Famous Ballerina

There are so many ways to tie up pointe shoes. I think, you would like a piece of advice that comes from Anaheim Ballet.

One can not confuse a ballet tutu with any other female skirt.  Designers use various materials to create tutus, the most traditional among them are tulle, voile, muslin and nylon. 

It’s been a couple of centuries since female ballet dancers started using tutus during ballet performance. To an untrained eye they all look the same, but balletomanes know that it is not true. In the modern ballet there are 4 major types of tutus worn for ballet dancing. Two of them are classical with the difference in shape (bell or pancake).  And the other too are romantic tutu and Balanchine-Karinska tutu.

Classical tutus of both types extend outwards from the hips. They are made with layers of netting and have fitted bodice.  The main difference between them is that the tutu shaped as a bell does not use a wired hoop while the pancake tutu uses one that keeps the layers flat and stiff.

Romantic Tutu is probably the most famous of all ballet clothing.  Specialists say that Marie Taglioni, famous ballet dancer of Romantic ballet era invented it and popularized it among European ballet dancers. This bell shaped tulle skirt is free flowing and emphasizes lightness and ethereal quality of the romantic ballets. The length varies between the knee and the ankle.

The last type of a tutu has an interesting origin. Father of American ballet and famous ballet master George Balanchine often choreographed ballets with a large assembly of dancers on stage.  This led to an unusual problem with the traditional pancake tutus - ballerinas skirts often brushed against each other. 

In 1950 famous designer Karinska that costumed Ballanchine’s ballets solved this problem. She invented so-called powder puff tutu that had looser appearance than a stiff pancake tutu.  Her newly designed tutu was self supporting and did not require the wired hoop anymore.

It seemed such a simple idea to create special shoes for ballet dancing that would be lightweight and give the appearance of dancing barefoot. However, it took centuries to implement  the whole concept before ballet slippers (or ballet shoes) began to look the way we know it now. 

Ballet slippers usually come in four colors: pink, black, gray or white and made from satin, canvas or leather with flexible thin soles. People who just start to learn about the ballet dancing usually confuse them with pointe shoes, which have their own place in the history of ballet as we know it. 

Male ballet dancers almost always wear ballet shoes, which is understandable, because they practically don’t dance en pointe.  Young ballerinas always start with ballet slippers as their young bones and muscles are not strong enough for more for more sophisticated type of footware.  It takes them not less than five years and lot of training before they can wear both types.

International Dance Day has been celebrated on April 29  for over a quarter of the century. But not many people know that the origin of this holiday. It is the birthday of the famous ballet dancer and Ballet Master Jean-Georges Noverre.  He revolutionized classical dance by creating ballet d’action, which became the predecessor of the narrative ballets of the 19th century. His ideas had lasting impact on ballet ideology, and his theories have been implemented in dance classes today and remain a part today’s ideology of dance.

Born in 1727, Noverre debuted on stage in Fontainebleau when he was only sixteen years old.  He composed his first ballet when he was twenty.  Noverre became so famous that practically all influential European monarchs tried to get him performing at their courts.  Famous Garrick invited him to London where Jean-Georges spent almost two years. He was so wildly popular there that Garrick called him the “Shakespeare of the dance”.

In 1775, in the peak of his fame at the request of the French queen Marie Antoinette Noverre was appointed First Ballet Master of Paris Opera. Jean-Georges kept this post till the days of the French Revolution that ended his career. And not only that.  Revolution reduced this famous genius to misery and poverty. The man of Enlightenment who had so many close friends like Mozart, Voltaire and Frederick the Great, died like a pauper in Paris in 1810.

Yet, his name entered the history and was saved to posterity not because he was a great dancer and Ballet Master.  And it was not because of the numerous ballets that he staged and composed - they have not been reproduced for at least two centuries. It was due to his publishing of the famous treatise Les Lettres sur La Danse et sur Les Ballets.

This treatise has been printed in almost every European language. Due to this work, Noverre’s name is one of the most quoted in the literature of dance. He criticized professional ballet dancers of his time, cumbersome costumes, and old-fashioned musical styles and choreography. He was against the use of the mask in the ballet because it hides facial expression of the ballet dancers.  He encouraged young ballet dancers to profit from their own talents rather than imitate their teachers or the style of a popular dance.

Noverre was the first to state in his treatise that ballet should stir up the audience’s emotions by the use of expressive movement.  He called this type of dance, ballet d’action. His brilliant conclusion was that ballet should unfold through dramatic movement and the movement should express the relationship between the characters.

Jean-Georges Noverre