A Brief History of Ballet, Pt. 2

In the first part of this two-parter, we covered ballet’s origins and early evolution. We left off with the founding of the Academie Royale de Musique, and the ways Jean-Baptiste Lully worked to ensure that his academy had as much prestige as possible.  

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Polly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So we
are continuing our talk about a brief history of ballet

(00:21):
which I put along precursor to you in the first
episode about how brief means brief and a lot of
things will get left out unfortunately because it is a very,
very long and storied tradition. Uh. And in the first
part we covered ballet's origins and early evolution, but we
didn't even make it to the eighteenth century yet, so
we still have plenty of ground to cover today. And

(00:42):
that also means that if you haven't listened to part one,
you really should because you might then be like, wait,
who is this? How do we get here? What is
going on? I don't know what ballet decorus? Uh. We
left off with the founding of the Academy Royal Music
and the ways that it's leader, Jean Baptiste Lully, worked
to ensure that his academy as much power and prestige
as possible. In sixteen eighty one, Louis Stage had a

(01:05):
milestone women who were professional dancers appeared on the stage
for the first time in the ballet La Trio de
la Moor. While women of the court had performed the
roles written as women in the performances at the Royal Court,
once productions were being mounted on a stage in a
more theatrical setting, it had been men dressed as women
filling these roles up to sixty one, and although ballets

(01:30):
were continuing at court, these were decreasing in frequency as
the performances staged by the opera were becoming more and
more prominent. By seventeen thirteen, the Paris Opera had a
regular core of two dozen professional dancers. By the time
Louis the fourteenth died two years later in September seventeen fifteen,
ballet had become entirely its own theatrical entity outside of

(01:53):
the realm of court, and by that time it had
also spread throughout Europe and beyond Great Britain, Italy, Russia,
the tier ratories of the German States and many other
places were all uh starting their own ballet traditions, and
the ballet of France was to some degree starting to
be seen as a little bit passe. It was the
art of a bloated and overly indulgent royal court, although

(02:14):
it was still revered as the birthplace of the art
form after England's monarchy was restored under Charles the Second
in sixteen sixty. He had brought French ballet masters to
England and an effort to add some of the trappings
that were expected of a royal court, but ballet was
being seen as a married diversion. It was not really
a cultural institution in the early eighteenth century, though a

(02:37):
dance teacher named John Weaver helped bring more serious thoughts
a ballet in England. Weaver had become something of a
dance scholar. He translated Foyet's notation in seventeen o six,
and then wrote his own book on the subject, called
An Essay Towards and a History of Dancing, in which
the whole art and its various excellencies are in some

(02:57):
measure explained, containing the several sorts of dancing. I think
one of my favorite things on the podcast are those long,
crazy book titles. They're my favorites. And I like how
this is long and it has both towards with an
s on it and and history. Yeah yeah. Uh. Weaver,
though saw so much potential in ballet. He really thought

(03:21):
that if England could reform French ballet into its own art,
it could foster civility and regulate passion, and draw people
together and offer this shared experience that could make all
viewers equal as they watched. He believed in staging serious
pantomime ballets, and he had some early commercial success with them.
But even so, a lot of the ballet performed on

(03:43):
the stages of Britain in the eighteenth century were still
French or Italian in origin. But what really bolstered the
British ballet during this time was actually its lack of
regulation and etiquette requirements in comparison to that of France,
and this resulted in one of Paris's most famous dancers, Resale,
leaving France to perform on the London stage for several years.

