6 - The rise of ballet technique and training: the professionalisation of an art form

Summary

On any given morning of the year, if you were to ask a ballet dancer, “What are you going to do today?” the answer most probably would be, “First, I'll take class.” “Taking class” means the daily regimen of formalised exercises to refine, strengthen, maintain, and prepare the dancer's body for performance. This is the leçon or lesson – a process based on a codified, although ever-evolving, academic theatrical dance technique, done under the supervision of a ballet instructor. This chapter will discuss early ballet technique and training, with particular focus on developments in the eighteenth century, when the codification, the instruction, the academies and the performing companies – the professionalisation of ballet – became well established, setting the tone for decades to come and influencing the art into our own day.

At the outset, it is important to acknowledge that the historical traces of the development of ballet technique and training, as well as of ballet repertoire, are relatively rare. Unlike its sister arts, music and drama, ballet did not develop a comprehensive and universally accepted way to leave written or notated records capable of reflecting the complexities of its technique and choreographies, although in the early eighteenth century there was one valiant attempt at notation. Prior to the early nineteenth century, there were no detailed accounts of systematised training practices for professional dancers, although there are many tangential sources about training exercises from earlier periods and many later sources for corroborative material.