Russian Classical ballet and Modern Dance

RUSSIAN CLASSICAL BALLET AND MODERN DANCE

About Site

Classical Ballet:

History

General Overview

Ballet is a modern art, dancing is prehistoric. The history of ballet is but a fragment of the history of dancing. Ballet can be defined today as a theatrical entertainment of group and solo dancing usually to a musical, vocal or percussion accompaniment, with costumes, scenery, and lighting.
CLASSICAL BALLET is movement based on the traditional technique from the French ballet of the 17th and 18th centuries, and the Italian school of the 19th century.
MODERN DANCE, having begun as a reaction to the rigidity of classical ballet, is perhaps more easily defined by what it is not than by what it is, and it is often defined in contrast to ballet. Modern dance flourished in areas that lacked strong ballet traditions, such as in the United States where ballet companies were imported from Europe. Although modern dance originated in Europe, by 1930 the United States had become the center for dance experimentation.
Russian Classical Ballet is well known all over the world. Since the 19th century it has continued to be the best. Russian Modern Dance, however, is not as popular even in Russia itself, and almost unknown for the rest of the world. It appeared in Russia much later than in Europe and in the United States, and it has not more than 20 years of history, but certainly has a promising future.

Purpose and Content of the Site

The site is designed as a subject guide. Its primary purpose is to introduce the world of Russian Classical Ballet and Modern Dance. As a consequence, the site contains mostly the links to different sources on the web that are organized by topics. Only history of both Russian Classical ballet and Modern Dance movements is given in a full text version.
Although Russian Classical Ballet is so famous and popular nobody has ever created one website which would contain information about its rich history, prominent figures, companies and theatres. Authors of the site could not find any source on the Internet that would give such a general overview; therefore, they decided that it would be really helpful to gather different types of information about Russian Ballet. As for Russian Modern Dance, because it is so young there are very few sources even in print describing its history, companies and prominent figures. Mostly these are articles and interviews. However, it becomes more and more popular and many people, professionals as well as non-professional, are eager to know more about it. As a consequence, authors found useful to give an overview of Russian Modern Dance as well. They also found interesting to present both movements of Russian Dance art on the same site so that the user could compare them and feel the oppositeness of these two dance genres.

Audience

As far as the site gives a general overview of the movements including various information such as history, galleries and biographies, it might be equally interesting for professionals as well as for beginners or enthusiasts who are just interested in Russian dance art.

We hope you find this site useful and interesting. Enjoy!

To learn more about the content of the site as well as navigation go to Help

Modern Dance:

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Reference

Last updated April 9, 2001