(04:05):
In London, Salih was able to work outside the bounds
of the Paris Opera's rules. She started performing narrative solos,
where her ability to convey emotion through acting and movement
without words could be expressed without that formality. She was
really beloved by audiences in Britain, but still went back
to France in seventeen thirty five, when she tried to

(04:26):
innovate in Paris the way she had done in London,
the King threatened to have her arrested. She retired from
the stage in seventeen forty one, but continued to appear
in performances at court, but she had left her mark
on the dance world by bringing less formal and more
emotive modes of movement into the performances. Another frenchwoman was

(04:46):
also innovating at the same time in a rival position
to Salleh, and that was Marie Anne Coupie de Camargo.
And whereas Salih relied on a motion to draw in
her audience, La Camargo, as she was called, achieved levels
of technical proficiency beyond all of her peers, including steps
that had historically belonged to men's roles. She even raised

(05:07):
the hems of her skirts so that the audience could
fully appreciate her incredible and very precise footwork. For the record,
there is debate about whether she was the first to
do that to raise the hem of the skirt um.
Keep in mind, these are still regular clothes for the
most part that people are wearing, uh, not what we
would see as tootoose now, Uh, but she definitely did

(05:29):
do it, although we don't know if she was the
first or not. I'm thinking about all the folks for
whom two twos are regular clothes. Well that too. In
the mid eighteenth century, ballet went through a transition led
by dancer and choreographer Jean George Novare. In seventeen sixty, Novare,
who was in his early thirties, had been performing and
composing ballet since he was a teenager. He had published

(05:52):
his book Letters on Dance and Ballets, and in it
he pushed to move this art away from spectacle, so
that things like costume and sets would be less important
and the expressiveness of the dancers would come to the forefront. Now.
Vere's writing was really influential and it sparked a movement
called ballet dat and no Vera was critical of just

(06:14):
about everything in the dance world in his writing, and
because he was famous throughout Europe as an accomplished dancer
and a composer of ballet's a lot of people read
this book and he was very open about his opinions
on the productions and the dancers at the Paris Opera. Uh.
Some critiques were favorable, others were utterly scathing. This is

(06:35):
kind of like if a very famous actor today wrote
a book and broke down how he thought other actors
stunk in their rules, but some were really good. I mean,
it was that level of like, and everyone bought the
book and read it. It was that level of critique.
He was also very critical of Lacademy Royale de Dance.
He pointed out that despite the organization's mission, no comprehensive

(06:57):
formal writing on dance at material us from their work,
and that criticism continued even as he joined the organization
in seventeen seventy five. At that point, as we mentioned
at the end of the previous episode, the King's other
established academy, l Academy Royal the Music, which evolved into
the Paris Opera, was taking on most of those matters

(07:18):
of dance documentation, and Lacademy Royal the Dance was left
with certifying teachers. Yeah, their power was diminished progressively and
they were kind of just just left running a certification
program while the opera staged all of their productions, and
while Nolvaire was criticizing the empty and wooden nature that
dance had taken on in the years after Marie Sallet's

(07:40):
generation had retired. Others, including Jean Jacques Rousseau, thought that
having ballet's within operas was what was no good. To Rousseau,
this idea of stopping for dancing ruined the story and
the rhythm of the entire production. To just throw these
in periodically. Ballet was really getting a bad mutation as

(08:00):
an easily dismissible art, and never wanted to reform and
revitalize it, and part of that was separating it out
into its own production and writing ballets that contained their
own stories in their entirety that did not depend on
the story being explained in a song or a spoken word. Additionally,
he wanted dancers to stop wearing court clothes and hairstyles

(08:22):
and to move to garments that allowed them to move
elegantly and expressively. Up until that point, dancers were still
wearing hoops under their skirts to create volume. He also
wanted ballet to be staged in a way that the
audience watched it and was drawn entirely into the world.
No longer should there be boxes for royalty on the stage,
and the sight line of the spectators taking in the

(08:43):
story and things like set changes and effects, he said
should happen discreetly so that they didn't break the illusion
of the story. Yeah, we mentioned previously that, you know,
as it became like a stage the way we would
think it helped create that illusion. But they still had
some weird p actuses like they would have a stage
manager blow a whistle to start like scenery changes, and

