60 Fun Facts About Ballet

Ballet originated in the courts of which country's Renaissance before spreading to France?

The word itself comes from the Italian balletto, a diminutive of ballo, 'dance'; it entered English from French around 1630.

Which queen is credited with bringing court ballet from Italy to France?

The dancers in these early court ballets were mostly noble amateurs weighed down by ornate costumes.

Which French king founded the Académie Royale de Danse in 1661?

He was an enthusiastic dancer himself; his ballet master Pierre Beauchamp is credited with codifying the five positions of the feet.

How many basic positions of the feet does classical ballet recognise?

Lully and his ballet-master Beauchamp get the credit for fixing them at the Paris Opera in the 1670s.

Which composer wrote the music for Swan Lake?

He wrote it in 1875-76; the 1877 Bolshoi premiere flopped and it took the 1895 Petipa-Ivanov revival to make it a classic.

In Swan Lake, what is the name of the princess turned into a swan by a sorcerer's curse?

The same ballerina now usually dances both her and the sorcerer's daughter Odile, though the original 1877 production may have used two dancers.

How many consecutive fouetté turns does the Black Swan famously perform in Act 3 of Swan Lake?

Italian ballerina Pierina Legnani first pulled off the feat in public in 1893, in a ballet called Cinderella, before it was written into Swan Lake.

The Nutcracker is set on which night?

American companies now earn roughly 40 percent of their annual ticket revenue from it, though it flopped next to its own suite in 1892.

Which bell-like keyboard instrument gives the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy its distinctive sound?

Tchaikovsky had already tried the instrument out in his little-known 1891 symphonic ballad The Voyevoda.

Whose short story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King is the ultimate source of the ballet?

The ballet actually adapts Alexandre Dumas's 1844 retelling; in the original story the heroine is Marie and Clara is her doll's name.

Which American company gave the first complete US performance of The Nutcracker, on 24 December 1944?

Willam Christensen staged it; his brother's company Ballet West in Salt Lake City has performed the original version every year since 1963.

In what year did New York City Ballet first perform Balanchine's The Nutcracker?

Maria Tallchief's Sugar Plum Fairy was singled out for turning the piece from an obscurity into the industry's most reliable box-office draw.

In Giselle, the Wilis are the vengeful ghosts of whom?

They dance men to death by exhaustion; Giselle's love for Albrecht saves him and frees her from joining them.

Who composed the music for Giselle, first performed in Paris in 1841?

He is also the composer of the Christmas carol 'O Holy Night'; Carlotta Grisi created the title role.

In The Sleeping Beauty, which fairy is the villain who curses Princess Aurora?

Good and evil each get a leitmotif that runs through the whole score, and the villain is often danced as a virtuoso role by a man.

Which composer's Romeo and Juliet ballet originally had a happy ending that Soviet officials objected to?

Composed in 1935, it was not staged in the Soviet Union until 1940, partly because of the Pravda campaign against 'degenerate modernists'.

Coppélia, the 1870 comic ballet with music by Léo Delibes, centres on what?

Village boy Franz falls for Dr Coppélius's creation, and his sweetheart Swanilda saves him by impersonating it.

Which Italian-born ballerina is credited as the first to truly dance en pointe, in La Sylphide in 1832?

Her shoes were little more than darned satin slippers; the gauzy white skirt she wore became the Romantic tutu.

Which 1730s French dancer was the first to perform in a heel-less shoe, freeing her to jump?

Heels disappeared from ballet shoes entirely after the French Revolution.

What is the stiffened front section of a pointe shoe that encases the toes called?

One famous prima ballerina, who had very arched feet, hardened hers with leather and then had photographs retouched so nobody could tell.

Which impresario founded the Ballets Russes, the Paris-based company that ran from 1909 to 1929?

Despite the name, the company never once performed in Russia; he died in Venice in 1929 leaving it deep in debt.

Whose score for The Rite of Spring caused a sensation at its 1913 Paris premiere?

Nijinsky's original choreography saw only eight performances and was thought lost until the Joffrey Ballet reconstructed it in the 1980s.

Which dancer choreographed the 1913 Rite of Spring and 1912's L'après-midi d'un faune for the Ballets Russes?

He was also Diaghilev's lover for a time; his career ended early with a diagnosis of schizophrenia.

Which fashion designer created costumes for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes?

Picasso and Matisse designed for the company too, and its avant-garde look fed directly into Art Deco.

The Dying Swan, the solo that made a Russian ballerina famous, is danced to music by whom?

Michel Fokine choreographed it in 1905 to Le cygne from The Carnival of the Animals; the dancer later fed pet swans on the lake at her London home.

A meringue-based dessert popular in Australia and New Zealand is named after which ballerina?

She was the first ballerina to tour the world with her own company, reaching South America, India, Mexico and Australia.

Rudolf Nureyev defected from the Soviet Union in 1961 at an airport in which city?

He was told at Le Bourget that he must fly back to Moscow instead of on to London with the Kirov; it was the first Cold War defection by a Soviet artist.

Nureyev was born in an unusual place. Where?

His mother was travelling to Vladivostok, where his father, a Red Army political commissar, was stationed.

Which company did Nureyev direct from 1983 to 1989?

He died in 1993 at 54 from AIDS complications; his diagnosis was not made public until after his death.

Which British ballerina, Nureyev's partner, was named prima ballerina assoluta of the Royal Ballet?

