ballet de cour

The tradition & historical record

Ballet de cour ("court ballet") is the name given to ballets performed in the 16th and 17th centuries at courts. The court ballet was a gathering of noblemen and women, as the cast and audience were largely supplied by the ruling class. The festivities, which were descendants of festivals, processions and mummeries dating back to the Middle Ages, looked more like a modern-day parade, than what people today would identify as a ballet performance. Where early court ballet differed from its predecessors, is that it was a secular, not religious happening. It was a carefully crafted mixture of art, socializing, and politics, with its primary objective being to exalt the State. Because these celebrations occurred long before the proscenium stage had been invented, and were instead executed in large halls with audience members stacked up on three sides of the performance, early court ballet's choreography was constructed as a series of patterns and geometric shapes that were intended to be viewed from overhead. Once the performance was through, the audience was encouraged to join the dancers on the floor to participate in a "ball" which was designed to bring everyone in the hall into unanimity with the ideas expressed by the piece. As they developed through time, court ballets began to introduce comedy, went through a phase where they poked fun at manners and affectations of the time, and they moved into a phase where they became enamoured with pantomime. ¹

Ballet des Polonais was one of the first works to be recognized as a true court ballet. The spectacle was commissioned by Catherine de’ Medici in 1573 to celebrate the election of her second son, Henry of Anjou, as King of Poland. Performed at the Tuileries Palace and organized by the Italian dancing master, Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx, the hour-long ballet consisted of sixteen amateur French ladies representing the sixteen provinces of France. Describing it as the most beautiful ballet ever made on earth, the court observer Brantôme recounted that they "danced their ballet so curiously designed, with so many turns, swerves, and sinuosities, interlacings and minglings, confrontations and withdrawals, that [it was surprising that] no lady ever failed to be at her appointed turn or place." Although its combination of verse, song and dance had been used before, the intricate figure dancing involved in the Ballet des Polonais marked the beginning of the French style that would become the dominant continental school over the next century. The first ballet de cour to fuse dance, poetry, music and design into a coherent dramatic statement was the Ballet Comique de la Reine, performed in 1581. As part of the wedding celebration for the queen's sister, Marguerite of Lorraine and the Duc de Joyeuse, the plot based on Ulysses’ encounter with Circe was symbolic of the country's desire to heal old wounds and restore peace after religious civil wars. Reaching new heights in scale and diversity, the lavish five-hour production included a three tiered fountain, palace, garden, townscape, and chariot-floats. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Ballet de cour”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

ballet de cour is type of dance, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 9 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²