100 Fun Facts About Ballet

In the Renaissance courts of which country did ballet begin before spreading to France?

Italy's Renaissance courts staged it at lavish noble weddings, danced by the courtiers themselves in court dress, long before tutus or pointe shoes existed.

Which queen of France is credited with importing court ballet from her homeland?

Catherine de' Medici's court staged the Ballet Comique de la Reine under her auspices in 1581; often called the first court ballet, it began a long French tradition.

Which French king founded the Académie Royale de Danse in 1661?

Louis XIV founded the dance academy in March 1661, the very month he took personal control of France after his chief minister died; he had danced in court ballets himself as a teenager.

How many basic positions of the feet does classical ballet recognise?

Five positions, each with the legs turned out from the hips, were codified in the late 1600s by dancing master Pierre Beauchamp, and ballet steps still start and finish in one of them.

Which composer wrote the music for Swan Lake?

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky did not live to see Swan Lake triumph: the first production was not a success, he died in 1893, and only the 1895 St Petersburg staging made it a classic.

In Swan Lake, what is the name of the princess turned into a swan by a sorcerer's curse?

Odette and Odile, the sorcerer's daughter who tricks the prince into betraying her, are usually danced by the same ballerina in one of ballet's great dual roles.

How many consecutive fouetté turns does the Black Swan famously perform in Act 3 of Swan Lake?

32 fouettés were Pierina Legnani's showpiece: she astonished St Petersburg with them in Cinderella in 1893, and the feat was then written into Swan Lake.

The Nutcracker is set on which night?

Christmas Eve at a family party opens the story. Its composer thought little of the score, writing that the ballet was 'infinitely worse' than his Sleeping Beauty.

Which instrument gives the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy its delicate, tinkling sound?

Celesta: the composer came across the newly invented instrument in 1891 and at once asked his publisher to order one for the ballet.

Whose short story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King is the ultimate source of the ballet?

E. T. A. Hoffmann's 1816 tale is darker than the ballet, which follows Alexandre Dumas's lighter retelling; along the way the heroine Marie became Clara.

Which West Coast company gave the first complete American performance of The Nutcracker, in 1944?

San Francisco Ballet's Willam Christensen staged it, then moved to Utah and founded Ballet West, which has kept his version in its repertoire.

Which Disney film set The Nutcracker's music to dancing fairies, fish and flowers?

Fantasia reached cinemas in 1940, when the complete ballet had never been staged in the United States: its first full American production came four years later.

In Giselle, the Wilis are the vengeful ghosts of whom?

Maidens jilted by their lovers, the Wilis dance men to death, but Giselle shields Albrecht until the hour their power fades.

Who composed the music for Giselle, first performed in 1841?

Adolphe Adam, who also wrote the carol O Holy Night, worked at speed: Giselle reached the stage about two months after he began the score.

In The Sleeping Beauty, which fairy is the villain who curses Princess Aurora?

Carabosse curses baby Aurora over a snub: she was left off the christening guest list. A man, Enrico Cecchetti, first danced the role in 1890.

Which composer's 1935 Romeo and Juliet ballet was originally written with a happy ending for the lovers?

Sergei Prokofiev first let the lovers live, then restored Shakespeare's ending; Soviet theatres shelved the ballet anyway, and it premiered abroad, in Brno, in 1938.

Coppélia, the 1870 comic ballet with music by Léo Delibes, centres on what?

A life-size dancing doll so lifelike that village boy Franz falls for it, until his sweetheart Swanilda cures him by dressing up as the doll herself.

Which French Impressionist is best known for his paintings and sculptures of ballet dancers?

Edgar Degas showed only one sculpture in his lifetime, the wax Little Dancer of 1881, which he dressed in a real cloth tutu and real hair.

Which part of her costume is 18th-century ballet star Marie Camargo credited with shortening?

The skirt: Camargo is credited with raising her hem to calf length so audiences could see her fast footwork, and with swapping heeled shoes for slippers.

What is the stiffened front section of a pointe shoe that encases the toes called?

The box ends in the small flat platform a dancer stands on, yet in a traditional shoe it is built up from layers of fabric and paper stiffened with glue.

Which impresario founded the Ballets Russes, the company that ran from 1909 to 1929?

Sergei Diaghilev recruited stars from Russia's imperial theatres, yet despite its name the company never once performed in Russia.

