Sleeping Beauty Ballet

The first experience of watching a ballet, for me or any little girl, can be fascinating and exhilarating. Wondering how a dancer can be so steady on her toes as she spins in circles and leaps through the air. Watching a ballet, there is a feeling of wanting to be graceful, as well as the warm sensation felt by a little girl as she slips into dream land. My mom had taken me to my first ballet when I was 11 years old. When we returned home home, she signed me up for classes at the local dance center. The expectations to become a prima ballerina would involve much hard work and concentration. I knew when I started it would take years of steady practice and commitment. Learning the history of ballet and the famous

In modern times, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet, The Nutcracker, is a Christmas classic. With memorable songs and beautiful instrumentation, many cannot imagine Christmas without it. Dance companies perform the ballet year after year with spectators coming to watch annually. There have even been LGBT, hip hop, and Jewish adaptations to the popular ballet (Begley). Thousands of musicians and dancers all over the world perform it to add to the excitement and cheer of the holidays.

While observing this dance ballet, there were many things that caught my attention. First, the theater itself was extremely large, and the stage itself was big, and the dancers had plenty of room to move across the stage and perform their routines. There were many dancers, and they all played various roles that ranged from Clara, Fritz, Herr Drosselmeyer, the Rat King, the Nutcracker, the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Cavalier, and many more. All of the performers wore vivid costumes

The short story/essay “Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self” written by Alice Walker demonstrates the story of Alice accepting herself despite her flaws. As a child, Alice is a pretty, outgoing, and messy girl; but that all changes in a matter of seconds. Alice loses sight in one of her eyes, changing her perspective on life for a majority of her life. She went from the outgoing girl whom everybody seems to love, to the girl that doesn’t look up anymore in fear people will see her messed up eye. Growing up in 1947 with her family, she is not a rich child, in fact, almost dirt poor, so her parents can’t afford a car to take her to the hospital, contributing to her losing sight in her eye. Although she tells her parents a reason causing her to injure her eye, it is a lie, so that she is able to protect her siblings from becoming in trouble. Alice Walker demonstrates a theme of lying to protect siblings in her life which I can relate to because I oftenly as a child had to lie to protect my siblings as well.

The story of Sleeping Beauty is told in many different forms and is most famous from Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. For example, the fairytale “The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood” by Charles Perrault is quite different than Disney 's version. This fairytale should be researched because it has an interesting historical background and it is still culturally relevant to this day. The three main points that will be discussed about Sleeping Beauty in this paper is historical background, the different ways this fairytale is represented, and the cultural significance this story has on society. Researching this story has opened my eyes that the Sleeping Beauty movie I

Which choreographer created several famous full length ballets, including Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, and The Nutcracker?

Another one of the main differences between Russian ballets and Balanchine ballets are the people or items of importance that might inspire a ballet to be created. There are so many ballets that have been inspired by things like old folklores or ancient fairy-tales. These ballets are likely to be of Russian origin. Many ballets such as Cinderella, The Sleeping Beauty, or even The Nutcracker are just few of the many examples of Russian originated ballets based on fairy-tales. “Petipa’s later works showed the way to much of the innovation of the future, and the choreography and pedagogy of Balanchine (though carried on primarily in the United States) represent the most important creative response to the legacy of Petipa’s nineteenth-century ballet academy - and the most significant twentieth-century development of Russian ballet traditions.” (Scholl 2) However, Balanchine was not so quick to rely on thing such as old stories or folkloric tales. Many of Balanchine’s ballets rely on the things that were around

Whether we look at a romantic ballet like La Sylphide or a classical ballet such as Sleeping Beauty, audiences are constantly mesmerized by the gracefulness and weightlessness of the ballet dancers. They seem to defy the laws of physics, which is greatly possible due to the use of the pointe shoe. However, many masterworks that were created in the Romantic era did not solely rely on the pointe shoe to help convey messages. Instead, the choreography, dancers, scenic elements, subject matter, and music all helped shaped masterworks such as La Sylphide, Napoli, and Giselle. Similarly, in the Classical era, these elements all played a role in shaping famous ballets like La Bayadere, Sleeping Beauty, and Swan Lake. But once we take a closer look at these ballets from the Classical era, we can see how much ballet evolved. Nevertheless, it is important to note that the Romantic era was the stepping stone for this pure art form that we have been able to preserve for more than 160 years.

