Ballet To America Essay

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Dance, more specifically ballet, began as early as the 1400s, developing through many parts of the world including France, Italy, Russia, and America. This physical art began for the King and traveled through centuries to transform into the modernistic version America and around the world sustains. To find out how this transformation occurred many people must be mentioned such as King Louis XIV, Rudolf Nureyev, Natalia Makarova, Anna Pavlova, Sergei Diaghilev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and George Balanchine. To convert from the beginning of ballet to where it is in America now, one must consider style, purpose, and use to find out why it is the way it is now. Long before ballet had ever entered into America, the creation of dance existed. Starting …show more content…

The “over the top” ballets first arrived around 1930 with Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes when on tour. Arguably the most famous ballet creator settled the arrival of dance in America when he came in 1933 and immediately started the School of American Ballet in 1934. Starting with more dancers than a normal company begins with, New York City Ballet was then established with seventeen dancers. This company, along with Baryshnikov’s American Ballet Theatre, started the main style known as American Classism. The balletic style further developed in the 1960’s at the time of the defection of Paris during World War Two. This was when many great international ballet icons came, such as Rudolf Nureyev. The retreat of London brought Natalia Makarova and then Makhail Baryshnikov during the defection in Toronto. Many of the international artists who brought ballet to America arrived for the same reasons as others: to escape the control of the Soviet Union, or to find freedom. Different aspects in style of ballet started with its graceful or delicate form, by Anna Pavlova’s intricate technique admired by the audience. At this time ballet had been released into American culture on its way to developing the huge dance style we now have.

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