The Art of Ballet

It is curious to recall the fact that a taste for dancing has always been a characteristic of the Londoners, who have supported really artistic ballet as often as they have had...

Before it opened its doors as a regular theatre, with the late H. J. Hitchins as Manager, on April 17th, 1884, the Empire had “played many parts.” The site had been occupied by...

There was something like a craze for music-halls in the early ’sixties of last century, and it was probably partly due to this that the Alhambra, which had been opened in 1854 a...

For some thirty of Madeleine Guimard’s seventy-three years of life she was the idol of Paris, having risen from obscurity to power, and returned again from a joyous life set in...

When the news was first announced that an end was to come to Mlle. Adeline Génée’s ten years’ reign at the Empire and that the famous dancer was seeking, if not new worlds to co...

The great theatrical sensation of the mid-’forties was the famous _Pas de Quatre_, composed of Lucile Grahn, Fanny Cerito, Carlotta Grisi, and Marie Taglioni, the last-named mak...

The stage has from time to time been indebted to Watteau for costume and _décor_. But Watteau’s debt to the stage of his period, to the Opera, to the Italian Comedy, and to the...

In considering di Botta’s elaborate feast, and Beaujoyeux’s “ballet,” one is struck by their similarity to the English “disguisings” and masques, which, first introduced to the...

Humanity, like history, repeats itself in its recurring moods. Some years ago London playgoers went rather mad over what was a comparatively new thing to that period, the produc...

While the English Court was enjoying its masques, during the reigns of Henry VIII, Elizabeth and James, and the French were labouring forth their heroic ballets under Henri Quat...

The Dance and Ballet had made progress during the past two centuries and had reached the point when, unable to attain to greater perfection of technique, it needed some fresh ar...

“In Spring,” we know, “the young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.” In the winter of life it would seem that an old man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of the dan...

Among the various arts of war and peace that Vulcan engraved upon that wondrous shield which he fashioned at the entreaty of sad Thetis for her son Achilles, the Dance was not f...

Supreme above all other writers on the dance and ballet is Jean Georges Noverre, whose genius has been praised by Diderot, Voltaire, by D’Alembert, Dorat, and by David Garrick,...

A superb and ingenious festivity was that arranged by Bergonzio di Botta, a gentleman of Tortona, in honour of the wedding of Galeazzo, Duke of Milan, with Isabella of Aragon.

It is recorded that during one of the many revolts indulged in by the dancers of the Paris Opera against managerial control, which incidentally meant, of course, State and Royal...

Now, in 1651, it was France who was to give the lead to Europe, for in February of that year Louis-Quatorze, then a lad of thirteen, appeared in a ballet by Benserade, entitled...

There was plenty of novelty and ample charm in “All the Year Round,” a ballet in seven scenes, written and produced by Mr. Charles Wilson, with bright and appropriate music by t...

The origin of the drama is hardly to be reckoned among the historic mysteries. By serious triflers debate might be held as to what should be considered the first dramatic repres...

Some say that Camargo had no right to be described “La Belle.” Contemporary accounts of her appearance differ. It was a time when people took sides, and duelled for their opinions.

Queen Anne had long been dead, but she can never have been very lively when alive, for her period was one when political intrigue, theological controversy, and the War of Spanis...

Though it had not died during the Revolutionary period, either in Paris or London, the art of Ballet, from the death of Louis XV was really of little artistic interest, and was...

By many the word Pantomime is associated solely with that time-honoured entertainment which children, home for the Christmas holidays, are supposed to be too _blasé_ to care for...

We have seen that the state of dancing in England was nothing to boast of in the early eighteenth century. We have seen that London had not yet what Paris had had some fifty yea...

In speaking, however, of Despréaux as “husband of Guimard,” it is not my intention to cast any slight on an estimable and, in his own time, well-known personality; but I do so m...

If the masque was a kind of ballet that did not move from its appointed place within sight of the Royal and Courtly audience, by whom it was commanded as a spectacle for private...

It is a truism of history that opposition towards the amusements of a people only increases the desire for them, and that the undue pressure of a law, or of a too rigid majority...

The mention of Subligny recalls the interesting fact that during the reigns of Louis XIV and Louis XV of France there was a considerable importation of French and Italian actors...

There may be some who could not agree that Ballet _is_ an “art,” or even that it has, or ever had, any special charm or historic interest. The charm--as in the case of any other...

Seldom is a good dancer also a born singer; and still more rarely do both talents develop simultaneously to such a point that there can be any serious doubt as to which to relin...

Lucile Grahn was born at Copenhagen, June 30th, 1821, and is said to have been so delighted with a ballet to which she was taken when only four years old, that she forthwith ins...

For some time after the founding of the King’s Dancing Academy the French Opera stage was ungraced by the feminine form, though women took part in the performance at some of the...

The chief elements of Ballet as seen to-day are--dancing, miming, music and scenic effect, including of course in this last the costumes and colour-schemes, as well as the actua...

This but echoed the pretty worship of her good old father to whom she was always “La Divinita,” and who in the heyday of her success used to go about with his pockets stuffed wi...

“Revolution,” did they not call the madness which seized France? Heralded by fair promises of universal brotherhood, what did all the fine talk of her “intellectuals” and “philo...

Following what may be called “the Taglioni era” came a period of comparative dullness. There _were_ successors who charmed their audiences in London, in Paris, in Rome, Vienna a...