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Stylistic qualities of classical ballet
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When one thinks of a ballet they hear soft rhythmic notes and see elegantly dancing ballerinas softly tip-toeing around the stage. This is also what people in early 1900’s expected to see when they planned to attend a ballet. However, a couple of motivated artists in 1913 literally planned to change the design of ballet, music and dance forever. On May 29, 1913 a ballet named The Rite of Spring premiered in Paris, France. The original title as it translates from Russian to French is; Le Sacre du Printemps, meaning the rite of spring, but the literal translation from Russian to English means “Sacred Spring”. The ballet and music were composed by Igor Stravinsky, with the help of Nicholas Roerich, who proposed the general idea behind the ballet to Stravinsky. Roerich wanted to put into motion the ideas behind pagan pre-Christian rituals in Russia. Together the two created the story line behind the ballet; a sacred pagan ritual where a young female dances herself to death and is then offered to the “Gods” of spring to make them happy. The music was composed by Vaslav Nijinsky and the ballet was produced by Sergei Diaghilev for the Russian Ballet. This ballet was so different from what the spectators expected to see that it caused a riot. The Rite of Spring turned the tables of ballet in every sense: the dance, the music and the general idea of ballet was modernized by the group of artists who created and produced it. Vaslov Nijinsky was the choreographer for this ballet. He was considered the greatest male dancer of the 20th century and his works were known for their controversy. In this ballet Nijinsky’s choreography far exceeded the limits of traditional ballet. And for the first time the audience was experiencing th... ... middle of paper ... ...s to keep its beautiful array of melody, intensity and control by reminding the audience that it’s still a contemporary and classical piece of work. Works Cited Taylor, Jake. “Igor Stravinsky – Le Sacre du Printemps.” SputnikMusic. 10 August 2008. Web. 17 September 2011. < http://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/26668/Igor-Stravinsky-Le- Sacre-du-printemps/>. “The Rite of Spring.” Wikepedia – The Free Encyclopedia. 12 September 2011. Jimmy Whales. Web. 17 September 2011. . Gutmann, Peter. “Igor Stravinsky – The Rite of Spring.” Classical Notes. 2002. Web. 17 September 2011. . Rytell, David. “Music Worthy of a Riot.” David Rytell’s Home Page. 1989. Web. 17 September 2011. .
Ballet has been an art form since the late fifteenth century, but society did not truly see the impact of ballet until the nineteenth century. Modern day thinkers possess the idea that ballet began with tutus and pointe shoes, but it wasn’t until the nineteenth century that this opinion was observed. Ballet has come a long way. It has survived the turmoil of many wars and has changed itself by accepting new ideas and impressing the audience with its unique stylistic views.
Schwartz, Boris. Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 1917-1981. 2nd edition. Indiana University Press, 1983.
Rothstein, Edward. "What Shostakovich Was Really Expressing." The New York Times 6 May 2011: n. pag. Print.
Stravinsky was born on June 17, 1882 and died on April 6, 1971. He was a Russian classical composer. Stravinsky’s works are mostly neoclassical and serial works and the most representative classic compositions, that are L’Oiseau de feu, which means the fire bird, Petrushka, and Le scare du printemps, which means the rite of spring, represents Stravinsky. Not only composer, Stravinsky was recognized as a pianist and conductor at his works. He also worked on theoretical work, which is called Poetics of Music and he strongly claimed that music is incapable of “expressing anything but itself”. By this writing, he was recognized as a writer. Stravinsky asserted that music is essentially powerless to express something, but he still believed the nature
By examining a piece like The Rite Of Spring, modernist techniques and styles can be observed, Stravinsky created “an extra rhythmic tier, somewhat like the stresses superimposed on the regular patterns of The Rite.” 4 Stravinsky pushed the envelope of rhy...
- Norris, Jeremy Paul. The development of the Russian piano concerto in the nineteenth century. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1988. Print.
