Born: 1818
Died: 1910
Marius Petipa was born in 1818 in Belgium.
The family moved to Brussels where Petipa attended the Grand College and also studied music at the conservatoire. He disliked dancing as a youngster but made such progress that he appeared in his father's La Dansomanie n 1831. In 1838 Petipa became a principal dancer at the theatre in Nantes, France where he also staged opera dances for the theatre.
He had a great flair for staging, for writing imaginative scenarios and for developing the full-length ballet into a grand spectacle with a structured form: a set sequence of pas d’actions, divertissements, ensembles and pas de deux.
Under Petipa’s reign, dancers were encouraged to sustain longer balances, higher jumps and stronger pointe work. Yet, he was also the custodian of high academic standards and never sacrificed the essentials of elegance and grace for athletic virtuosity. His Imperial Russian court audiences demanded formality and elegance of classicism.
Inevitably the transmission from dancer to dancer over a century and a half has altered the fine details of Petipa's original steps, but the living tradition of ballet everywhere still bears Petipa's stamp and his authority.
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Marius Petipa died at the age of 92 in 1910 in Ukraine after retiring in 1903.
ReplyDeleteMarius was born in 1818 Belgium, he also disliked dance as a child but grew up to be a very good one.
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