(09:06):
so no Va was like, why are we doing this?
Be cool, you guys, like be quiet, step carefully backstage,
don't tromp around back there having loud conversations. Everyone who's
ever been shushed in a backstage area can kind of think,
no there a little bit. Uh. We're going to talk
about Novare and his influence some more in the next segment,
but first we are going to pause for a sponsor break. So,

(09:37):
as we mentioned before in reference to England's Charles the
Second Ballet had become something of a French export. Royal
courts of other countries were often eager to hire French
dance teachers and choreographers to come and stage productions for
them and also teach. In this way, ideas such as
Novair spread beyond the stages of Paris. Novair himself traveled

(09:58):
throughout the European continent on a variety of jobs in
other countries, to mixed reception before he was appointed the
ballet master at the Paris Opera by Marie Antoinette in
seventeen seventy six. Because time at the Paris Opera was
controversial but also exciting, some of the dancers viewed him
as an interloper after all of his time away in
other countries, they would deliberately sabotage his productions. Critics weren't

(10:23):
always wild about the stories that he was telling in
his ballets. They found them too emotional and sometimes frightening,
but he really drew in the crowds and was generally
a success. Even still, he only stayed at the Paris
Opera for five years, and three years after his exit
in seventeen eighty four, the Paris Opera was formally endowed
with a ballet school by King Louis the sixteenth. The

(10:46):
French Revolution, of course, impacted the arts. As the rebellion began.
The opera house was even looted at one point for
any props that looked like weapons. After a brief suspension
of performances, the show at the opera went on, but
it did shifted a bit. Up to the time of
the revolution, it had been closely linked to the nobility,
and as a consequence, it was seen as a very

(11:07):
wasteful and corrupt institution. The National Assembly was kind of
uncertain about what exactly to do with the opera. Pierre
Gardell was the man who steered ballet through these times
in Paris and enabled it to survive as an institution
of the people. And this wasn't because he was a revolutionary.
He'd been loyal to the crown and he had inherited

(11:27):
the position of ballet master at the opera when his
brother Maximilian died in sev seven. But he was really
excellent in navigating the shift from one government to the other,
and he staged heroic stories in which he and his
wife often start. The wholesome reputation of the Guardels is
an upstanding and moral family, and the move to simpler,

(11:48):
more Grecian style costumes really signal signal a dismissal of
the artifice from the French court. It gave the opera
an image that moved forward with the political times. Yeah,
people often spoke about what people they were, which was
almost just as important at this period as them actually
being good dancers, which they both were. Guardell held his

(12:08):
post at the Opera House for more than forty years,
although at times he and other artists were suspected of
still being royalists and had to swear their loyalty to
the revolutionary cause. He weathered these times by staging productions
for revolutionary festivals and ballets that supported the ideals of
the cause and celebrated liberty from the monarchy. In seventeen nine,

(12:30):
during the Terror, Guardell and several other artists formally promised
that they would not produce any more works that originated
with the aristocracy. Uh Those stories that had been part
of the repertoire developed under the aristocracy, though, went right
back into production after the Terror ended. After the Revolution,
the simplicity and virtue that had been central to French
productions came back to the stage once again, but it

(12:53):
was also commingled with the aesthetics of a surge of
decadence that blossomed very briefly after the Terror and that
gave birth to the romantic ballet. There was some fabulous
fashion and sartorial uh daring nous going on at this time,
largely among people who had been part of the aristocracy,

(13:13):
had had to go into hiding or beyond the downlow,
and then when it was all over, they were like
back to craziness and they like amped it up to eleven.
But there are some great stories of crazy clothes that
appeared during this time. And as ballet moved into the
nineteenth century, it's narratives started to take shape in the
stories of woodland spirits and fairies. Often the stories of

(13:34):
these ballets were about man's relationship to the mystical or
spiritual aspects of nature. And once again social dance influenced
the development of new steps for performance, just as it
had in Louis the fourteenth court. The waltz became very
popular at masked balls hosted by the Paris Opera and
inspired a shift in the way couples danced together in ballet.

