Fun facts about the most popular Ballet shows in the world

Today I want to take this opportunity to tell you some curiosities & fun facts about the 3 most popular ballet shows in the world and also the most trending on Google. Let’s see if you can find the similarities and differences between these 3:

Giselle:

• This masterpiece was written by Theophile Gautier, who read and was inspired by Heinrich Heine’s book “De l’Allemagne”, which was about a German legend that told the story of brides who died before marriage, and their spirits called their boyfriends to the forest to dance till death.
• The hairstyle of the main dancer, Giselle, became a Parisian success in 1841, where the salons were crowded by women desiring to have the same hairstyle.
• It was the most famous ballet during romanticism and a great success at the Paris Opera, but it was not the first one. The first ballet was La Sylphide, which also inspired Giselle’s libretto.
• The person who turned this ballet into the success it is today was the ballerina Carlota Grisi.
• The one who accompanied Giselle (Carlota Grisi), as Albrecht, was Lucien Petipa.
• The music was made in only three weeks, and its composer was Adolph Adam.
• Only some of the original musical compositions are still preserved.
• The Sylphide was the first ballet to be danced on the tips of the toes, but only the first dancer, Marie Taglioni, did it. It was with Giselle where the entire cast of a ballet danced in pointe slippers.
• The world premiere of Giselle’s ballet was at the Paris Opera in 1840.
• It has an Afro version! It was choreographed in 1984 by Arthur Mitchell, the first African-American soloist of the New York City Ballet.

Swan Lake:

• In the era of romanticism in Russia, a famous German legend, Swan Queen, was well known. That’s where the Swan Lake fairy tale came from.
• It was the first ballet piece composed by Tchaikovsky.
  The Russian aristocracy of the time loved ballet, so they asked for this piece to be done, and it was then that the Bolshoi theater in Moscow paid for it to be written.

• In 1877 Julius Reisinger created the first version of the choreography.
• Swan Lake was the first symphonic ballet.
• Being part of Swan Lake required not only great technical skills in dance but also anatomical requirements, which ones? They had to be tall, have a long neck, small head, and perfect legs and arms, all in order to give the aesthetic sensation of looking like swans. Some well-known dancers with these features are: Ulyana Lopatkina, Cosmina Maria Sobota Zaharia, Lucia Macíková, and Nina Poláková.
• Act 3 of the play is famous for Odile’s 32 fouettés, a real feat in the world of ballet, a very difficult challenge to achieve. What few know is that this was not part of the original work, it was an idea included by Tchaikovsky later.
  In the version choreographed by Petipa in 1895, Pierina Legnani was the first dancer to play Odile and Odette, who put the bar of both roles.
• The first show, on March 4, 1877, was a failure, even critics thought that the music composed by Tchaikovsky was too noisy.
• Marius Petipa, a French choreographer, was the one who revived this iconic dance, after the death of Tchaikovsky

The Nutcracker:

• The Nutcracker ballet is based on the story: The Nutcracker and the King of Mice, the work of Hoffman, but the literary version is much darker and bloodier than the reproduction of the ballet
• In Germany, they usually give children a wooden nutcracker at Christmas because they believe that this figure protects homes from danger and evil spirits, and brings luck to families. Fanaticism is so much that in 2008 they won a Guinness Record with the largest Nutcracker, it measures 10.10 meters.
• With the choreography of George Balanchine in 1945 it began to gain popularity and has become the most performed version to date, but its premiere was at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia, on December 18, 1892.
• The Nutcracker has become a must in the Christmas season, since the 1960s.
  For “The dance of the fairy of the sugar plum” Tchaikovsky used a celesta, which he had smuggled from Russia to Paris, to give a different sound to the act. But, at the premiere the play did not go well, they mocked and Tchaikovsky’s musical compositions were judged too simple and easy.
• Every December, more than 450 works of this same show are prepared, in the United States alone.
  On December 18, 2012, in commemoration of the 120th anniversary, Google dedicated a special doodle of its logo to celebrate it.
• There is a museum dedicated to Nutcracker with more than 6,000 figures. Do you want to go? It remains in Leavenworth, Washington (United States)
• His melodies are part of romanticism, and the well-known ones: “The Flute Dance” and the “Candy Fairy Waltz” to this day are used in advertisements and movies, some well known as: Nutcracker: The Movie (1986), The Nutcracker Prince (1990),
• Barbie in the Nutcracker (2001) or The Nutcracker in 3D (2010).
  In the 2005 episode Simpsons Christmas Stories, the characters of the famous series sang and danced the ballet

Ballet has been the starting point for all the rhythms that exist today, no matter how different they seem, its bases are in the movements of classical dance per excellence, because ballet does not only understand ballet, it understands the body in motion, so if you have thought that dancing is not your thing and that ballet is very difficult, today I want to leave you a Ballet Fit routine that will teach you the point & flex step to start noticing the changes in your body and mood.

You can also read: “Secrets Behind Choreographies”