Knowra Ballet de cour Ballet de cour Ballet de cour was a French court entertainment that combined dance, music, poetry, and elaborate spectacle. It flourished especially in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Court masque : An elaborate court entertainment combining music, dance, drama, and costume, especially in early modern England. The English masque offers a close comparison in how courts joined performance and political display.
Ballet notation : Systems for recording dance movements in written or graphic form. Notation later made choreographies more reproducible than the largely ephemeral court performances.
Ballet comique de la reine : A lavish French court entertainment staged in 1581, often cited as an early landmark of ballet de cour. Its integrated music, dance, poetry, and staging helped define the genre's early form.
Académie Royale de Danse : A dance academy founded in Paris in 1661 by Louis XIV to promote and regulate dance. Its founding formalized court dance practices in the period when ballet de cour was changing.
Court ballet : A court-sponsored theatrical dance performance, often incorporating music, poetry, costumes, and scenery. This broader performance form includes the French genre and its related court entertainments.
Baroque dance : A family of European social and theatrical dances associated with the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its steps and styles developed alongside the French court's staged dance entertainments.
Catherine de' Medici : Queen consort and regent of France who supported court festivals and theatrical spectacles. Her patronage helped foster the court entertainments from which ballet de cour developed.
Paris Opera Ballet : A French ballet company founded in 1669 as the Académie Royale de Musique. The move toward a permanent professional company carried court dance into institutional theatre.
Intermède : A musical and theatrical interlude performed between acts of a play or within a court spectacle. Intermèdes supplied dramatic episodes and musical variety within larger French court performances.
Court music : Music composed, performed, or patronized at royal and aristocratic courts. Music structured the dances and helped bind the spectacle's separate episodes together.
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