The Birth of the Ballet d’Action

From Baroque Symmetry to Expressive Truth

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, ballet in Italy was technically codified but dramaturgically rigid. Danced sequences often remained episodic, inserted into opera as decorative moments. In the cultural climate of Arcadia and the Enlightenment, however, the aesthetic paradigm changed. Simplicity, clarity, verisimilitude, and narrative coherence were now sought. Dance could no longer be pure ornamentation; it had to speak, to tell a story. Gesture had to express emotion, and movement had to correspond to the psychology of characters. Rigid masks and cumbersome costumes were progressively abandoned. It was a revolution. Dance was no longer a collective geometric figure; it became silent theatre, using bodily movement as language. The great pioneer and theorist of this transformation was the Milanese Gasparo Angiolini, creator of the true “ballet pantomime.” Angiolini maintained that dance should move and narrate solely through gesture, without the aid of spoken or sung explanation. In the ballet d’action, gesture replaced the word, pantomime became structural, and facial expression acquired central importance. The dancer was no longer merely a technical virtuoso but an interpreter. This transformation paralleled in Italy the reforms of opera seria and the broader eighteenth-century search for naturalness in music.

Italy as a Center of Experimentation and the “Ballo Grottesco”

Italy remained a fundamental theatrical center, especially for opera, but the primacy of choreographic reform was shared with major capitals (Paris, Vienna, London), which became laboratories of narrative ballet — largely thanks to the exportation of Italian talent. In Vienna, as in Italy, within the context of mid-eighteenth-century theatrical reform, ballet became increasingly integrated into spectacle under the guidance of Angiolini himself and supported by the music of major Italian composers such as Antonio Salieri and Luigi Boccherini. Alongside “noble” dance, Italy developed during this period a uniquely important native form: the Ballo Grottesco. Far removed from French measured elegance, the Italian grotesque dancer was a formidable virtuoso, capable of leaps, turns, and acrobatics combined with vivid facial expressivity. This Italian excellence was codified by the Neapolitan choreographer Gennaro Magri in his fundamental Trattato teorico-prattico di ballo (1779).

From Divertissement to Autonomous Dramaturgy: The Coreodramma

Here lies the decisive shift. Previously, dance interrupted the action of opera; now dance became the action itself. The apotheosis of this emancipation was achieved at the end of the century through the genius of the Neapolitan Salvatore Viganò. Viganò invented the Coreodramma (or choreographic drama), elevating pantomime to an unprecedented level of complexity, particularly at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan. In his works, even the corps de ballet ceased to move as a geometric flock: each individual dancer possessed an autonomous expressive and dramatic role within the mass. The ballet d’action thus prepared the ground for the birth of Romantic ballet and the definitive emancipation from melodrama.

Toward the Nineteenth Century

By the end of the eighteenth century, ballet was technically mature and narratively self-aware. What was still lacking was the transformation of the body into an ideal, suspended, almost superhuman figure. Only the Romantic nineteenth century would bring the myth of lightness, placing the ballerina on pointe as absolute protagonist — a technical achievement that, once again, would see a dynasty of Italians (such as the Taglionis and the Blasis family) set the standard for the entire world.