Whose score for The Rite of Spring caused a sensation at its 1913 premiere?

Igor Stravinsky's score outlived its first staging: the original choreography vanished after a handful of performances, until the Joffrey Ballet rebuilt it in 1987.

Which dancer choreographed the 1913 Rite of Spring and 1912's L'après-midi d'un faune for the Ballets Russes?

Vaslav Nijinsky, famed for leaps that seemed to hang in the air, left the stage while still in his twenties after a breakdown that was diagnosed as schizophrenia.

Which fashion designer costumed the 1924 beach ballet Le Train Bleu?

Coco Chanel dressed the Ballets Russes cast in sportswear: the ballet shows swimmers and tennis players at play on the fashionable French Riviera.

The Dying Swan, the solo that made a Russian ballerina famous, is danced to music by whom?

Camille Saint-Saëns wrote it as The Swan, the one movement of his jokey Carnival of the Animals that he allowed to be published in his lifetime.

A meringue-based dessert popular in Australia and New Zealand is named after which ballerina?

Anna Pavlova toured Australia and New Zealand in the 1920s, and the two countries have argued ever since over which of them first made the dessert in her honour.

Rudolf Nureyev defected from the Soviet Union in 1961 at an airport in which city?

Paris's Le Bourget airport was the scene: told to fly home to Moscow instead of on to London, he slipped his Soviet minders and asked the French for asylum.

Where was Rudolf Nureyev born during his mother's long journey?

On a Trans-Siberian train near Lake Baikal: his mother was travelling to Vladivostok, where his father, a Red Army political commissar, was posted.

What French term names a complete spin of the body on one foot, a staple of ballet?

Pirouette: to keep from getting dizzy, dancers 'spot', fixing their eyes on one point and whipping the head round last.

Which British ballerina, Nureyev's partner, was named prima ballerina assoluta of the Royal Ballet?

Margot Fonteyn was 42 to his 23 when they first danced Giselle together in 1962, and the ovation that night launched their celebrated partnership.

Mikhail Baryshnikov defected to the West in 1974 while on tour in which Canadian city?

Toronto was where he slipped away from his Soviet tour and won asylum in Canada; he left to dance the modern Western ballets he was barred from at home.

Baryshnikov earned an Oscar nomination for which 1977 film?

The Turning Point collected 11 Oscar nominations, his for supporting actor among them, and lost every one, a record later matched by The Color Purple.

Misty Copeland became the first Black woman principal dancer at which New York company in 2015?

American Ballet Theatre promoted her in its 75th year; she had not taken a ballet class until she was 13, a very late start for a professional.

Which ballerina created the title role in Balanchine's Firebird in 1949?

Maria Tallchief, raised on the Osage reservation in Oklahoma, was Balanchine's muse, and he built the role around her speed and energy.

Which company did George Balanchine and patron Lincoln Kirstein found together in 1948?

New York City Ballet came second: Balanchine is said to have told Kirstein 'But first, a school', and their School of American Ballet opened within months of his arrival in 1933.

Marius Petipa shaped Russian ballet for nearly 60 years, but in which French port city was he born?

Marseille-born Petipa arrived in St Petersburg as a dancer in 1847 and stayed in Russia for the rest of his life, choreographing for the tsar's theatres.

Which Russian ballet company, with roots in 1776, has a name meaning 'big'?

Bolshoi Ballet took its name in 1825 from Moscow's new Bolshoi Theatre; the Maly Theatre nearby is, by the same logic, the 'small' one.

Which company is regarded as the world's oldest national dance troupe, from which many others descend?

Paris Opera Ballet, with roots in the 1660s, names its top dancers, the étoiles or 'stars', on stage at the end of a performance, with the curtain still up.

Who founded the company that became Britain's Royal Ballet, in 1931?

Ninette de Valois, born Edris Stannus in Ireland, cut back her own dancing at 26 when doctors found undiagnosed childhood polio, and turned to building a company.

Which ballet company did the dancer Arthur Mitchell found in 1969, the year after Martin Luther King's assassination?

Dance Theatre of Harlem began as ballet classes for neighbourhood children, and Mitchell put his own savings into converting a garage as its home.

What is the French ballet term for a smooth bending of the knees with the upper body upright?

