Although ballet is usually thought of as a female art form, in its early days, only men were allowed to dance on stage. When ballet moved out of the palaces of Louis XIV of France and onto stages, when dancers became professional and not mere noble amateurs, all the dancers were men. Female roles were taken by youths as they were in Shakespeare’s plays.
In 1681, in the opera-ballet Le Triomphe de l’Amour, Mlle de Lafontaine led three other female dancers on stage and became the first in a long line of famous ballerinas. Mlle de Lafontaine and her friends were French dancers, who learnt their art from the teachers at the Académie Royale. The dancing they did was not very complicated mainly because of the long heavy dresses and healed shoes they wore. Costumes like this made it impossible for them to jump or turn. So if dancing was to develop, some changes had to be made.
Luckily, at this time two exceptional ballerinas appeared at the Paris Opéra. Marie Camargo was a dancer with a brilliant technique. She was particularly noted for her entrechat, a sparkling jump in which the dancer’s feet cross repeatedly while she is in the air. But on stage the length of her dresses made the step impossible to see. So, Camargo did what at the time was a scandalous thing, she shortened her skirt by several inches and took the heels off her shoes. This allowed female dancers to develop a technique to match the men, and incidentally, now that their feet could be seen, it made them more careful about the neatness of their footwork.
Her rival, Marie Sallé, while also strong technically, was a dramatic ballerina. She also instituted reforms in costumes. When she appeared as a Greek goddess who came to life in Pygmalion, a ballet which she choreographed in London in 1734, she discarded the usual wig and cumbersome costume and appeared in a simple muslin robe with her hair hanging loosely over her shoulders. The reasons behind the changes these dancers made, exemplify two different approaches to the art of dance that we see even today. Camargo wished to make her technical accomplishments more visible and Sallé wanted to portray her dramatic character as convincingly as possible.
Two ballerinas of the Romantic era also came to represent these two rival aspects of dance. Marie Taglioni, a dancer who developed the art of dancing on the tips of the toes to new heights, is the person who gave us the popular image of a ballerina as a tall willowy creature in a long white tutu who seems to fly through the air with effortless ease and then alights into a graceful pose on the tips of her toes. She was a chaste dancer and excelled in ballets about sylphs, wilis and other fairies.
The other dancer was Fanny Elssler. She had great dramatic intensity and preferred to dance roles that showed off her virtuosity. Her specialty was Spanish dances that she brought to life with her warmth and passion. Both of these ballerinas travelled extensively, were wined and dined by kings and emperors and were even carried through the streets by their devoted fans. And, incidentally, the more famous they became the more secondary became the roles of their male partners.
With the development of pointe work in the late 19th Century, ballet technique continued to evolve. The emphasis of female dancing shifted from effortless lyricism to powerful virtuosity. The Romantic bell-shaped tutu was replaced by shorter and shorter skirts to show off not only the footwork but also the legs of a new generation of dancers. The centre of ballet had also changed; it was now in Russia where visiting Italian ballerinas vied with Russian ones in feats of technical brilliance.
During the late 1800s, Russia produced lavish ballet spectacles that centred around the talents of these ballerinas. The Petipa ballets, Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and Nutcracker, introduced the Grand Pas de Deux, and demanded ever more brilliance from the dancers. This was when the famous 32 fouettes (turns in which the raised leg simultaneously whips out and in) was first seen. The ballerinas who at that time were amazing audiences with their technique were the Italians Pierina Legnani (the first Swan Queen), Carlotta Brianza (the first Aurora), Antoinetta Dell-Era (the first Sugar Plum Fairy) and the Russian stars Mathilde Kchessinska and Olga Preobrazhenska.
The early 20th Century saw the rise to stardom of a Russian dancer who became a household name throughout the world: Anna Pavlova. Remembered for her lyricism and beauty, her famous Dying Swan made her a legend wherever she danced. And that includes Australia, where thousands of Australians fell under her spell. Equally loved were three Russian stars, who toured Australia with the Colonel De Basil Ballets Russes. They were called the “baby ballerinas” because they were made principal dancers at the age of 14 - Irina Baronova and Tamara Toumanova - and at 16 - Tatiana Riabouchinska.
Here in Australia our home grown ballerinas began to come to prominence during the life of the Borovansky Ballet. To list just a few: Edna Busse, Laurel Martyn, Dorothy Stevenson, Peggy Sager, Rachel Cameron plus Kathleen Gorham and Marilyn Jones who were the first stars of the young Australian Ballet; and not to be forgotten, Lynne Golding who danced Odette/Odile in the first Australian production of the full-length Swan Lake for the National Theatre Ballet.
More recently The Australian Ballet’s ballerinas have been - Elaine Fifield, Lucette Aldous, Barbara Chambers, Kathleen Geldard, Marilyn Rowe, Michela Kirkaldie, Christine Walsh, Lisa Pavane, Vicki Attard, Lisa Bolte, Miranda Coney, Justine Summers and the current stars of the company Lucinda Dunn, Kirsty Martin, Rachel Rawlins and Lynette Wills. All of these ballerinas are linked to this long and glorious past. A past that illuminates their dancing today and points us towards a truly exciting future.
