4.8. How did ballet develop in the nineteenth century?
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This article is from the Ballet and Modern Dance FAQ, by Tom Parsons twp@panix.com with numerous contributions by others.
4.8. How did ballet develop in the nineteenth century?
Dance in the nineteenth century was marked by three main develop-
ments: the expansion of dancers' technical powers, the primacy of the
ballerina, and the flowering of ballet in Russia.
The enlargement of the technical vocabulary and the growth of tech-
nique in general was an inevitable consequence of the professionalization
of ballet. We see evidence of this growth in the writings of Carlo Blasis
(question 4.8.1). One of the most striking technical advances was the de-
velopment of dancing on the toes, or on pointe. Marie Taglioni, reportedly
a superb technician, is commonly said to have been the first dancer to go
up on pointe, in 1825, although historians believe that she probably had
predecessors. (There is some evidence that Didelot (question 4.8.5) may
have had his dancers on pointe.) Taglioni was, in any case, the first to
popularize the technique, in the ballet "La Sylphide", and ballet was never
quite the same again.
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