Plié means 'bent', and it is far more than a warm-up: it gives every jump its spring and absorbs the shock of the landing.

A ballet's grand pas de deux runs from adagio through solo variations to which finale?

Coda is the Italian word for 'tail': after the supported adagio and a solo each, the two dancers come back together to show off their virtuosity.

What French term names the ensemble that dances as one, like Swan Lake's swans?

Corps de ballet is where most star dancers started out: newcomers learn company life in its ranks before any promotion to solo roles.

In an arabesque, what is the dancer doing?

Balancing on one leg, the other raised behind, draws one long line from fingertips to toes; the pose takes its name from the flowing curves of Moorish ornament.

Which term names the long horizontal leap in which the dancer performs a split in mid-air?

Grand jeté means 'big throw': the dancer throws the front leg forward into the air, pushes off the back one and lands on the front foot.

What is the bow or curtsy performed at the end of a ballet class or performance called?

Révérence ends every class: the dancers bow or curtsy to thank the teacher and the pianist, a courtesy that dancing masters once taught to young nobles.

What is the waist-height rail that dancers hold during warm-up exercises called?

Teachers insist it is for balance, not support; portable versions can be wheeled into any studio.

Which ballerina's gauzy white dress in La Sylphide in 1832 became the model for the Romantic tutu?

Marie Taglioni's father created La Sylphide to show her off, and she danced it on the tips of her toes, then a novelty, fixing the image of the Romantic ballerina.

Who won the Best Actress Oscar for playing the Swan Queen ballerina in Black Swan (2010)?

Natalie Portman met the man she went on to marry on the film: Benjamin Millepied, who choreographed it and danced the prince opposite her.

The 1948 ballet film The Red Shoes, starring Moira Shearer, is based on a fairy tale by whom?

Hans Christian Andersen's tale of red shoes that will not let their wearer stop dancing is staged as a full ballet inside the film, and its score won an Oscar.

Billy Elliot, the 2000 film about a boy who takes up ballet, is set during which British event?

The 1984-85 miners' strike keeps Billy's father and brother on the picket line while he secretly swaps his boxing lessons for ballet class.

Who took charge of France's royal opera, the Académie Royale de Musique, in 1672?

Jean-Baptiste Lully ran French opera for 15 years, until a blow to his own foot from his long conducting staff turned gangrenous and killed him.

Which famous orchestral piece of 1928 began life as a ballet score for the dancer Ida Rubinstein?

Boléro was written for Rubinstein to dance after she asked for music with a Spanish flavour; today it is nearly always heard in the concert hall instead.

Which 1928 ballet on a Greek myth did the 24-year-old Balanchine make for the Ballets Russes?

Apollo was, by Balanchine's own account, where his life changed course: its spare score taught him to pare things back, and he later stripped away its costumes and scenery too.

Which teacher created the Russian training method after retiring from dance in 1916?

Agrippina Vaganova was known as the 'queen of variations' yet won the rank of ballerina only a year before retiring; the school where she taught now bears her name.

The Bournonville method, known for its light, buoyant jumps, comes from which country?

Denmark's Royal Danish Ballet kept Bournonville's works in its repertoire long after his death, which is why his 1836 La Sylphide is among the oldest ballets still danced.

Ballet stars Alicia Alonso and Carlos Acosta both came from which country?

Cuba's Alicia Alonso kept dancing lead roles after eye trouble left her nearly blind, and the company she founded became the Ballet Nacional de Cuba.

Which choreographer created Push Comes to Shove for the newly arrived Baryshnikov in 1976?

Twyla Tharp made it for the recently defected Baryshnikov, setting ballet's new star to a ragtime tune and a Haydn symphony in a mix of ballet and modern dance.

Which British choreographer's 1995 Swan Lake cast men as the swans?

Matthew Bourne's male swans went on to the West End and Broadway, and it is his production the grown-up Billy dances in at the end of the film Billy Elliot.

Which dancewear staple is named after the 19th-century French trapeze star who made it famous?

Leotard: Jules Léotard flew between trapezes in a skin-tight one-piece in the 1860s, and he inspired the song 'The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze'.

Rudolf Nureyev guest-starred on which television series, dancing in a parody called Swine Lake?

The Muppet Show had Nureyev dance Swine Lake in 1978, then sing a duet with Miss Piggy in a sauna.

