Writing

For the past few weeks in writing, we have been looking at explanations. An explanation writing is a piece of write that explains what something is or how something works. Once we learn how to write a good explanation, we then got to write an explanation about a topic of our choice. I decided to explain what ballet is. I'm a fan of ballet and was interested in the history and how it came to be. Here is my piece of writing (sorry, I blabbed on a bit)-

What Is Ballet?

What do you think about when you hear the ‘dance’? Hip-hop? Jazz? Ballet? If your answer was ballet, then good. Cause that’s what I’m going to talk about today.

Have you ever wondered where ballet originated from? Well, for starters, it came together in Italy in the 15th century. It got spread to France by an Italian dancer named Catherine de' Medici, who later became Queen of France. In France, ballet continued to develop under the influence of their Queen. King Louis XIV later funded Académie Royale de Danse (Royal Dance Academy). The woman would turn out their ankles to show the nice outline of their foot, this is how ‘turnouts’ in ballet came to be.

Ballet shoes back then all had heels, making it harder to dance in. Marie Camargo was the first dancer to wear non-heeled shoes. She could perform leaps and turns that would have been almost impossible with heels. After that, heeled shoes became wiped out completely. In 1795, ballet dancers started to dance on the tips of their toes, with the help of Charles Didelot’s flying machine. In the 19th century, dancers then wanted to dance on the tips of their toes without the help of the machine. They started to dance en pointe (on the tips of their toes) with shoes that were nothing more than modified ballet slippers; the sides and toes were darned to create an outline to help stand en pointe. As it merely provide any comfort or support, dancers cushioned their toes and relied entirely on their ankle strength to hold their weight up on their toes.

The next form of pointe shoes were shoes that dancers like Pierina Legnani wore; it had a surdey and flat platform at the tip of the shoe, unlike the earlier model of shoes. They also had a box made of lots of fabric layered together for more support. Unlike shoes today, those shoes where made without nails and only the tips of the shoes were hardened. This made it basically silent. The pointe shoes we are used to today were created in the early 20th century (not too long ago!). You may have heard of the famous ballerina Anna Pavlova. Her last name is actually where the Kiwi classic Pavlova originate from. She was one of the greatest ballerinas in her time. Ballet then took a dive from classic ballet into modern ballet, which got spread to more countries. There is also contemporary ballet, romantic ballet etc.

Ballet took a lot of years to get where it is today. I still believe that there is still a bigger future for ballet. I was even surprised by some of these facts; I thought that the ballet as we know it today was been this was for centuries! There is always something more to teach as there is to learn.