The Sleeping Beauty of Ballet Ballet began in the royal courts of France and has influenced the politics, economy, socialization, innovation, art, and culture globally resulting in the art to become a cultural continuity into the twenty-first-century. But how does ballet affect a society? Beginning in the sixteenth century ballet began to impact economics, politics, and society within Europe, especially France.
Sixteenth-century France contained civil and religious conflicts: so the French kings drew from the deep traditions of Italian Renaissance thoughts of arts and spectacle, as a way to sooth passions and calm violence. Ballet as a consequence became a political, religious, and cultural tool. Theatrical events specifically were also used…show more content… Beauchamps failed to receive permission for the king to give his work to the press, and his system was taken and published by Parisian ballet master, Raoul Auger Feuillet. Feuillet’s notation became widely influential, it went into translation of English and German and used for many years across Europe well into the eighteenth century. Ballet which began in court, primarily royal courts of this time was a “calculated mixture of art, politics, and entertainment; its chief purpose was to glorify the State, which could be symbolized, as in the time of Louis XIV, by the reigning monarch.” It served as a secular and religious function; combining pleasure and politics, as it so happened to exist primarily for the ruling class. Patriarchy was also eminent in the beginnings of ballet. La belle danse a type of social dance presented patriarchy in a very confusing form. Women were not performers and so they’re dancing was limited to social balls or at the queen’s ball, at a king’s ball men performed the female role en travesty. Later toward the 1680s, this would change, but as of now men were seen as the lead and prominent figure of the art. Ballet also had hierarchies, since not all bodies were considered equal. “Graduation, inequality, and difference,” were natural things to have occurred in ballet–in society as in the physical world–some people’s bodies were considered to be “higher” and a better fit to perform the noble style, than other people. Ballet also dealt into the fashion aspects of art. Roman dress was regarded as the highest and most noble, thus the reason why Louis XIV often appeared as a Roman emperor. The idea was not to be