BALLET, a performance in which dancing, music and pan tomime are involved. The present acceptation of the word ballet is a theatrical representation in which a story is told only by gesture, accompanied by music.
This variety of theatrical representation by means of dancing, mimicry and orchestral music, had its origin in the pantomimic performances of ancient Rome. The earliest form of the modern ballet was the interpretation of a theatrical plot by means of dancing combined with speech, and even with song. In this form it was well known to the princely courts of Italy. In France, where it preserved its essentially artistic formation, it is closely asso ciated with the history of the opera; but in England it came much later than the opera, for it was not introduced until the 18th century, and in the first Italian operas given in London there was no ballet. Catherine de'Medici introduced these entertainments into France and spent large sums of money on devising perform ances to distract her son's attention from the affairs of the state. Baltasarini, otherwise known as Beaujoyeulx, was the composer of a famous entertainment given by Catherine in 1581 called the Ballet Comique de la Reyne. This marks an era in the history of the opera and ballet, for we find here for the first time dance and music arranged for the display of coherent dramatic ideas. Henry IV., Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. were all lovers of the ballet and performed various characters in them, and Richelieu used the ballet as an instrument for the expression of political purposes. Lully was the first to make an art of the composition of ballet music and he was the first to insist on the admission of women as ballet dancers, feminine characters having hitherto been assumed by men dressed as women. When Louis XIV. became too fat to dance, the ballet at court became unpopular. It was then adopted in the colleges at prize distributions and other occasions, when the ballets of Lully and Quinault were commonly performed.
The most notable personage in the history of the ballet is Jean Georges Noverre. He revived the ballet as Gluck revived the opera. His literary productions on dancing, published in 1760, are in style so vivacious that even to-day they are well worth reading, and at the same time they are indicative of the aesthetics of 18th century dancing. They ran into many editions and were translated into several languages. Noverre freed the dance from the starched rigidity of the farthingale, constructed in his libretti plots of great dramatic movement, and introduced into dance compositions the whole gamut of dramatic expression. He wrote ballets in abundance that were accounted heroic or lyric accord ing to their subject. He ended the supremacy of the leaders of the ballet and with it their purely artistic setting in the dance, creating instead a composite work of art in which painting, for decorations and costumes and music (Mozart composed his ballet Les Petits Riens) found a place as active auxiliaries of dancing. Noverre was the last as well as the most notable representative of classical ballet dancing, for this elegant art disappeared at the outbreak of the French Revolution. In the great opera houses of Europe, corps de ballet still persisted; but the technique of these gradually lost its clear-cut perfection. In Russia alone was the great tradition of the old ballet carefully preserved, especially in the Royal opera houses of St. Petersburg and Moscow.
At the beginning of the loth century a new convention for stage dancing, initiated in America and perfected by an American, Isadora Duncan (q.v.), appeared in Europe. In this new form the inaillot, the padded shoes and the ballet skirts gave way to bare feet, classic tunic and flowing drapery. There was no dancing sur les pointes, but stately movement from one deliberate Greek pose to another, to the accompaniment of music always carefully chosen from the works of Chopin, Gluck or some equally famous master. It had the air of being easy and natural, but was really the outcome of much thought and long training. Miss Duncan's figure was lithe and supple, her sense of rhythm was good, and she had acquired the certainty of balance that marks the first rate dancer. Neither her dancing nor her theories were taken seriously till she arrived in St. Petersburg in 1907, where the two conventions met, the classical and the classic, each at the highest point of its development. Reacting one upon the other, a new form emerged, the Fokine ballet, which combined the virtues of the two schools and quickly superseded both.
Fokine was strongly influenced by the theories of Isadora Duncan, and it was in accordance with her teaching that the best composers and painters were brought in to write and decorate the new ballets, and that the ballets themselves were cut down to one act of such a length that three or four could be played in one evening. Though the old technique was by no means abandoned, it was modified by the addition of many of the Duncanesque move ments; and the bare feet and Greek tunic began to alternate with the traditional uniform. Within a year of his appointment Fokine managed to sweep away the accumulated traditions of two cen turies, and the ballet was at last free to express itself in any form that the dramatic subject demanded. The Russian ballet remained practically unknown outside its own country till 1909, when a company from the Marinsky theatre of St. Petersburg appeared at the Chatelet theatre in Paris. Serge Diaghilev (b. 1872), to whom the management of this season had been entrusted, was known in Russia as one of the younger leaders of the renaissance of Russian art. He was one of the warmest supporters of Isadora Duncan during her visit to St. Petersburg, and an equally staunch supporter of Michel Fokine when he began to put her theories into practice.
The choreography of all the ballets was the work of Michel Fokine. He was the great eclectic, the master of the composite ballet, who used the methods of Duncan and of the Russian folk dancers each in its proper environment with equal success. He was the inventor of the modern ballet, and from his creations practically all the later developments can be traced. As a dancer Fokine was graceful and accomplished, but lacked the genius of his successor, Vaslav Nijinsky, who took command for the season of 1913. Nijinsky was influenced by Jacques Dalcroze, a Swiss exponent of musical calisthenics, in accordance with whose theories the dancing in Debussy's Jeux was made to synchronise exactly with the beat of the music ; while in Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps the movement became a sort of rhythmic counter point in opposition to it. As a dancer, Nijinsky ranks among the greatest in history, and his premature retirement was an irrepar able loss to the ballet.
