International book international book of favorite sports_FV | Page 38

Now, on her toes, the deified ballerina (embodied in this period by the legendary
ballerina Marie Taglioni) seemed to magically skim the surface of the stage, an
ethereal being never quite touching the ground. It was during this period that
the ascending star of the ballerina quite eclipsed the presence of the poor male
dancer, who was in many cases reduced to the status of a moving statue, present
only in order to lift the ballerina. This sad state was really only redressed by the
rise of the male ballet star Vaslav Nijinsky, with the Ballets Russes, in the early
20th century. Ballet as we know it had well and truly evolved by this time, with
all the familiar conventions of costume, choreographic form, plot, pomp, and
circumstance firmly fixed in place.
After the explosion of modern dance in the early 20th century, the 1960s saw
the growth of postmodernism. Postmodernism veered towards simplicity, the
beauty of small things, the beauty of untrained body, and unsophisticated
movement. The famous "No" manifesto rejecting all costumes, stories and outer
trappings in favour of raw and unpolished movement was perhaps the extreme
of this wave of thinking. Unfortunately lack of costumes, stories and outer
trappings do not make a good dance show, and it was not long before sets, décor
and shock value re-entered the vocabulary of modern choreographers.
By the 1980s dance had come full circle and modern dance (or, by this time,
"contemporary dance") was clearly still a highly technical and political vehicle for
many practitioners. Existing alongside classical ballet, the two art-forms were by
now living peacefully next door to one another with little of the rivalry and
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