Ballet traces its origins to the Italian Renaissance, when it was developed as a court entertainment. During the 15th and 16th centuries the dance technique became formalized. The epicentre of the art moved to Francefollowing the marriage of the Italian-born aristocratCatherine de Médicis to Henry II of France. A court musician and choreographer named Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx devised Ballet comique de la reine (1581; “The Queen’s Comic Ballet”), which inaugurated a long tradition of court ballets in France that reached its peak under Louis XIV in the mid-17th century.

As a court entertainment, the works were performed by courtiers; a few professional dancers were occasionally participants, but they were usually cast in grotesque or comic roles. The subjects of these works, in which dance formed only a part alongside declamation and song, ranged widely; some were comic and others had a more serious, even political, intent. Louis XIII and his son Louis XIV frequently performed in them; the younger Louis was in time regarded as the epitome of the noble style of dancing as it developed at the French court.

Eventually, developments at the French court pushedthe arts aside, and the court ballet disappeared. ButLouis XIV had established two academies where ballet was launched into another phase of its development: the Académie Royale de Danse (1661) and theAcadémie Royale de Musique (1669). The Académie Royale de Danse was formed to preserve the classical school of the noble dance. It was to last until the 1780s. By then its purpose essentially had been abrogated by the music academy, the predecessor of the dance school of the Paris Opéra.

The Académie Royale de Musique was to become incalculably significant in the development of ballet. The academy was created to present opera, which was then understood to include a dance element; indeed, for fully a century ballet was a virtually obligatory component of the various forms of French opera. From the beginning, the dancers of the Opéra (as the Académie was commonly known) were professional, coming under the authority of the ballet master. A succession of distinguished ballet masters (notablyPierre Beauchamp, Louis Pécour, and Gaétan Vestris) ensured the prestige of French ballet, and the quality of the Opéra’s dancers became renowned throughout Europe.

The growing appeal of ballet to an increasingly broad public in Paris was reflected in the success of opéra-ballets, of which the most celebrated were André Campra’s L’Europe galante (1697; “Gallant Europe”) andJean-Philippe Rameau’s Les Indes galantes (1735; “The Gallant Indies”). These works combined singing, dancing, and orchestral music into numbers that were unified by a loose theme.

In the early years the most accomplished dancers were male, and it was not until 1681 that the first principal female dancer, Mlle La Fontaine, appeared. Gradually she and her successors became nearly as well-known and respected as male dancers such as Michel Blondy and Jean Balon. From the 1720s, however, with the appearance of Marie Sallé and Marie-Anne Camargo, the women began to vie with the men in technique and artistry. The retirement of Sallé and Camargo in turn coincided with the debut of one of the most celebrated dancers of all time, Gaétan Vestris, who became regarded in his prime as the epitome of the French noble style; he played an important part in establishing ballet as an independent theatrical form.

Ballet remained subservient to vocal music at the Paris Opéra until the 1770s, but elsewhere—and even in Paris—enlightened ballet masters had been experimenting with a genre in which dance was allied with mime to form a new type of theatrical work known as the ballet d’action. Its origin can be traced back at least to 1717, when in London John Weaver produced The Loves of Mars and Venus, which he claimed echoed the pantomimes of ancient Rome. This was the forerunner of several pioneering attempts to weave dance and mime into a narrative work, notably by Franz Hilverding and Gasparo Angiolini in Vienna and Jean-Baptiste de Hesse and Antoine Pitrot in Paris (on other stages than the Opéra). It fell to the French choreographer and writer Jean-Georges Noverre to establish the genre of the ballet d’action in the public consciousness.

At the Opéra-Comique in Paris Noverre produced in 1754 a remarkable ballet on a Chinese theme that earned him an engagement in London. There Noverre was befriended by the actor David Garrick, who became an important influence in his artistic development. In 1760, at the court of Württemberg (now in Germany), he produced a series of major works in which he realized his personal vision of the ballet d’action. The most celebrated of these was Médée et Jason, in which Gaétan Vestris played Jason. Noverre’s fame spread throughout Europe. After Württemberg he was employed in Vienna, where Empress Maria Theresarecommended him to her daughter, Queen Marie-Antoinette of France, for the post of ballet master at the Paris Opéra.

Noverre’s brief engagement at the Opéra was a turning point of the greatest significance. Gaétan Vestris, a dominant figure there, espoused the cause of the ballet d’action. Although the other ballet masters, Jean Dauberval and Maximilien Gardel, forced Noverre out of the organization, they were no less committed to the new genre he had introduced.

Noverre’s fame also derived from his writings, notablyLettres sur la danse et sur les ballets (1760), one of the classics of dance literature, in which he drew attention to the shortcomings of the ballet of his time and set down his ideas for reforming his art and explained his vision of the ballet d’action.

