International Dance Day commemorates ‘father of modern ballet’: Who was Jean-Georges Noverre?

Jean-Georges Noverre’s path to dance

Jean-Georges Noverre was born on April 29, 1727, in Paris in a family of modest means. While his father was a soldier in the French army, his mother came from an aristocratic home. Growing up in Paris, Europe’s cultural nerve centre, Noverre was exposed to the arts easily. Opera, ballet, and theatre were an integral part of his early life.

Men learned dance back then as an education, and it was considered a significant marker in social grooming. Noverre learned from the famous dancer and teacher Louis Dupré and debuted at the Opéra-Comique in Paris in 1743. His interest grew mainly from cultural immersion, Dupre’s mentorship and his own creativity, where he began linking movement with expression. He became a ballet master and danced in the court of Versailles before moving to London and Berlin.

Search for emotive storytelling in ballet

Before Western classical dance acquired meaning and stories, it existed for entertainment in European courts. Ballet, which emerged during the Italian Renaissance in the 15th century, was rigorous, complex and emotionally aloof. It was more like upper-class pageantry that was an extension of court rituals. Precision and symmetry were significant, but ballet existed without any emotional vocabulary.

Various dance reference books from the time talk about courtesy, following the chain of command, posture and technique, and not about showcasing happiness, ecstasy, anguish or turmoil. It was all beautiful to watch, and Noverre was fascinated, but he also wanted dance to mean and feel something.

What contributed to his ideas was the French Enlightenment movement (late 17th century to early 19th century), which stressed reason and ideas of identity. This was also when some members of the intelligentsia were criticising ballet performances and equating them with mere gymnastics, asking for a purpose to the narrative.

A democratised vision for dance

In 1760, Noverre went on to publish Lettres sur la danse et les ballets (Letters on Dancing and Ballets), a treatise which spoke of storytelling and dramatic expression in ballet, and how dance should be capable of moving its audience. He made the costumes simpler, removed facial masks (a mainstay then) so that one could see a dancer’s expressions, brought about changes in choreography and moved beyond usual tropes to teach dancers how to be storytellers.

He called his concept “Ballet d’action”, where a dancer was to convey meaning through movement. He’d ask dancers to observe their daily life and project it in their dance with expressions of joy, grief, and anger, among others. “The dancer must feel before he can attempt to make others feel. He must possess a soul,” he wrote in the manifesto.

Difficult transition and a controversial dance revolution

Like all radical ideas, Noverre’s ideas were not instantly accepted and were criticised. Many ballet masters thought such views were dangerous and would kill an authentic form. However, the younger dancers and choreographers all around Europe were interested in moving forward, and soon his ideas began to find some recognition.

A significant collaboration was with composer Christoph Willibald Gluck, who tried to bring about similar changes in opera. In 1776, Noverre was made the ballet master at the Paris Opera, a prestigious tenure marked by disapproval from many. But in the following decades, his ideas became increasingly more important, and a shift began.

A legacy Noverre wouldn’t live to see

While his theories influenced the 19th-century Romantic movement (emphasising storytelling and emotions), Noverre did not live to see ballets such as Giselle (1841) or Swan Lake (1877) with their exquisite heroines – a direct result of his ideas.

He died in 1810 and never saw how ballerinas became so significant in the years to come. Before this, all ballet dancers were men. Pointe work, the rigorous skill of dancing on the tips of the toes, was yet to make an appearance. Noverre remains a foundational figure, whose ideas paved the way for 20th-century dance trailblazers like Isadora Duncan, Doris Humphrey, and Martha Graham, who introduced new styles and aesthetics to ballet.