Rahul Kapoor
Dance 2010
Tu/R 9:30
Instructor : Foster
From rapid spins, high jumps, and dizzying turns by the professional dancers of the late 17th
and rising 18th centuries came the fluttering motion and distinctive symmetry and harmony of the
body of Louis XIV school for dancers at the Académie Royale de Musique (Opéra). The forming
period of Romanticism was an elegant, woman centered, international sensation. The status of the
male dancer began to decline as masculinity and athleticism were replaced by gracefulness and the
exotic forms created by the woman’s body through ballet. A few major dancers that expressed the
weightlessness and grand imagery on stage were Marie Taglioni in her title role in La Sylphide in
1832, choreographer Jules Perrot and her work on Pas de Quatre, and choreographer Marius Petipa,
who engaged in work at the Imperial Ballet Academy in St. Petersburg, Russia, first appearing in the
wonderful Paquita. The pointe technique of dancing on the tip of the toes, the romantic tutu which
developed over time, and use of gauzy white skirts, held the Paris Opera audience in awe for almost
a century.
The dawn of the television, cellular phones, the Internet, and many more major
technological breakthroughs at the beginning of the 19th century gave rise to a more modern dance
form. A new source of strength and invention was sparked after ballets had been seen globally
through the internet and television. The vigor of the Russians was intensified when Serge Diaghilev
used the modernism movement to introduce the Ballet Russe of Monte Carlo to the West. His
company Ballets Russes was progressed through the infamous members of the Imperial Ballet
Academy of St. Petersburg. Choreographers Michel Fokine, Vaslav Nikjinksy, and George Balanchine
illuminated the stages in Western Europe onwards to the United States in 1916. The impact of the
Ballets Russes was made by the collaboration among contemporary composers, artists, designers,
and dancers. This avant-garde became an important tool for expression ideas of Russianness
abroad. The work of Léonide Massine, a dancer and later a choreographer with Les Ballets Russes,
was influenced by the cubist movement. Using the marvelous music by Igor Stravinksy, Sergei