Until the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, the Paris Opéra remained closely linked to the court. The revolution put an end to such support. The turn of the 19th century was a time of confusion for the arts, during which ballet gained greatly in popularity and prestige at the expense of its sister art, opera. Ballet’s success was largely a consequence of the personal effort of the ballet master Pierre Gardel (Maximilien’s brother), who dominated French ballet from 1787 to 1827. Gardel was not only an experienced administrator but also a choreographer, esteemed throughout Europe. In Paris he staged many ballets from a wide variety of genres, from Classical legend (Psyché, 1790) to comedy (La Dansomanie, 1800) and contemporary fiction (Paul et Virginie, 1806). He was most ably supported by Louis Milon, who himself produced a number of masterpieces, including the tear-jerking Nina, ou la folle par amour (1813; “Nina, or Mad by Love”) and the boisterous Le Carnaval de Venise, ou la constance à l’épreuve (1816; “The Carnival of Venice, or The Test of Constancy”). Under Gardel’s rule the dominance of the Paris ballet was recognized throughout Europe for its ballet productions, for dancers such as Marie Gardel, Emilia Bigottini, and Louis Duport, and for superior teachers such as Jean-Franƈois Coulon.

Meanwhile, ballet had also taken root in other European cities, most notably in Vienna and in Italian cities such as Milan and Naples. The outstanding Italian choreographer of this era was Salvatore Viganò, who endeavoured to mold dance and silent drama to a greater extent than any other choreographer of his time. His most celebrated work was his definitive version of the Prometheus legend, Prometeo (1813), which reused much of Ludwig van Beethoven’s ballet music for the Vienna State Opera (Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus, 1801; The Creatures of Prometheus). Among other celebrated choreographers working inItaly at this time were Gaetano Gioja and the French-born Louis Henry.

The world changed fast after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815. The base of the Parisian theatregoing public was broadening with the rise of a wealthy middle class, while in matters of artistic taste the younger generation rejected the neoclassical preferences of their elders and surrendered to the growing vogue for Romanticism. Ballet itself would be radically changed. After the fall of the Bourbon monarchy in 1830, the Opéra was privatized, and its new management opened the door to Romanticism with Giacomo Meyerbeer’s operaRobert le Diable (1831; “Robert the Devil”) and Filippo Taglioni’s ballet, La Sylphide (1832; “The Sylph”). The latter, which became the prototype for many other ballets with a spirit as heroine, established the fame ofFilippo Taglioni’s daughter, Marie Taglioni, the most eminent ballerina of her generation. Trained by Coulon and polished by her father, Taglioni had a style that set her apart from her contemporaries; she projected a spiritual quality that was said to touch the soul, and her virtuosity was subjugated to the creation of mood.

The years from about 1830 to 1850 were a golden age for ballet. Taglioni was followed by other great stars, who like her enjoyed international renown, including the Austrian Fanny Elssler. Elssler was famed for character dances such as the Spanish cachucha, and she had a dramatic flair that was evident in Joseph Mazilier’s La Gipsy (1839) and Jules Perrot’s La Esmeralda (1844). After Elssler came Carlotta Grisi, who created the title role in Giselle (1841), a ballet that remains, somewhat modified, in the 21st-century repertoire.

The age was dominated by the ballerina at the expense of the male dancer. Women’s technique became increasingly virtuosic, largely as a result of the development of pointe work (i.e., dancing on the toes). In the last third of the 19th century, ballet in Paris was in artistic decline; the only work of merit to survive wasArthur Saint-Léon’s Coppélia (1870).

One centre in which the male dancer held his own was Copenhagen, where the Paris-trained August Bournonville directed the ballet for many years. He produced many ballets, including his own version of La Sylphide (1836) and Napoli (1842); both of these have remained in the repertoire into the 21st century, and both convey an authentic flavour of the Romantic style.

London was another important centre of ballet at this time, but there ballet was largely an imported form, dominated by visiting stars from the Continent and by French choreographers. Outstanding among these wasJules Perrot, who produced a string of masterworks, including La Esmeralda (1844) and the all-star Pas de Quatre (1845). However, the great flowering of ballet in London was to be of short duration, and some 80 years were to pass before the first stirrings of a truly English ballet tradition were felt.

As the 19th century drew to a close, the centre of ballet activity moved to St. Petersburg, where the art was supported by the bottomless resources at the disposal of the tsar. Nevertheless, ballet remained an exotic import from western Europe, and the only production of note with a Russian theme was Saint-Léon’s The Little Humpbacked Horse (1864). Saint-Léon was one of a line of French ballet masters who worked in Russia; he was preceded by Perrot and succeeded by Marius Petipa. Petipa dominated the Russian ballet from 1870 to 1903, virtually replenishing the repertoire with ballets of his own. Several of these have survived to form the basic ballet classics into the 21st century: not only the three ballets to scores by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky—The Sleeping Beauty (1890), The Nutcracker (1892), andSwan Lake (1895; Petipa’s assistant, Lev Ivanov, set the lakeside acts)—but also an earlier work, La Bayadère(1877; “The [Hindu] Temple Dancer”), and a later one,Raymonda (1898). Petipa also ensured the survival ofGiselle.