Mikhail Baryshnikov played the Russian artist Aleksandr Petrovsky in the final season of which HBO series?

Sex and the City cast Baryshnikov as the suitor who woos Carrie Bradshaw relentlessly, a recurring role across its last run of episodes.

Which Hollywood star studied ballet in wartime Arnhem and later at London's Ballet Rambert before taking up acting?

Audrey Hepburn was told that her height and the effects of wartime malnutrition put the rank of prima ballerina out of reach, so she chose acting.

Which French painter made ballet dancers the subject of more than half his works, on stage and in rehearsal?

Edgar Degas painted more ballet scenes from 1870 partly because they sold well, after a brother's debts left his family bankrupt.

Which artist designed the costumes and sets for Parade, the 1917 Ballets Russes work with music by Erik Satie?

Pablo Picasso made some of the Cubist costumes from solid cardboard, which left the dancers able to move only a little.

Which one-piece garment worn in ballet class was made famous by a French trapeze artist in his act?

The leotard honours Jules Léotard, who performed the first flying trapeze routine in 1859 and wanted a streamlined costume for it.

Which pop star wrote the music for the stage musical version of Billy Elliot, the tale of a boy ballet dancer?

Elton John wrote the score, with book and lyrics by Lee Hall, who had written the screenplay of the original film.

In Disney's Fantasia, Hyacinth, the prima ballerina of the ballet Dance of the Hours, is what kind of animal?

A hippo called Hyacinth leads the dance, and Disney's animators drew on real performers for her, among them the dancer Tatiana Riabouchinska.

Bolshoi, the name of Moscow's most famous ballet theatre and company, is the Russian word for what?

Big is the plain meaning, and the theatre for plays that stands nearby is the Maly, which means Small.

For which French actress and former ballet student did Repetto create its Cendrillon flat shoe in 1956?

Brigitte Bardot's flats brought fame to Repetto, a firm that grew from the shoes Rose Repetto stitched for her son, the dancer Roland Petit.

In The Nutcracker, which magician and toymaker, godfather to young Clara, gives her the wooden nutcracker?

Drosselmeyer first amuses the party with four lifelike toys he has made, then produces the nutcracker, which the other children ignore.

In Swan Lake, which daughter of the sorcerer Rothbart is transformed to look like the swan queen and trick the prince?

Odile is now usually danced by the same ballerina as the swan queen, a double role that calls for opposite characters in one evening.

In Giselle, which young nobleman courts the peasant heroine while disguised as a humble villager called Loys?

Albrecht is already engaged to a duke's daughter, and when a rival exposes him Giselle goes mad and dies of heartbreak.

In The Sleeping Beauty, who alters the curse so that Princess Aurora falls into a 100-year sleep instead of dying?

The Lilac Fairy lacks the power to undo the spell completely, and the score gives her and the wicked fairy a musical theme each.

In the ballet Don Quixote, which innkeeper's daughter steals out to meet her beloved, the barber Basilio?

Kitri is promised by her father to the rich nobleman Gamache, so she and Basilio run away with both men in pursuit.

In the Land of Sweets in The Nutcracker, the Spanish Dance traditionally represents which treat?

Chocolate from Spain leads the parade of sweets, ahead of coffee from Arabia, tea from China and candy canes from Russia.

La Sylphide, in which a farmer named James deserts his bride-to-be Effie for a winged sprite, is set in which country?

Scotland is home to the farmer James, and the plot flips the story it borrows, a tale by Nodier of a goblin and a fisherman's wife.

Which Petipa ballet about the doomed lovers Nikiya and Solor contains the celebrated Kingdom of the Shades scene?

La Bayadère places its Kingdom of the Shades in the Himalayas, a vision the grieving warrior Solor sees after smoking opium.

Which Ballets Russes work of 1911 tells of the loves and jealousies of three puppets at a Shrovetide fair?

Petrushka is Russia's cousin of the English Punch, a puppet of straw and cloth who is cut down by his rival's scimitar.

Spartacus, the Bolshoi showpiece about a slave uprising against Rome, has music by which Soviet composer?

Aram Khachaturian won a Lenin Prize for the score, and Yury Grigorovich's 1968 Bolshoi staging became the ballet's most acclaimed production.

Les Sylphides, a plotless ballet of white-clad sylphs and a poet in the moonlight, is set to piano music by whom?

