Romantic Ballet

The romantic ballet appears at the beginning of the 19th century (romantic period), and succeeds the Ballet of action whose Jean-Georges Noverre was the large theorist. The period of the romantic ballet lasts about thirty years, of 1815 with 1845 - 1850.

The Romanticism, appeared at the end of the 18th century in Germany (Goethe and Schiller) and in Great Britain (Walter Scott and Lord Byron), is spread in all Europe at the beginning of the 19th century and touches the France under the Restauration, with authors like Madam de Staël, Châteaubriand or Lamartine, in particular. In music, Beethoven is one of its pioneers.

One new era opens and the Danse is not saved: all the artists dream of a revolutionary art removed from the demons of the Ancien Mode, of a new breath, lyric, exotic, fairy-like, sensual.

Of passage to Paris in 1815, coming from Russia, a disciple of Noverre, Charles Didelot, presents Flore and Zéphire to the Opéra: the dancers Albert and M {{lle}} Gosselin fly on the scene, fixed on steel wire. It is a shock for the public which discovers for the first time an air dance, éthérée. Miss Gosselin had already innovated two years before while going up on the points.

The romantic ballet gradually gives up the myths of the ancient Greece to turn to the Scandinavian Mythologie populated Elfe S, of Ondine S, Troll S. It is the reign of the pale and éthérée Danseuse, incarnating the nostalgia and the Spleen, equipped with vaporous and crowned muslin flowers of the fields. The dancer is, as for him, tiny room to the role of “carrier”, emphasizing the grace and the delicacy of his partner.

The first great romantic ballet is the Sylphid , created with the Opéra of Paris the March 12th 1832 by Filippo Taglioni for his/her daughter Marie. It is the apotheosis of the white ballet which will triumph during thirty years.

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