(13:56):
The pas de dou became a more dynamic dance. Couple
faced and engaged each other during the dance, when before
they had normally stayed facing the spectators. Yeah, it was
like a side to side thing that was performed strictly outwardly,
whereas now when you think of a potida, it's often
very passionate or very romantic, and they're clearly engaged with
each other, and it's about their relationship. But that was

(14:18):
all new born out of this time. There were other
influences also from government offices. So after Napoleon became Emperor
of France in eighteen o four, he actually instituted an
approval process for all Paris opera productions, both musical and ballet.
Joseph Fouche, as Minister of Police, had the final word
on which ballet's could be staged. But after Napoleon was defeated,

(14:42):
the tone of ballet shifted even more towards romanticism. The
new middle class, with new prosperity, was starting to go
to the opera, which privatized in eighteen thirty, since it
wasn't being overseen by a government office or by royal tastes.
The Paris Opera, which was by Louis desire Von, started

(15:02):
starting in one entered this golden age. It really fully
embraced romanticism. In eighteen thirty two. Previous podcast subject Marie
Taglioni charmed audiences in her starring role in Law Suil Feed,
which was choreographed by her father Felippo Taglioni. Marie is
often credited with ushering in and shaping the Romantic era

(15:23):
in dance, which was due in large part to how natural, airy,
and spirit like her technique appeared on stage. This is
a little bit ironic, since she had, as you may
recall if you listen to that episode, not taken to
dance naturally. She had had to train rigorously with her
father to achieve physical skills that appeared effortless to observers

(15:44):
at the ballet. Marie's portebra, or the manner that her
arms were carried, was considered especially beautiful because they framed
the head and face and an oval when her arms
were raised overhead, and this is rumored to have been
a style her father developed too high had a less
than graceful back. Marie also appeared in this ballet on point.

(16:05):
Although it's probably not the first time she danced that way,
it was definitely different from the way that a ballet
dancer's toe shoes work today. Yeah, and Taglioni was not
the first dancer to use full point as part of
a performance that is normally credited to Amalia Brunioli. In
three Taglioni saw Brunoli's work and thought it had potential,

(16:27):
but she also thought it looked really laborious that uh,
you know, you could see her kind of using momentum
of her arms to swing up into that position, and
she thought it robbed the movement of its grace. So
for Taglioni, point work was sort of pepper did as
a transitional technique. It was used to create the illusion
of gliding as she subtly changed her the level that

(16:47):
she was at on stage, and the shoes used to
achieve full point at that point. We're not the residence
diff point shoes of today. They were soft satin with
a leather sole and a toe with darning stitches right
there at the tip, and the toe like full point
really was a very tiny, tiny, almost pinpoint compared to
like the more squared off toe of a shoe today.

(17:10):
Taglioni is said to have burned through two to three
pairs of shoes in any given performance. Marie Taglioni also
created something entirely new aside from technique or skill, and
that was the celebrity ballerina. Women of the day saw
her and her relatively simple loss of feed costume, and
they saw her as an aspirational figure. They were really

(17:32):
captivated by this dancer with whom they all identified, and
they also envied her very expressive life. Taglioni inspired fashions
of the day because women emulated the ethereal style that
she became known for on stage. There was even, very
briefly a fashion magazine called Lasso Feed that Taglioni consulted on.
It was printed on scented paper. I find that so

(17:55):
delightful to think about. I would hate it because some
fragrances give me a headache. I would love it. Marie
Taglioni's success and celebrity stature paved the way for other
women to achieve similar levels. One of her contemporaries, the
Austrian dancer Fanny Ellsler, was able to carve out her
own celebrity as a sort of counter to taglione style.

