Ballet
The history of ballet is only a part of the history of dance, which spreads over the modern-era and refers mainly to European culture. Ballet originated in the Renaissance court as an outgrowth of court pageantry in Italy, where aristocratic weddings were lavish celebrations. Ballet was further shaped by the French ballet de court, which consisted of social dances performed by the nobility in tandem with music, speech, verse, song, pageant, decor and costume.
The first ballet performance is said to be a ballet comique (ballet drama) Ballet comique de la Reine produced for Catherine de’ Medici in 1581 by an Italian producer Baldassarino do Belgiojoso, who later on became Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx.
Domenico da Piacenza and his students - Antonio Cornazzano and Guglielmo Ebreo were the first dancing masters. Da Piacenza left one work: De arte saltandi et choreus ducendi (On the art of dancing and conducting dances), which was put together by his students.
Ballet developed as a separate, performance-focused art form in France during the reign of Louis XIV, who was passionate about dance and in 1661 established the Académie Royale de Danse.
Jean-Babtiste Lully, an Italian composer serving in the French court, and a French playwright Moliere, took an Italian theatre style, the commedia dell'arte, and adapted it into their work for a French audience, creating the comédie-ballet.
The first ballet school established in France, was taught by Juliette Blanche. Its terminology crystallised there.
The 18th century was a period of advance in the technical standards of ballet and the period when ballet became a serious dramatic art form on par with the opera. Central to this advance was the seminal work of Jean-Georges Noverre Lettres sur la danse et les ballets, which focused on developing the ballet d’action, in which the movements of the dancers are designed to express character and assist in the narrative.
In 1832 a choreographer Filippo Taglioni composed a romantic ballet La Sylphide. Ballerinas started playing main roles. Maria Taglioni, Carlotta Grisi i Fanny Elssler were best ballerinas of those times.
In the second half of the 19th century Moscow became the capital of world ballet. Marius Petipa, who worked there as a choreographer was one of the well known masters of those times. He originated ballet-divetissement – classic ballets like Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty by P.I. Tchaikovsky. At the beginning of the 20th century Isadora Duncan stood against the rut in ballet. Mikhail Fokin reformed ballet. Among masters of those times were Anna Pavlova, Vazlav Nizhynsky, Mathilde Kzhesinska, Tamara Karsavina. In the second half of the 20th century M. Béjart and R. Petit influenced further development of modern ballet.
Modern Ballet
Pina Bauch – was a German modern dance choreographer and had a leading influence in the development of the Tanztheater style of dance.
She began dancing from a young age. In 1955 she entered the Folkwang Academy in Essen, then directed by Germany's most influential choreographer Kurt Jooss, one of the founders of German Expressionist Dance.
After graduation, she won a scholarship to continue her studies at the Juilliard School in New York City in 1960, where Anthony Tudor, José Límón and Paul Taylor were her teachers. In New York she performed with the Paul Sanasardo and Donya Feuer Dance Company, the New American Ballet and became a member of the Metropolitan Opera Ballet Company.
In 1962, Bausch joined Jooss' new Folkwang Ballet Company as a soloist and assisted Jooss on many of the pieces, before choreographing her first piece in 1968, and in 1969 succeeded Jooss as an artistic director. In 1972, Bausch started as an artistic director of the then Wuppertal Opera Ballet, which was later renamed as the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch. The company has a large repertoire of original pieces, and regularly goes on world tours.
Male-female interaction is a theme found throughout her work, which has been an inspiration for and reached a wider audience through – the movie Talk to Her, directed by Pedro Almodóvar. Her pieces consist of short parts of dialogue and action, often of a surreal nature, where repetition plays an important role. Her large multi-media productions often involve elaborate sets and eclectic music. In Masurca Fogo half of the stage is taken up by a giant, rocky hill, and the score includes everything from Portuguese music to K.D. Lang.
In 1983, she played La Principessa Lherimia in Federico Fellini’s film And the Ship Sails On.
She was married to Dutch-born set designer, Rolf Borzik (1944-1980). He had a significant influence on her theatre’s style and had been a great supporter of Pina’s early work, before the theatre had received recognition.
She was awarded the UK's Laurence Olivier Award, Japan's Kyoto Prize, and the Goethe Prize in 2008.
She worked with Wim Wenders on a 3D film, which was scheduled to start shooting this September. She died of cancer in June…