Frédéric Chopin even gave the ballet its first title, Chopiniana, under which it opened in St Petersburg before being renamed.

Which French composer wrote Boléro in 1928 as a ballet score commissioned by the dancer Ida Rubinstein?

Maurice Ravel predicted that most orchestras would refuse to play Boléro, yet it became his most famous composition.

Which American composer wrote the ballet scores Appalachian Spring, Rodeo and Billy the Kid?

Aaron Copland found his first widespread public success with Billy the Kid in 1938, the earliest of these frontier ballets.

The Sleeping Beauty is based on a tale by which French author, whose Puss in Boots dances at the wedding?

Charles Perrault's other characters were written into the ballet too, among them Little Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard and Tom Thumb.

Which choreographer of West Side Story also made Fancy Free, a ballet about sailors on leave?

Jerome Robbins shared the Best Director Oscar for the film of West Side Story, and Fancy Free inspired his Broadway musical On the Town.

Which choreographer made the cowboy ballet Rodeo and then the dream ballet in Rodgers and Hammerstein's first musical?

Agnes de Mille was hired for Oklahoma! on the strength of Rodeo's success; her uncle was the film director Cecil B. DeMille.

Which Russian choreographer created The Dying Swan solo and then The Firebird for the Ballets Russes?

Michel Fokine was refused barefoot dancers for his 1907 ballet Eunice, so he had toes painted on their tights.

Which choreographer created the full-length Royal Ballet works Manon and Mayerling in the 1970s?

Kenneth MacMillan made Mayerling a dark portrait of the suicides of Austria's Crown Prince Rudolf and his young mistress.

Balanchine's plotless ballet Jewels is in three parts called Emeralds, Rubies and which other gemstone?

Diamonds is danced in the flat classical tutu of Imperial Russia, and the whole idea came from the jeweller Claude Arpels.

Which director made Black Swan, the 2010 thriller about a New York company staging Swan Lake?

Darren Aronofsky earned a Best Director Oscar nomination for the film, which grew out of his idea of a performer haunted by a double.

The Royal Ballet is the resident company of the Royal Opera House, which stands in which district of London?

Covent Garden became home in 1946, when the company was invited to move from Sadler's Wells Theatre into the newly reopened opera house.

The classical tutu is built from ten or more stiff layers of which fine netting, also used for bridal veils?

Tulle is sometimes said to have given the tutu its name, but dictionaries trace the word to French baby talk for a bottom.

Which powder, also rubbed on violin bows, do ballet dancers work into their shoes to stop slipping?

Rosin, a solid form of plant resin, is also rubbed on shoes by flamenco and Irish dancers and used by baseball pitchers for grip.

Which English ballerina was made a Royal Ballet principal at just 20 and later judged Strictly Come Dancing?

Darcey Bussell was promoted on the opening night of a new production in 1989, at the time the youngest principal in the company's history.

Which dancer, the eleventh child of a Havana truck driver, starred at the Royal Ballet and inspired the film Yuli?

Carlos Acosta was sent to dance school by his father, who hoped it would teach an unruly boy discipline and give him a free lunch every day.

Which St Petersburg ballet company, founded under the tsars, was known as the Kirov from 1935 to 1992?

The Mariinsky began as the Imperial Russian Ballet, and its school was established in 1738 at the Winter Palace.

Which ballerina, partially blind from the age of nineteen, won fame as Giselle and founded Cuba's national company?

Alicia Alonso had no peripheral vision, so she drilled her partners to be exactly where she needed them on stage.

Which Bolshoi prima ballerina created the title role in Carmen Suite, set to music by her husband Rodion Shchedrin?

Maya Plisetskaya saw Carmen Suite banned at first by Soviet officials as disrespectful to Bizet's opera, yet it became her husband's best-known work.

Which Chinese revolutionary ballet did President Nixon watch with Mao's wife Jiang Qing on his 1972 visit to Beijing?

The Red Detachment of Women follows a peasant girl on Hainan Island who escapes servitude and rises through the Communist ranks.

Which comic ballet about the lovers Lise and Colas dates from 1789 and ranks among the oldest in the repertory?

La Fille mal gardée is said to have been inspired by an engraving its creator saw in a Bordeaux print shop, of a girl scolded by her mother.