a faraway land, a fantastic place under the sea, a haunted forest-some where away from the realities of war, economic upheavals and the drudgery of life.

Classic Ballet-Why did it change after being so popular?

Classic music, art, and ballet have much in common and yet many differences. What makes each art form classic? In the second half of 19th Century, visual arts styles went through romnticism, realism, impressionism, symbolism, and post impressionism movements. Music for most of the 19th Century, however, remained in a romantic period from the late works of Ludwig vab Beethoven to the impressionist composers such as Claude Dubussy and Maurice Ravel. For ballet the last quarter of the 19th century became the classical era in Russia: Swan Lake is te prototype of a classic ballet.
Marius Petipa took elements from a romanticism and expanded and wove them into fantasy plot lines, point work, and partnering. His legacy of ballets has survived and been reconstructed, re staged, and re envisioned by great ballet companies and artists through out the world.
Importing European stars of technical prowess and commissioning music to match his choreography. Petipa sculpted ballet into a classic form. His resources were prodigious, with highly trained dancers and the finest sector, costumes, and music at his command. His works were performed in one of the worlds greatest theatres and the production expenses were underwritten by the czar.
Ballets expanded in extravagance to become entire evening of entertainments. They featured dazzling ballet technique and national dancers interwoven into a dramatic story told through stylises mime scenes, all supported by beautiful music, expensive costumes and elaborate scenery.

History of Ballet Dance

History of Ballet

1924:



The Dancing Times was still being edited by JS Richardson. The content is Very much about dance rather than ballet and many of the covers feature pictures from musical reviews or exotic dancers from overseas.


The dance was not an invidually recognised and popular style at this time, so they had to hype the coverd of music reviews by using exotic dancers from overseas to hope the attraction would be for the beautiful dancers and not the dance alone.

1928:

Queen Mary agreed to become the patroness of the Association of Operatic Dancing of Great Britain, which was founded by and had as its President Mme Adeline Geneée. This was seen as a significant move towards the establishment of a State ballet school.

Without the recognishion of Queen Mary operatic/ballet dancing may not have been such a popular style of performance.


1934:
An amazing year for British ballet with a home-grown company performing the first full length versions of Giselle, Nutcracker and Swan Lake.

20 years later the critic Richard Buckle wrote "No one can dance Giselle like Markova, and no one should try to. Hers is a personal and extraordinary interpretation which defies analysis and which it would be fatal to copy. She breaks every rule and gives one of the great performances of our day".

This says to me that this was a turning point to future ballet dancers, that times were changing and so should the standard of their dance.

The Vic-Wells unveiled their Giselle on 1st January 1934. 30th January, Casse-Noisette (Nutcracker), their largest production to date, was also led out by Markova and Stanley Judson, a former member of the Pavlova company.

1942:
Nearly all the male dancers were conscripted and off to war. Later it dawned on the government that ballet and dance could actually help the war effort best by properly entertaining troops and civilians and some more 'manpower' was found. Rapidly all the Sadler's Wells Ballet males went and only Robert Helpmann, of the originals, was left. Luckily he was exempted. Robert Helpmann produced 3 ballets for Sadler's Wells Ballet. Admirable considering he had never choreographed a thing for them previously-alongside dancing too.

Robert Helpmann's Hamlet was premiered on the 19th with designs by Leslie Hurry (and whose later designs for the Royal Ballet Swan Lake will be remembered by many)

1946:
On the 20th February there was a gala reopening of the Opera House with the King, Queen, both Princesses, Prime Minister (Attlee) and many other VIPs.

It was a new production of Sleeping Beauty with Fonteyn dancing Aurora. According to the Dancing Times “It was a great occasion and it marked the first appearance of a British company in ballet on a grand scale”.

1 Jul - 3 Aug: Ballet Rambert's first season at Sadler's Wells. Includes the first performance of a full length Giselle - based on Sergeyev/Maryinsky version but including Romantic Ballet details courtesy of Cyril Beaumont (president)
Richard Buckle claimed in the Observer (August 1953) that the production “proves Madame Rambert to have a deeper understanding of this masterpiece of Romantic Ballet than anyone else alive.”

1949:
The post-war ballet boom had reached its peak and was about to start declining - but at the start of the year ballet was still sufficiently popular for programmes to be presented in huge arenas and temporary theatres.

The event of this year was the Sadler's Wells Ballet's first visit to the USA. They opened in New York on October 9th with Sleeping Beauty and had a success which has passed into history.

Margot Fonteynhad a personal triumph in the States and moved from being the UK's favourite ballerina to being a world star.

"To watch the coordination of her head, arms and torso is to learn a lesson about the nature of art. The inclination of her neck and the exact curving of her arms from shoulder to finger-tips are Raphaelesque, (I am reminded that Leonardo wrote in his Notebooks 'it is the extremities that lend grace to the body')".{Richard Buckle}

The art of ballet was really get recognised and becoming bigger and bigger each year even with threats from war.

SDP Week 1

Workshop 1

Waistband;
Basque;
Knickers.

We constructed the waistband as a group, i found it quite simple to follow the hand out notes once. We made the mistake of envelope stitching the grois grain petersham (behind the elastic) to the petersham not the elastic, there was no way of fixing our mistake so we all re-did the waistbands. I realised how fixing the peterham onto the elastic was to secure the elastic in the waistband, without the envelope stitch joining them it would be so easy to rip out whilst the dancers were dancing.
This gave me a further understanding in constructing garments for dance productions, it will also help me in costume construction in a whole as i will think more deeper into how my construction will benefit/constrict the movement of the actress/dancer.

Basque:
Basque was very straight forward, the only part that took a little time to get my head around was that one CB end was turned in and one CB turned out. When i related it to the waistband hand out it was easier as they where both going to be joined they had to match.



I didn't realise that ballet costumes had all the seams on the outside, i have learnt that it will benefit the dancer as it will not chafe and irritate the dancer. There wouldn't be any lining as that would bulk the costume out, and it wouldn't be a "second skin" if there was lining and extra bulk. So it defiantly is the best option.


Knickers:
Working with the soft net material made me a little nervous as i had worked with slippery fabric in a previous unit (RRR.) I found it ok, i took it slow and made sure i took all the precautions i could think of taking.

When i was making up my knickers i went ahead without reading my notes and made a mistake, i did a french seam on CF and CB. The CB was not needed because i wouldn't be able to attach my net to the knickers without a lot of problems later on when I'm going to have a lot more fabric to be dealing with, it resulted in me having to start again which i believe is certainly the best decision for the long run in the tutu construction.

Notes:

Refer back to my notes more, dont carry on without checking step by step

Be more confident in my own judgement. Make decisions on what i think is right, not what others may be doing.

Keep at a steady pase, done rush

Blog Include

For SDP you must include the following tags:

Planning – establishing ideas and how it fulfils aspirations
Evaluation and Reflection – final evaluation, reflections on tutorial feedback and a midway reflection point.

Your blog could also include tags for the following (depending on the type of project you’ve taken on):

Research Ideas
Development Ideas
Experiments
Fittings
Production meetings
Tutorial Reflections