Ballet

Ballet /ˈbæleɪ/ (French: [balɛ]) is a type of performance dance that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread, highly technical form of dance with its own vocabulary based on French terminology. It has been globally influential and has defined the foundational techniques used in many other dance genres. Becoming a ballet dancer requires years of training. Ballet has been taught in various schools around the world, which have historically incorporated their own cultures to evolve the art.

Ballet may also refer to a ballet dance work, which consists of the choreography and music for a ballet production. A well-known example of this is The Nutcracker, a two-act ballet that was originally choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov with a music score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Ballets are choreographed and performed by trained artists. Many classical ballets are performed with classical music accompaniment and use elaborate costumes and staging, though there are exceptions to this. Most notably, American choreographer George Balanchine is known for his plotless neoclassical ballets which are often performed in simple leotards and tights without scenery.

Ballet (music)

Ballet as a music form progressed from simply a complement to dance, to a concrete compositional form that often had as much value as the dance that went along with it. The dance form, originating in France during the 17th century, began as a theatrical dance. It was not until the 19th century that ballet gained status as a “classical” form. In ballet, the terms ‘classical’ and ‘romantic’ are chronologically reversed from musical usage. Thus, the 19th century classical period in ballet coincided with the 19th century Romantic era in Music. Ballet music composers from the 17th–19th centuries, including the likes of Jean-Baptiste Lully and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, were predominantly in France and Russia. Yet with the increased international notoriety seen in Tchaikovsky’s lifetime, ballet music composition and ballet in general spread across the western world.

History

Until about the second half of the 19th century the role of music in ballet was secondary, with the main emphasis on dance, while music was simply a compilation of danceable tunes. Writing "ballet music" used to be a job for musical craftsmen, rather than for masters. For example, critics of the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky mentioned his writing of ballet music as something demeaning.

Carmen (verse)

In Ancient Rome, the term "carmen" was generally used to signify a verse; but in its proper sense, it referred to a spell or prayer, form of expiation, execration, etc. Surviving examples include the Carmen Arvale and the Carmen Saliare.

Purposes

Spells and incantations were used for a variety of purposes. If a spell was intended to harm someone, the State could interfere to protect him. For instance, it was not unusual for a farmer whose crops had failed to accuse another farmer of having, by a carmen, lured the crops away. Tibullus, in a poem in which he complains that an old woman has bewitched Marathus, takes the opportunity to recount various feats of witches, such as transferring crops from one field to another. Similarly, Pliny the Elder records in Naturalis Historia (XVIII. 8) that a certain freedman, Furius, by using better implements and better methods than his neighbor, obtained richer crops from a smaller strip of land. A neighbor compelled Furius to go before the tribes and accused him of having bewitched his field. But when the tribes saw his sturdy slaves and his implements of witchcraft—hoes, rakes, and ploughs—they acquitted him.

Carmen (storm)

Cyclone Carmen was an extratropical cyclone and European windstorm which crossed the Atlantic Ocean and affected the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands in November 2010.

Meteorological history

Windstorm Carmen formed as a low-pressure system off the east coast of the United States.

By 9 November, while over Nova Scotia, the system was named "Carmen" as it passed into the North Atlantic near and over southern Greenland, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands, which had been suffering from the lesser storm Becky since the 5th. Windstorm Becky died out over Denmark and Northern Germany on the 12th, and its remnants joined windstorm Carmen over Russia on the 14th. Due to a strong pressure gradient, gale-force winds were recorded in the United Kingdom. A 91 mph (146 km/h) wind gust was recorded at Capel Curig, Wales.

Traveling eastward, Carmen eventually attained a central pressure of 949 millibars as it struck the United Kingdom. At 06:00 UTC on Friday, 12 November, Windstorm Carmen was over the North Sea, east of Scotland, with a central pressure of approximately 965 mb. Carmen was last noted over western Russia on 14 November as it continued to weaken, and had burnt itself out over the Former Yugoslavia, Eastern Europe, Moscow, and the Gulf of Finland between the 18th and 19th.

Carmen (2003 film)

Carmen is a 2003 Spanish drama film directed by Vicente Aranda. The script was written by Aranda and Joaquim Jordà adapting the classic romance of the same name by Prosper Mérimée. Director Vicente Aranda based the plot on Mérimée's original 1847 novella about jealousy and passion, not its famous operatic adaptation by Bizet from 1875, changing some details about the love story between Carmen (Paz Vega) and José (Leonardo Sbaraglia). As in the novella, author Mérimée (Jay Benedict) is portrayed as a French writer who finds the "real" Carmen in early 19th century Spain.

Plot

While traveling through Andalusia, Spain in 1830, Prosper Mérimée, a French writer, meets José, a wanted criminal. José ends up condemned to death by garroting. The day before José is going to be executed, Mérimée, who has befriended the bandit, visits him in prison. From his jail cell, José begins to narrate his tragic story to the sympathetic writer.