The Imperial Ballet paid great attention to the training of its dancers, and an essentially Russian style emerged in the company. The Italian style taught by Enrico Cecchetti and the French style taught by Christian Johansson together formed the foundation for the Russian school that was to become dominant in 20th-century ballet.

From Russia came the impulse that reanimated ballet in western Europe. For the ballet season in 1909 the impresario Serge Diaghilev brought to Paris a company, called the Ballets Russes, that was made up of prominent dancers from the Imperial Ballet. The effect on the artistic world was shattering. Ballet, which in western Europe had sunk low in public estimation, became recognized as a major theatre art, one in which dance, music, and stage design contributed to an unprecedented and impressive overall effect. The dancing was of the highest quality. The greatest sensation was created by Vaslav Nijinsky, a male dancer of a standard not seen within living memory, and the ballerinas Anna Pavlova and Tamara Karsavina also made a lasting impression.

In its early seasons the Ballets Russes had to reassemble each year to visit western Europe, since the company’s dancers were still under contract in Russia; but in 1911 Diaghilev broke with the Imperial Theatres, and thereafter the company was based in Monte Carlo. Its appeal extended beyond the ordinary theatregoing public to embrace the artistic intelligentsia, so that ballet began to lose the somewhat louche reputation it had acquired in the 19th century. A main reason for this change in status was the participation of major artists—artists such as Alexandre Benois and Leon Bakst, who designed the scenery, and leading composers, notablyIgor Stravinsky, who produced specially commissioned musical scores.

In the company’s early seasons the principal choreographer was Michel Fokine, who staged a number of ballets that became classics, notably Les Sylphides (1909), The Firebird (1910), and Petrouchka(1911). Eventually Diaghilev’s encouragement of Nijinsky as a budding choreographer soured his relationship with Fokine. As a choreographer Nijinsky proved an iconoclast, seeking nonclassical forms of movement. Although his choreographic output was limited, it included two ballets that achieved notoriety on account of their sexual inferences: L’Après-midi d’un faune (1912; The Afternoon of a Faun) and Le Sacre du printemps (1913; The Rite of Spring).

After World War I Diaghilev made common cause with some of the modern art movements in Paris, and the prestige of his Ballets Russes was unabated until his death in 1929. The Russian Revolution of 1917 inevitably weakened the company’s link with its homeland. Nonetheless, the Russian element within the company remained dominant, although the Russians were joined by dancers of other nationalities, includingAnton Dolin (English), Ninette de Valois (Irish), andAlicia Markova (English). Among the choreographers who worked for Diaghilev during this period wereLéonide Massine, Bronislava Nijinska, George Balanchine, and Serge Lifar; the most lasting ballets were Massine’s La Boutique fantasque (“The Fanciful Shop”) and Le Tricorne (1919; “The Three-Cornered Hat”), Nijinska’s Les Biches (1924; “The Does”), and Balanchine’s Apollon Musagète (1928).

Independently of the Ballets Russes, Anna Pavlovatraveled the world with her own company of supporting dancers. She brought her art to millions who had never seen ballet before, and she became in the process a veritable icon.

Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes did not survive his death, and two years passed before the impresarios Colonel W. de Basil and René Blum formed a company, the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo, in 1931 to carry on the tradition. The story of the Ballets Russes companies of the 1930s is too complicated for a brief treatment; most important was the development in that decade of a younger and more widely based public for ballet than the intelligentsia whom Diaghilev had courted. The new company soon produced its first stars: the three “baby ballerinas” (ages 12 to 14 at their debuts), Tamara Toumanova, Tatiana Riabouchinska, and Irina Baronova. They and other dancers in the company were pupils of various distinguished Russian teachers (notably Mathilde Kschessinska, Olga Preobrajenska, and Lubov Egorova) who had settled in Paris and went on to establish Russian-style training in the West.

The Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo continued the Diaghilev tradition by commissioning leading artists and composers to collaborate in the ballets. Although Balanchine produced both Cotillon and La Concurrencein its first season (1932), Massine became the dominant choreographer, covering new ground with his symphonic ballets Les Présages (1933), Choreartium(1933), and Symphonie fantastique (1936). The company’s U.S. tours, which began in 1933, became regular events; from these visits can be traced the later vogue for the ballet in North America. Blum broke with de Basil in 1936 to form his own short-lived company with Fokine as ballet master, while de Basil directed his own company under various names until his death. There was great rivalry between the two companies, which in 1938 appeared simultaneously in London. Both survived World War II, but their former relevance was by then passing. The de Basil company, as it had become known, disbanded in 1948, and the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo in 1962.