She was considering retirement when Nureyev defected in 1961; the partnership that followed premiered Ashton's Marguerite and Armand.

Mikhail Baryshnikov defected to the West in 1974 while on tour in which city?

A local ballet critic helped him escape, hiding a slip of paper with phone numbers under his wedding ring.

Baryshnikov earned an Oscar nomination for which 1977 film?

He later co-starred with Gregory Hines in White Nights and had a recurring role in the final season of Sex and the City.

Misty Copeland became the first Black woman principal dancer at which New York company in 2015?

She did not begin ballet until she was 13, and Time put her on its cover as one of the 100 most influential people that same year.

Which Osage ballerina, Balanchine's original Firebird, was America's first major prima ballerina?

She was also the first American to dance with the Paris Opera Ballet and the first to perform at Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre.

Which young arts patron brought Balanchine to America in 1933 and co-founded New York City Ballet?

He was born Georgiy Balanchivadze in St Petersburg to a Georgian composer; the pair had founded the School of American Ballet in 1934.

In which city was Marius Petipa, choreographer of The Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake, born?

He was born in Marseille in 1818, the son of a principal dancer, and spent most of his career at the Imperial Ballet in St Petersburg.

In what year was the Bolshoi Ballet founded, making it one of the world's oldest companies?

Today it is also one of the largest, with roughly 220 dancers.

Which company is regarded as the world's oldest national dance troupe, from which many others descend?

It has performed at the Palais Garnier since 1875 and its principal dancers give around 180 performances a year there.

Who founded the company that became Britain's Royal Ballet, in 1931?

The Irish-born dancer's company was known as the Vic-Wells and then Sadler's Wells Ballet before its 1956 royal charter.

ABT, the New York company founded in 1939 by Richard Pleasant, had which dancer-patron as its co-founder?

The company's first performance was on 11 January 1940; Chase ran it through decades of financial trouble.

What is the French ballet term for a smooth bending of the knees with the upper body upright?

It literally means 'bent'; a demi-plié is done in first, second, fourth or fifth position while keeping the turnout.

A pas de deux is a dance for how many performers?

The phrase means 'step of two'; the grand pas de deux of a classical ballet usually pairs the ballerina with her cavalier.

What term describes the ensemble dancers of a company who are neither soloists nor principals?

The swans in Swan Lake and the Wilis in Giselle are the most famous showcases for the group's unison work.

In an arabesque, what is the dancer doing?

The word literally means 'in Arabic fashion'; the supporting foot can be flat, on demi-pointe or en pointe.

Which term names the long horizontal leap in which the dancer performs a split in mid-air?

It starts from one leg and lands on the other, essentially a moving grand écart.

What is the bow or curtsy performed at the end of a ballet class or performance called?

In class it acknowledges the teacher and the pianist; after a performance it may be a choreographed bow in character.

What is the waist-height rail that dancers hold during warm-up exercises called?

Teachers insist it is for balance, not support; portable versions can be wheeled into any studio.

Which ballerina's gauzy white skirt in La Sylphide in 1832 became known as the Romantic tutu?

Designed by Eugene Lami, it was cut to reveal her ankles, and modern Romantic tutus are still based on it.

Who won the Best Actress Oscar for playing the Swan Queen ballerina in Black Swan (2010)?

Director Darren Aronofsky saw the film as a companion piece to The Wrestler, both about punishing performances.

The 1948 ballet film The Red Shoes, starring Moira Shearer, is based on a fairy tale by whom?

Powell and Pressburger built a full ballet of the same title into the film's plot; Brian Easdale's score won an Oscar.

Billy Elliot, the 2000 film about a boy who takes up ballet, is set during which British event?

Jamie Bell was 14 when he became the youngest winner of the BAFTA for Best Actor in a Leading Role.

Whom did Louis XIV appoint director of the Académie Royale de Musique in 1672?

Pierre Beauchamp served as Lully's ballet-master; the Paris Opera Ballet grew out of the institution.

Which 1760 book by Jean-Georges Noverre shifted ballet's emphasis from costumes to movement and emotion?

Its reforms eventually shortened ballerina skirts into knee-length tutus that showed off pointe work.

Which 1928 Balanchine work does scholar Tim Scholl call the first neoclassical ballet?

Balanchine later brought modern dancers such as Paul Taylor into his company for Episodes in 1959.

Which teacher created the Russian training method after retiring from dance in 1916?

She began teaching at the Leningrad Choreographic School in 1921; the school now bears her name.

The Bournonville method, prized for producing dancers with 'ballon', comes from which country?

August Bournonville trained under his father Antoine and French masters, and ballon means the illusion of weightless lightness.

The Royal Academy of Dance method, or English style, was established in which year?

Its founders included Adeline Genée, Tamara Karsavina, Phyllis Bedells, Edouard Espinosa and Philip Richardson.

Which choreographer created Push Comes to Shove for American Ballet Theatre in 1976?

A decade later she made In the Upper Room for her own company, cementing her place in contemporary ballet.

Which contemporary choreographer's company is called New Adventures?

His all-male Swan Lake is the company's signature; Alonzo King runs LINES Ballet and Forsythe has The Forsythe Company.

The word ballet ultimately traces back to a Greek verb meaning what?

It reached French via the Italian balletto, a diminutive of ballo, and the Latin ballare.