(18:18):
Where Marie was the ethereal sylph, Fanny was very much
of the earth and she was a much more sensual dancer.
When the ballet Gazelle debut in eighteen forty one, it's
star Carlotta Greasy achieved her own fame as the lovelorn
woman brought back from the dead to dance the man
who had wronged her to death. La Sulfeed and Giselle
gained their own levels of fame as ballets as they

(18:39):
continue to be staged in the modern era, and they
are sometimes recognized as two of the first quote modern ballets.
The Romantic era also established things like Romantic two two's
that continue to be used today, but but didn't last forever.
And coming up, we'll get into the culture and politics
that led to its decline along with what followed. First, though,
we will take a little sponsor break Taglioni and Elsler

(19:10):
retired just a few years apart, the former in eighteen
forty seven and the latter in eighteen fifty one, and
as women had become the stars of the Paris ballet stage,
male dancers had receded in importance, and with the end
of the eighteen fifties and the retirement of its most
prominent dancers, Paris began to decline in importance as well,

(19:31):
due in part to the ongoing political struggles that the
country went through leading into the Second French Empire. As
France had struggled with the ups and downs and the
evolving identity of its ballet over the years leading up
to the mid nineteenth century, other countries had also adopted
the form. St. Petersburg, in particular, had embraced ballet more

(19:51):
than a century earlier. The St. Petersburg Ballet School formed
in seventeen thirty eight. In the beginning of the nineteenth century,
French dancer Charles Dilo was hired at the Russian Imperial
Ballet and while working there he guided the creation of
several ballets that formed the bedrock of the Russian repertoire.
He wound up reforming the Russian school. The ballet scene

(20:13):
in Russia was bolstered in the eighteen fifties by the
fact that Taglioni's father, Felippo, had moved there for a while,
as well as Jules Perot, who had woud London audiences
in eighteen forty five with his choreography of a Pas
de Catra, which featured four of ballet's biggest stars of
the time dancing together. That included Marie Taglioni and Carlotta Greazy.
Fanny Elsler had also spent time in Russia. In an

(20:35):
eighteen fifty Carlotta Greezy went to St. Petersburg at Perot's
request to dance on the Russian stage. During this phase
in the middle of the century, the performances being staged
in St. Petersburg were re workings of the popular French ballet.
But as Marius Petipa, who was another French ballet dancer,
rose through the ranks in St. Petersburg, he started making

(20:56):
his mark and developed some of the most famous and
beloved ballets of the Russian repertoire. The Sleeping Beauty, the
Nutcracker and Swan Lake were all developed by Pettipa with
music by Tchakowski. Eventually, in the early nineteen hundreds, there
had been this switch because Russia was then exporting its
style of dance back to Paris with the arrival of

(21:16):
the Ballet Rous in nineteen o nine. The Ballet Rous
had been assembled by entrepreneurs Sergei Diaguilev and included the
best dancers of the Russian Imperial Ballet. These dancers were
incredibly skilled and the productions were spectacular, and their arrival
electrified the European ballet world and completely revitalized dance culture
on the European continent. The Ballet Rouss was an exclusively

(21:40):
touring company. The Answers had been traveling from city to
city for a long time, but in the eighteen hundreds
travel became more common. Ballet had a vocabulary that crossed borders,
so teachers and dancers alike frequently had periods of residency
in foreign cities. But the Ballet Rouss was a whole
new level. The Agilev isn't a dancer or choreographer. He

(22:02):
was a critic and a fan of the arts, and
so he had assembled this whole company by getting permission
to use dancers who were under contract with the Imperial
Ballet for the tours. They would disperse at the end
of the tour, and then he would have to reassemble
the group for each tour season. After two years of this,
he moved the company's base of operations to Monte Carlo

(22:22):
so that he could build a permanent company and then
not go through this renegotiation every single time they wanted
to go on tour. The Ballet Us featured a number
of famous dancers, including Vasov Najinski and Anna Pavlova, who
eventually formed her own touring company, and it also fostered
the creation of a number of notable ballets, such as
the Firebird in and Petrushka the following year, which were