The Revolution of 1917 exerted a profound influence on Russian ballet, which remained virtually untouched by the reforms that Diaghilev had brought to ballet in western Europe. Notwithstanding its imperial and aristocratic associations, ballet in the Soviet Union survived and flourished, although it took a different course than ballet in western Europe. While the one-act ballet that Diaghilev had introduced became the norm in the West, Soviet ballet remained wedded to the multiact form. After a brief flirtation with modernism, led by Kasyan Goleizovsky in the 1920s, Soviet ballet reverted to traditional practice, marked by strong plots, a natural acting style that eschewed the formal mime of Petipa’s day, and the use of folk dance as a counterweight to the classical dance vocabulary.

During the years between World Wars I and II, St. Petersburg (known from 1914 to 1924 as Petrograd and from 1924 to 1991 as Leningrad) retained its ascendancy, but gradually Moscow, which had become the nation’s capital, emerged as a rival. In a landmark of the era, at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre the Soviet-themed ballet The Red Poppy (1927) was produced. This work, which is about Russian sailors who champion downtrodden Chinese dockworkers, was unashamedly propagandist and by current Western standards choreographically unadventurous.

The ballet school in Leningrad attained unprecedented prestige under one of the most inspirational teachers of all time, Agrippina Vaganova. She formed a new generation of dancers, headed by a ballerina of inimitable artistry, Galina Ulanova. At the same time, an awareness of the historical traditions of Russian ballet was returning, and some of the classic ballets of the previous century were reintroduced into the repertoire.

A new group of Soviet choreographers, working almost exclusively within the framework of the full-length ballet, matured, and, following the triumphant visit of the Bolshoi Ballet to London in 1956, ballet from the Soviet Union began to emerge from its isolation. In performances of the 1950s the full-evening work was the norm, typified by two ballets to scores that were greatly admired in western Europe: Leonide Lavrovsky’sRomeo and Juliet (1940), to music by Sergey Prokofiev, and Leonide Jacobson’s Spartacus (1956), to music byAram Khachaturian. As a result of the interchange that followed the Bolshoi’s tour, Russian and western European ballet were to be influenced by each other. Western choreographers, such as Frederick Ashton andJohn Cranko, began to work to a larger scale, while Russian choreographers began to experiment with the single-act form that Diaghilev had favoured.

Diaghilev’s enduring legacy was the resurgence of ballet that followed his death. The major companies that subsequently flourished in France, the United Kingdom, and North America were the direct beneficiaries of his vision.

The ballet of the Paris Opéra was in deep decline when the Ballets Russes first came to the city. In the 1920s the French company’s prestige began to rise, and it was a major force again in European ballet after 1931, whenSerge Lifar was appointed ballet master. During the Lifar regime, which lasted until 1958, the company’s fortunes—and respect for French ballet—rose dramatically. As a choreographer Lifar created a vast repertoire of ballets, inviting the collaboration of contemporary musicians and artists much as Diaghilev would have done; as a dancer unsurpassed for his allure, Lifar provided the example for others to follow. After his retirement the company continued to flourish under the direction of another iconoclastic figure,Rudolf Nureyev, who produced a spectacular range of classics from the Petipa period. Those ballets showcased the company’s outstanding technical and artistic strength.

In Britain an even more dramatic development took place. Diaghilev’s London seasons had rekindled interest in ballet, and the 1930s saw the modest beginnings of a national tradition with the formation of the Vic-Wells Ballet and the Ballet Rambert. In 1946 the Vic-Wells, by then called the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, was chosen to become the established ballet company at the Royal Opera House in London; in 1956, granted royal patronage, it became the Royal Ballet. Founded by Ninette de Valois, the company possessed a choreographer of genius, Frederick Ashton. His muse was Margot Fonteyn, a ballerina who achieved international renown. Ashton and his successor,Kenneth MacMillan, between them created the foundation of a rich and varied repertoire.

The development of ballet in the United States has been no less dramatic. Although the country has no national ballet, its leading companies stand comparison with the principal national companies of Europe. The most important of these are the New York City Balletand American Ballet Theatre, founded respectively in 1934 (as the American Ballet Company; the name was changed in 1948) and 1939 (as Ballet Theatre; the name was changed in 1957). The significance of the former lies in its being the repository of the vast repertoire thatGeorge Balanchine—in his younger days one of Diaghilev’s choreographers—created over a lifetime of incredible creativity; he died in 1983.

Many other countries, notably Germany, Holland, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, and Cuba, to name only a few, established ballet companies of note in the 20th century, and countless smaller companies and groups became active all over the world, playing their part in the extraordinary flowering of ballet after World War II.