classical ballet

classical ballet, system of dance based on formalized movements and positions of the arms, feet, and body designed to enable the dancer to move with the greatest possible agility, control, speed, lightness, and grace. Classical-ballet technique is based on the turned-out position of the legs, which increases the range of movement through added mobility in the hip joint and also imparts a more pleasing line to the extended leg. The subject matter of classical ballet may be romantic, realistic, or mythological; a variety of dramatic and emotional situations may be represented. A classical production is divided into three sections: the opening pas de deux (dance for two), or adagio; variations or individual performances by the partners, first by the male and then by the female; and the final pas de deux, or coda.

Classical ballet, with origins in the 17th-century French court ballet, came to fruition at the Russian Imperial School of Ballet, directed in the 19th century by Marius Petipa, and in the works of the Italian choreographic masters Carlo Blasis and Enrico Cecchetti. Blasis’s Traité élémentaire, théorique et pratique de l’art de la danse (1820) was the first formal codification of classical-ballet technique. As head of the ballet school at La Scala, Milan, he applied his strict methods and emphasis on form; the school became the principal source of solo dancers who spread classical ballet across Europe. Examples of classical ballets that have survived in repertoires throughout the world are Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake and The Nutcracker.