Dancetime: Romantic Ballet

Dancetime: Romantic Ballet features never-before-published early ballet solos and duets. The video reveals intriguing facets of 19th century ballet that illustrate innovations far beyond our common understanding of this era. In fact, this period of ballet offered a revolutionary focus highlighting the stories and characters of everyday people, inspired by a combination of dynamic influences from 'national dance'. The colorful ballet of this era, bridges the gap from the opulence of Baroque dance, supported by the wealth of kings and queens, to the broadened aesthetics and virtuosic technique of the Romantic Ballet, which became the vibrant link to Classical Ballet. The film includes a sampling of restaged dances based solely on documentation provided by 19th century dance literature and iconography. Among them is the renowned Cachucha, originally performed in 1836 and identified with the Romantic Ballet icon Fanny Elssler. Also featured are dances from the choreographer, Henri Justamant, a French ballet master who left fully notated scores of more than 100 ballets and divertissements, and whose work has never before been presented to the public. Dance footage is supplemented by an extraordinary collection of illustrations from the Derra de Moroda Dance Archives of Salzburg, Austria. The restaged dances represent the largest selection of early ballet choreographies, as reconstructed from documentation, ever published. The full list of the documented restaged dances is: Fandango [1761], Vestris Gavotte [1832], Cachucha [1871], Pas de L'Abeille [1843], Pas de la Esmeralda [1859], Tyrolienne [1859]. The video was conceived and written by Professor Claudia Jeschke, Chair of the Department of Dance Studies at the University of Salzburg, and Robert Atwood, instructor of classical ballet at The Ailey School in New York City,