The New York City Ballet conducted a dance performance titled “New Beginnings” on the 57th floor of the Four World Trade Center in New York. The performance took place September 12th, 2013 and was intended to commemorate September 11th, 2001. A tragic event, such as September 11th, tends to leave a bitter taste in one 's mouth. The public is generally heartbroken, angry, and distressed. This performance seeks to influence the general US audience by using dance as a means of changing the perception of the aftermath of disaster. By following a narrative structure, the dance performance begins by setting the scene of New York City. The performance is then followed with analogies through dance designed to provide moments of action, climax, and resolution. The New York City Ballet uses pathos and an instance of logos through movements to enforce their attempt to alter one’s perspective. There is plenty of pathos used throughout the dance performance in order to motivate a change in thinking from the audience. I believe this strategy was extremely effective because by influencing how the audience emotionally reacts to the performance there is more likely to be a change in audience perception. The ballet incorporates inductive reasoning by taking the specific situation of September 11th and implying that, after tragedy, we will ultimately have a “new beginning”. I believe the logical appeal of this implication is effective because the audience is naturally inclined to believe if

Giselle is one of the few many famous ballets still know in the ballet world today. A little about this ballet is a peasant girl in a village

French Ballet began in the 17th century. It was a flamboyant entertainment presented in front of the aristocracy and royalty in the courts. French Ballet was also performed when they were celebrating marriages and showing off the wealth and power of the ruler. Besides, Ballet was called “la belle danse”, and it means “the beautiful dance.” In order to help the audience to recognize the characters in the story, dancers usually wore extravagant costumes. Moreover, the idea of different ballet movements was based on the social dance of royal courts, like beautiful arm and upper body movements and floor patterns were included. Also, in the beginning, only men were allowed to dance ballet, and women played the first ballet with parts until 1681.

We have often seen numerous folktales that appear to be similar among different cultures. Often at times, the characters or locations change to accommodate the surrounding culture, but the message or moral of the story stays the same. In the case of the story, Sleeping Beauty, we notice that the earlier versions of the story are more crude and “adult” and as time passed on, the story evolved to become more suitable for a younger audience. Sleeping Beauty became a story of “rape, adultery, sexual rivalry, and attempted cannibalism” (Hallett, 1) to the clean and innocent Disney version we know today. The three versions of Sleeping Beauty that I will compare are Sole, Luna, E Talia (Sun, Moon, And Talia) by Giambattista Basile, The Sleeping

The Russian National Ballet was founded in 1989 by Sergei Radchenko, former star of the Bolshoi Ballet. Radchenko and his wife, who run the company together, decided to tour in smaller groups, to reach audiences in smaller cities around the globe and bring beautiful ballet to everyone. Founded when Russia was known as the USSR, the company was government owned, but allowed Sergei, an honored artist, to start and operate the company. Sergei and his wife, Elena found success with this company, and opened The Moscow Festival Ballet, allowing them to tour and perform all over the world. Some of their repertoire includes “Don Quixote,” “Cinderella,” “Coppelia,” and of course, “Sleeping Beauty,” performed March 4, 2017 at the State Theatre of New

The Sleeping Beauty by Tchaikovsky is another ballet that is based on a fairy tale, and was first presented to the Tsar of Russia.

The original story by Giambattista differs from Disney’s new interpretation in that it explores rape. In Disney’s version of sleeping beauty the princess named Aurora is awakened from a true loves kiss. The story is told to children all over the world and is seen as appropriate for them. The original version of this story involves Talia, the princess, being raped. The Prince laid the dead princess on her bed “where he gathered the first fruits of love” (Basile). This version of the story is grossly inappropriate for today’s modern generation of children and is far from the happy ending we are used to. Fairy tales where not originally intended on being entertainment for children however through constant revisions they seemed to target their imagination, essentially causing them to be successful tales. Clearly the earlier version of sleeping beauty contains ideas that are not yet suitable for