Leonide Massine, who first appeared in 1914 in Strauss's Legende de Joseph, produced his first ballets in 1917. His work was a development of the Fokine ballet, sharpened by contact with Andalusian forms, which he studied closely before the pro duction of De Falla's Tricorne. The best example of his inventive power was perhaps seen in Le Rossignol (192o) and in his use of mass movements as foreshadowed by Nijinsky in Le Sacre du Printemps. As a dancer he is alert and certain in his balance, with a marked sense of rhythm. Among the more notable names are those of Tamara Karsavina, a dancer of perfect technique and compelling grace, who between 191O and 1914 created most of the principal roles. Anna Pavlova danced with the company in 1909 and 1911. Her technique, perfect even to the most trifling detail, and the persuasive charm of her personality, won her a world-wide reputation. She was the brightest star in the Russian ballet and was the last personification of the lovely art of the old ballet. Among the men, in addition to the three maitres de ballet, have been Adolf Bolm, Woizikovsky, Idzikovsky and latterly Lifar. Diaghilev knew how to enhance his gifts and accomplish ments as a dancer by securing the services of the most distin guished painters of his day as decorators and costume designers. Chief among these was Leon Bakst, and others were Picasso, Derain and Benois. Diaghilev also secured the co-operation of leading modern composers—of Ravel, Richard Strauss, Poulenc, Milhaud and above all, of Stravinsky. Among the most remark able ballets, which he produced in every capital city in the world, were : Cirnarosiana, Carnaval (Schumann), L'Oiseau de feu, Le Spectre de la Rose, Petrouchka, Sacre du Printemps, Tricorne and Les Biches.
The 20th century has seen, besides the stimulus given to the old ballet by Diaghilev and his artistes through Isadora Duncan's reforms, and by Dalcroze through his system of eurhythmics, the rise of a new development in dancing. This, in contradistinction to the classical ballet, is known as the modern or new dancing, and its real originator and most zealous advocate has been pro duced by Germany in the person of Rudolf von Laban. His teach ing of established laws of motion, more especially his endeavours to invent a dance script, gave rise to an intellectual movement that determined all experimentation in the new dancing. Laban's teaching inspired large numbers of his students to devote them selves to creative work in their turn, and to develop further the modern dance and its technique. Of all Laban's circle it is Mary Wigman who has the strongest artistic individuality. With a group of women she has created remarkable dance compositions ; these, unrestricted by theatrical stage style, express in the so called abstract dance, strong intellectual emotion by means of architectonic group dancing. This form is being further de veloped by Palucca and Yvonne Georgi, pupils of Mary Wigman. Berthe Trumpi and Vera Skoronel are also originating strictly formal group dances in the Wigman tradition. Side by side with these extremely advanced forms, serious efforts are being made to bring the action of the modern dance into harmony with the valuable constituents of the old ballet. The work of Max Terpis, maitre de ballets at the State opera in Berlin, is pre-eminently important in this respect, for in a series of original ballets he has achieved a blend of the two styles. The work of Kurt Jooss, a pupil of Laban, as a composer of ballets should be mentioned. In several excellent compositions (in a Ballet Tragedy, for instance, that occupies an evening), he has used his master's abstract ideas to supply the needs of a style dramatically anaemic. Jens Keith too may be singled out as a stage-manager of fruitful imagination who knows how to amalgamate even more closely the new danc ing with the demands of the theatre. One of the staunchest sup porters of the modern dance is Harald Kreutzberg, solo dancer in the State Opera in Berlin, and member of Max Reinhardt's American touring company. He unites the extensive possibilities of expression inherent in the new dancing with the more precise technique of the old ballet. All the last-named advocates of modern dancing were colleagues of Dr. Hanns Niedecken-Gebhard who, as manager, was the first to organize on his stage a modern dance ensemble, and who, by the creation of large amateur choruses within the theatre personnel, especially within the opera management, gave the incentive to a new development. While the French and Russian devotees of modern music wrote their ballets for Diaghilev, latterly musicians like Bartok, Hindemith and Toch have frequently composed dance music. It is apparent from later developments in the modern dance that a merging of the style and technique of the old ballet with the capability of expression of the new, is gradually taking place. Thus the ques tion of aesthetics is less pressing than that of technique. Whereas the old ballet relied almost entirely on foot-and-leg work, the modern dance requires the whole body as its medium of expres sion. Therefore it presupposes application to gymnastics for sup pleness; the old ballet required stiffness, especially of the back. The rigid set pose of the old ballet is giving way to the continu ous flowing movement of the modern dance. There is no doubt that the new dancing, with its possibilities of strong emotional expression, particularly in the display of mass movement, can be made the medium of the deepest artistic effects; and that this mass movement will be more truly a cultural expression of the basic experiences of life than was the elegant art of the old ballet. (See also DANCE; PANTOMIME.) BIBLIOGRAPHY.-One of the most complete books on the ballet is Bibliography.-One of the most complete books on the ballet is by the Jesuit, Claude Francois Menestrier, Des ballets anciene et moderns, 12m0 (1682) . He was the inventor of a ballet for Louis XIV. in 1685 ; and in his book he analyses about fifty of the early Italian and French ballets. See also Noverre, Lettres sur la danse, 176o and 1804. In the last complete edition are to be found the libretti of many of his most notable ballets. H. Niedeken, Noverre in his Relation to Music, Munich. Important also are Cahusac's La Danse ancienne et moderne ou traite historique de la Danse, 1754; Weiter Castel-Blaze, La danse et les ballets (1832) and Les Origines de l'opera (186g) the comprehensive work by Aoskar Bie, Der Tanz.