DominikaR

Fouetté - A female turn  À la seconde - A male turn Plié -  A plié is when a dancer is basically bending at the knees. Relevé - A position in which the dancer rises from any position to  balance  on one or both feet  Passé -  Passé is a movement in ballet in which one leg passes the standing leg, sliding close to the knee. The leg ends up in a bent position making a triangle shape. Pirouette - A classical ballet term meaning “spin.”  It describes when a dancer is turning around one leg with the other off the ground and in a position, most commonly in passé. Grand jeté - A split jump Arabesque - A  position where the body is supported on one leg, with the other leg extended directly behind the body with a straight knee. Chaînés - A classical ballet term that means “chains” or “links.” It's a  series of turns on both feet, picking up each foot back and forth in order to keep moving in a line or circle. These are the five position...

On this blog I'm going to write about dance. The posts will be mainly about different styles of dance, some famous dancers, the history of it and other dance related things.  Since ballet is the foundation of all technical dance forms, I've decided that my first post should be about ballet. Ballet was invented in 1459 in Italy for a royal wedding, however, it became more popular in the 1700s in France when King Louis XIV appeared on a stage as a dancer. His teacher, Pierre Beuchamp was a director of the first ballet training school in Paris and an inventor of the concept of "turnout" which is now known as "five classical positions of the feet". The official terminology and vocabulary of ballet was gradually codified in French over the next 100 years.  In the beginnings of ballet  dance steps were just small hops, slides, curtsies, promenades, and gentle turns.  Dancing en pointe was made popular in the 1830s by Marie Taglioni. Fun fact:  After Marie...