The Classical Period which happened in the late 1700’s became one the most evolutionary times in ballets history. The Classical Period is where performance and expression became extremely important. With ballet this period is where the use of storytelling became one of the main focuses for the dancer’s performances. The use of their emotions and the character they portrayed were more important than the use of the costumes. The “father of classical ballet” was known as Marius Petipa. Petipa was born in French but he came to Russia to create in the ballet. In the early 1800’s came the Pre-Romantic Period which was short but needed because of Marie Taglioni. Marie Taglioni was the first ballerina to ever dance en pointe. This time was the time pointe surfaced, em pointe which means “on
Elements of this piece that helped shape a new musical language for thee twentieth – century would consist of Stravinsky experimenting with rhythm and new combinations of instruments. The way he uses dissonance in his pieces as well polyphonic and polytonal textures. His ballets were strongly nationalistic but contained rites of Russia in ancient times. On the opening night of The Rite of Spring, he caused a riot to ensue because it wasn’t like a regular ballet, it was totally different. It consisted of no ballet dancing at all, but more of a chant dance, the different melodies and the change in dissonance caused the ballet to be viewed as a frightening experience to some. Spring is something that is viewed as beautiful, light, loving and this ballet showed none of this, from the point of view of those who attended that night.
During the nineteenth and the twenty centuries musicians adopted new rules. Some of the rules would be not to follow rules or some composers would follow the rule that required them to return to emotional restrains. Whether it was the Impressionistic composer Claude Debussy performing La Mer or the Neoclassical composer Igor Stravinsky performing The Rite of Spring, the composers of this time period certainly had noteworthy ideas.
The notion of cultural authenticity, in seeking to solidify cultural form, authenticate some forms over others. Yet the contemporary ballet dance as an art form is remarkably dynamic and constantly interacting with other art forms in the globalizing world. The objectification of the contemporary ballet as authentically American will lead to the condemnation of innovation in the aesthetics of the dance style, and the suppress of artistic creativity in the name of a well-intentioned yet misplaced cultural authentication. To prevent the ossification of the contemporary ballet, Kevin McKenzie, the current artistic director of the American Ballet Theatre, once said in an interview, “The great art forms will always adapt and absorb whatever cultural influences are around it, and ballet is no exception. It absorbs influences from all other forms, without losing its own language and identity.” His words are strongly proved in the evolution of the contemporary ballet dance performances in American, in which not only the dancing movements absorbs a large number of new constituents from different cultures such as the lion and dragon dance from China, but the stage settings and costumes are changing significantly during the past decades. For example, the Alonzo King 's LINES Ballet Company in San Francisco performed a contemporary ballet dance show utilizing the ancient Egyptian pictographs as its background scenario last year, which wouldn’t have come true if the notion of cultural authenticity is legitimatized. That authentication process freezes the dynamism of culture denotes the high degree of illegitimacy of pursuing cultural
As discussed during class, dance has always played a large part in society and political affairs. However, what we covered was largely before the nineteenth century. These more than one hundred years that separate what we covered and the Ballets Russes was a time of great artistic innovation. The commodification of ballet was also very interesting to me. Previously, ballet and dance were used in social gatherings, however at the turn of the twentieth century it morphed into something that could be bought, sold, and traded. Garafola notes that, choreographers like Fokine could receive top dollar for their efforts (Garafola 196). I found it very remarkable just how much Diaghilev’s success relied on outside sources and his ability to integrate the Ballets Russes into the era’s operatic marketplace. When looking at the interaction between society and dance from the other direction it is interesting to note that during the twentieth century, dance became much more cosmopolitan in terms of artistic styling. Dance arrived at the forefront of the careful balance between social and artistic behaviors within the academic culture of France, in which a majority of these undertakings were purely of commercial
On May 29, 1913 when Diaghilev’s masterpiece debuted at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees, the response of the audience was overwhelming in their shock at the erotic and unconventional nature of the dance. What made this performance different then what anyone in Western Europe had ever seen before was its jarring and sexual nature. Rather than the music and choreography be one, flowing, coherent unit, it was instead rather choppy and dissonant which most likely caught the naive audience off guard. The nature of this ballet is described many times t...
Smith, Jane Stuart and Betty Carlson. “The Gift of Music: Great Composures and Their Influence.” Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books Publishing. 1987. Print. April 2014.
'It seems to me, my dear friend, that the music of this ballet will be one of my best creations. The subject is so poetic, so grateful for music, that 1 have worked on it with enthusiasm and written it with the warmth and enthusiasm upon which the worth of a composition always depends." - Tchaikovsky, to Nadia von Meck.
Bonds, Mark Evan. A Brief History of Music in Western Culture. 1st. New Jersey: Pearson