Origins of Ballet

Before Ballet: Word, Music, Movement

Between the late thirteenth and the fourteenth century, ballet as we understand it today did not yet exist: there was no corps de ballet, no organized choreographic stage, no codified technical language. What did exist, however, was something fundamental — the fusion of poetry, music, and gesture. In the climate of the Dolce Stil Novo, while Dante Alighieri theorized the nobility of love and the vernacular consolidated itself as an artistic vehicle, music developed as the sonic extension of the word. Poetry was not conceived merely to be read: it was designed to be sung. And what is sung can inevitably be danced. We are not yet in the domain of choreographic spectacle, but in the sphere of social and cultivated dance practiced in courts and aristocratic urban contexts. Dante himself offers testimony to this indissoluble bond. In Paradiso (Canto XXIV), he evokes the carola, a typically Italian circular dance of the period, using it as a metaphor for celestial perfection and joy. A few decades later, Giovanni Boccaccio in the Decameron minutely describes the young protagonists who, at the close of each day of retreat, devote themselves to dancing to the sound of a lute or a vielle (led in turn by Emilia, Pampinea, or Dioneo), confirming how choreutic practice was an indispensable ritual of the enlightened bourgeoisie.

The Trecento and the Birth of Musical Dance

With the fourteenth century, the situation changes more decisively. The secularization of culture, the rise of cities, and the new prominence of the bourgeois class transform music into a more human language. Within this context, dance finds a more defined space.

The Ballata: Musical Form and Dance Form

In the Italian Trecento, the ballata became one of the central forms of secular production. Leading composers of the Italian Ars Nova such as Francesco Landini, Gherardello da Firenze, and Lorenzo da Firenze made it the dominant genre. Its structure — Ripresa–Piedi–Volta–Ripresa — was not merely a poetic-musical device, but reflected a circular logic perfectly compatible with collective dance. Alongside vocal forms, music conceived exclusively for physical movement also began to consolidate, such as the celebrated Saltarello. Precious manuscripts from this period (such as the famous London codex Add. 29987) have preserved monodic Italian instrumental pieces characterized by lively rhythms, leaps, and driving pulsations, written specifically for courtly dances. The ballata and the saltarello are structured song, social form, and choreutic accompaniment. We do not yet possess notations of steps, but the proximity between musical form and movement is evident. Dance is integrated into the Italian urban cultural fabric — not yet theatricalized, but already refined.

Courts, Cities, and the Space of Movement

In the Trecento, secular music flourished in the courts of the Scaligeri in Verona, the Visconti in Milan, and in bourgeois Florence. Here dance performed a precise function as an instrument of social distinction: it was an expression of elegance and comportment as well as a ritual of political cohesion. It was not an ornamental detail of court life, but a behavioral code. During great banquets and princely feasts, the inclusion of musicians and jongleurs who blended music, sketches of dance, and pantomime began to lay the foundations for the future art of the “intermezzi.” The secular culture that produced madrigals, cacce, and ballate was the same culture that valued controlled gesture, ordered movement, and the measured body in space.

Rhythm and Movement: The Theoretical Revolution

The innovations of Marchetto da Padova, though born in theoretical and treatise contexts, had indirect implications for Italian and European dance. The recognition of binary division alongside ternary, the introduction of new rhythmic values, and greater metric flexibility made possible a wider variety of pulsations. Future dance would also arise from this conquest of measurable and articulated rhythm.

Not Yet Ballet, but Its DNA

In the Italian thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, dance was not yet an autonomous spectacle. There was no technical codification of steps, no clear distinction between music for listening and music for dancing. Yet the fundamental principle already existed: the harmonious movement of the body guided by music, firmly embedded in musical culture. The ballata was the bridge; the city the laboratory; secularization the historical condition that made it possible. Ballet proper would be born in Italy only later, in the Renaissance courts, when movement would be organized as scenic language — a milestone achieved in the early fifteenth century by the Ferrarese Domenico da Piacenza, considered the first great documented choreographer and dance master in Europe. Here, however, we already find the groundwork: structured music, measured rhythm, and codified social gesture. Without the Trecento, ballet would have had no body upon which to build, nor would it have laid those solid dramaturgical and visual foundations that in later centuries would make great not only dance, but the entire scenic and spectacular architecture of Italian opera.