This thread is planned to be about various ballets, with links to one or more excerpts and in the case of some short ballets the entire performance, what city and in what year the ballet premiered, a brief statement referring to the ballet, my best guess as to what inspired the ballet and where the ballet is set. It’s planned that the ballets will be listed in chronological order. Kindly correct me if you feel I made any errors or if you disagree with me. I have left out some ballet for my own reasons, feel free to politely and respectfully comment on what are your feelings about ballet? Starting with 7 ballets, the rest is planned to come in future posts. You can think of this as a ballet sampler and may be surprised by what you hear and see.
We start with Ballets from the French Era
1 Fille mal gardee, 4 mins, Bordeaux, France 1789, Earliest ballet still in production, originally entitled: Le ballet de la paille, ou Il n'est qu'un pas du mal au bien (The Ballet of Straw, or There is Only One Step from Bad to Good).
Inspired by Pierre-Antoine Baudouin's 1765 painting, La réprimande/Une jeune fille querellée par sa mère (Reprimand/A young girl quarreled by her mother), see image below. There is a young boy escaping behind the door to the right.
Setting French Countryside
2 Flore et Zephyr 6 mins, London, 1796 A pre-romantic ballet.
Inspired: by the Greco-Roman Myth of Flore and Zephyr
Setting: Mount Olympus
3 Ballet des Nonnes: Bacchanale, 5 mins audio only, Paris,1831, first Romantic ballet, first Ballet Blanc. “A crowd of mute shades glides though the arches. All these women cast off their nuns' costume, they shake off the cold powder of the grave; suddenly they throw themselves into the delights of their past life; they dance like bacchantes, they play like lords, they drink like sappers. What a pleasure to see these light women”
Inspired by: a medieval French tale from the 14th-century anthology Quarante Miracles dits de Notre-Dame, focusing on unfaithful nuns rising from their graves for a supernatural dance.
Setting: a moonlit, ruined cloister and graveyard of a convent
, audio only.
We start with Ballets from the French Era
1 Fille mal gardee, 4 mins, Bordeaux, France 1789, Earliest ballet still in production, originally entitled: Le ballet de la paille, ou Il n'est qu'un pas du mal au bien (The Ballet of Straw, or There is Only One Step from Bad to Good).
Inspired by Pierre-Antoine Baudouin's 1765 painting, La réprimande/Une jeune fille querellée par sa mère (Reprimand/A young girl quarreled by her mother), see image below. There is a young boy escaping behind the door to the right.
Setting French Countryside
2 Flore et Zephyr 6 mins, London, 1796 A pre-romantic ballet.
Inspired: by the Greco-Roman Myth of Flore and Zephyr
Setting: Mount Olympus
3 Ballet des Nonnes: Bacchanale, 5 mins audio only, Paris,1831, first Romantic ballet, first Ballet Blanc. “A crowd of mute shades glides though the arches. All these women cast off their nuns' costume, they shake off the cold powder of the grave; suddenly they throw themselves into the delights of their past life; they dance like bacchantes, they play like lords, they drink like sappers. What a pleasure to see these light women”
Inspired by: a medieval French tale from the 14th-century anthology Quarante Miracles dits de Notre-Dame, focusing on unfaithful nuns rising from their graves for a supernatural dance.
Setting: a moonlit, ruined cloister and graveyard of a convent
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