CHAPTER I
A DISTINCTION, AND SOME DIFFERENCES
The chief elements of Ballet as seen to-day are—dancing, miming, music and scenic effect, including of course in this last the costumes and colour-schemes, as well as the actual “scenery” and lighting.
It is in the proper harmonising of these elements that the true art of Ballet-composition, or, as it is called, “choreography,” consists. Each has its individual history, and all have been combined in varying proportions at various periods. But it is only in the past hundred and fifty years or so that they have been harmoniously blended in the increasing richness of their development to give us this separate, protean and beautiful art—the Ballet of the Theatre.
These four elements are the material of which Ballet is composed, and the result may be judged by their balance.
We are to think not of the worst examples that have been, but of the best, and of those that yet might be.
Most of the older writers on dancing speak of almost all concerted dances as ballets and refer to the “ballets” of the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans. The Abbé Menestrier, however, writing in the seventeenth century, wisely observed the distinction between dances that are only “dances,” and those that approximate to “ballet.”
It should be borne in mind that it is possible to dance and not represent an idea save that of dancing, as when a child dances for joy, not in order to represent the joy of another. That is the province of the Mime. It is equally possible to mimic without dancing.
The best ballet-dancer is one who has intelligence and training to do both, whose dancing and mimicry are interpretative.