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Ballet: The Nutcracker And The Sleeping Beauty

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What is ballet to you? Ballet is not just dancers twirling around on the tips of their toes, it's more to it. There are actually many different styles and techniques. “They sometimes tell stories, contain narrative action, characters, and a beginning and end. The Nutcracker and The Sleeping Beauty are famous story ballets from the 19th century” (“Types and Styles of Ballet”). Dance itself is a chain of measured and pattern bodily movements that are usually performed to differents types of music. It is a form of art that is performed in many cultures by people to express themselves and their ideas through movement. Dance is a profession for some and a passion for others. Ballet is so popular because not only was it the first type of dance to …show more content…
This professional style of dance developed from performance to concert dance and is being taught all around the world in different dance schools. Classical ballet is a very complex and disciplined style of ballet that involves detailed core techniques that are practiced by dancers everywhere.’ Alignment’ is the first technique and this refers to the dancer keeping their head, shoulders, and hips in a straight line. ‘Pointe’ technique involves dancing on the tips of fully extended toes. Last is the ‘turnout’ which refers to movement with the legs facing outward, this makes clean footwork. These techniques are also used as a substructure in other dance styles such as neo-classical ballet, contemporary ballet, and modern …show more content…
Contemporary ballet assimilates parts of classical and modern dance. This style not only includes the Pointe, turnout, and alignment techniques to make the work look clean, but it also allows a great span of movement to the upper parts of the body. The movements are not as restricted as the precise movements of classical ballet. The category is very broad and surrounds many different choreographies.

An example of this style of ballet is the Steptext by William Forsythe. The construction of this piece is very different, it may or may not have a plot or music, it could just be noise. The piece is an essay partly on dancers partnering. “It demonstrates a constant realigning of weight and balance between dancers that make explicit the muscular tensions that ballet usually masks” (R. Sulcas). The dancers who perform this type of dance usually do a lot of floor work, and they dance either with pointe ballet shoes or bare feet accentuated by a baby doll dress and dance shorts to flow with their

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