(22:44):
developed under choreographer Michel Fouquin. While Diagelev and his company
survived World War One and continued to work in Europe,
the Russian Revolution of nineteen seventeen caused a gap to
form between the ballet rousts and their contemporaries back home.
As a consequence, there was a fork in the development
of Russian ballet, with Diaglevs expatriates blending with and influencing

(23:08):
Western European dance and ballet, and St. Petersburg and Moscow
evolving in relative isolation. And while touring with the Soviet
State dancers in the nineteen twenties, a dancer named Georgie
Valencivads fled the company with his wife and two other dancers,
and he was welcomed into the ballet rouss by Diagilev
and under his simplified name given him by Diagilev of

(23:31):
George Balanchine. He would eventually go on to be seen
as the father of American ballet, but it was with
Diagilev that he first started choreographing ballets in collaboration with
composer Igor Stravinsky. In Balanchine created the neo classical Apollo,
one of his earliest pieces, which is still performed today.
Before we close out today's episode, we're going to take

(23:53):
a quick look at ballet and other places. So the
Royal Danish Ballet School was founded in seventeen seventy one.
It operates to this day and academics and dance are
taught in tandem. In eighteen thirty, August borne on Va
assumed the leadership of the Royal Danish Ballet and stayed
in that position for forty seven years. His teachings remain

(24:14):
at the core of that company's vision today. Denmark's stability
even before this long run of a career, gave it
a reputation as a haven for dance. You know, while
other countries were having all of these upheavals politically and culturally,
like the Royal Danish Ballet was in essence kind of
preserving things because they were stable and uh, you know,

(24:36):
had consistency that other places did not. So often dancers
would run to Denmark for a little while to um
or to Copenhagen for a while to work there, just
because they enjoyed returning to some of the pieces that
they were no longer doing in their own countries. Italy
made its own significant contributions, of course, to dance. We
talked about some at the beginning of the first episode

(24:57):
of this two parter. In eighteen thirty, Carlo Blaziz, were
king in Milan, published his book The Code of Terpsickory,
the Art of Dancing, comprising its theory and practice, and
a history of its rise in progress from the earliest times.
It also had the rather charming subtitle intended as well
for the instruction of amateurs as the use of professional persons. Terpsickory,

(25:17):
of course, just for context, was a muse and the
goddess of dance. His book attempted to systematize dance, and
a lot of the guidelines that he set forth in
The Code of Terpsickory are still observed today, including a
more extreme turnout from the hip than had been the
standard before. The illustrations in the book are identifiable as
balotic postures even to modern eyes. His work was unique also,

(25:42):
and that it was mathematically very precise. Uh. And there
is a section of his work that I really love,
because he admonished dancers with natural beauty and talent to
not become lazy and just rely on their good genes,
and he wrote, quote, do not rely on your own
natural qualities, and therefore neglect to study or practice so
much as those to whom nature has been less liberal.

(26:03):
For were you to possess the symmetry of an Apollo,
Belvedere or an Antonius, together with the happiest endowments, you
would have but little reason to expect to attain excellence
in your profession without study, industry, and perseverance. In nine
Diagolev died, and with him the Ballet Roosts. Although it
reformed a number of times under variations on that name,

(26:26):
and it's twenty year run, the company had included the
finest dancers of the era, but had collaborated with renowned
artists on the set and costume designs and posters and
programs that included Pablo Picasso and previous podcast subject Paul Poire. Yeah,
there are some beautiful posters that were made for the

(26:47):
Ballet Rouss in the nineteen twenties in particular, but because
of the way that Diagolev kind of ReLit the spark
of ballet. By the time that he died, companies throughout
Europe were thriving again, and touring ballet companies were traveling
the globe. He really sort of started this whole second
industry of touring ballet. In Paris, which had been the

(27:08):
epicenter of ballet development before it faltered at the end
of the Romantic era, once again regained its status under
the guidance of Serge Lefar who ushered it right into
the mid twentieth century as its ballet master. London also
saw a sort of modern ballet renaissance in the wake
of balletus influence. By nineteen forty six, the Royal Opera
House of London had its own ballet company, which transitioned

(27:31):
to become the Royal Ballet in nineteen fifty six with
royal patronage. In nineteen thirty four, George Balanchine, who had
been working with a number of companies after Diagilev's death,
established the School of American Ballet at the request of
dance patron and cultural influencer Lincoln Kirstein. The Ballet Theater
was founded in New York in nineteen thirty nine. It

(27:51):
changed its name to the American Ballet Theater in nineteen
fifty seven, and in nineteen forty six, Kirstein founded the
Ballet Society under the leadership of George Balance Team that
became the New York City Ballet In. There is a
lot more drama in that than that paragraph reveals, but
there was a lot going on at the time. One
of the most important aspects of the growth of ballet,

(28:12):
particularly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, is how fluid
it was in terms of actual people. Because the best
dancers from any given location would often go on to
travel to other countries to work, they shared the techniques
and styles of their teachers. So ballet has become an
international language and a connector that really evolved pretty organically.

(28:32):
Today you can find a ballet company in almost every
major city in the world. If a dancer from one
were to take a ballet class in the other, even
in a place where they didn't know the native language,
they could probably manage without too much trouble. Yeah. That
was uh, one of those things drilled into me by
early dance teachers. Um Post World War Two ballet has

(28:54):
of course continued in the classical style, but it is
also evolved and given rise to new forms of movement
based expression. It is not uncommon for a modern ballet
company to have classical ballet but also feature modern or
experimental dance, and dancers associated with a variety of discipline
have achieved fame in the twentieth century. So people like

(29:14):
Martha Graham, Twilight Thorpe, Michail Barishnikov, and of course Miss
de Copeland all have roots that go back to the
Court of France. That's very lovely. I love ballet. Like
I said, I feel bad because I know lots of
good stuff gets left because there's no way to include
it all. If you are really interested in learning more,
there is a fantastic book. It is called Apollo's Angels.

(29:36):
A History of Ballet is by Jennifer Homans, and it
came out not that long ago. It is really comprehensive
in a way that very few books on the history
of ballet have ever been. She is also a dancer herself.
Her research is meticulous and amazing, and it is comprehensive. Uh.
It's really really good read as well. It's just written
in a way that's fun and enjoyable to take in.

(29:59):
So highly recommend that I used it a lot on
this episode. Uh. And obviously I love ballet, so personal
vested interest in it. You know what else I love
listener mail? I do? And this this one mentions two episodes,
uh and food and fashion all in one, even though
it is not a very long listener mail, but I

(30:19):
love it. Uh. It is from our listener. I don't
know if she pronounces it Megan or Megan, but either way,
she writes, hello, ladies, I thoroughly enjoy your podcast and
the most recent six Impossible episodes made me laugh out
loud in my office, which isn't weird anymore. They're used
to be laughing randomly throughout the day. Uh. She spoke
specifically about our comment about creole food solving everyone's problems,

(30:40):
and she just wanted to note that she hasn't met
an etu fat that hasn't helped out a whole lot.
I would concur with that sentiment. She also says thanks
for the Nell Donnely episode. I've lived in Kansas City
for five years and it's nice learning more about my
current residence. This town would be a great place for us.
Stuff you missed a history class live show if you
ever do a Midwestern tour, uh, in a way thanks

(31:00):
to the show. It's one of my favorites. Uh yeah,
we we always have our ongoing list of places we
would like to be or be invited any of the above.
Uh So, thank you also me again for sending us that,
because I like to talk about food and clothes in
the same breath. If you would like to write to us,
you can do so at History Podcast at housetop work

(31:20):
dot com. You can also find us everywhere on social
media as missed in History, and you can visit our
website missed in History dot com for all of the
show notes and episodes that have ever existed of the show.
Uh and if you are so inclined, you should subscribe.
You can do that on Apple Podcasts, the I Heart
Radio app, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more on

(31:44):
this and thousands of other topics, visit how staff works
dot com.