"Taglioni is one of the greatest poets of our age": The Romantic Doyennes of the Ballet Blanc

Ballet in the early nineteenth century was an art form where male writers and owners benefitted of the popularity of the female stars. During this time period the cult of the ballerina gave rise to the new form of toe dancing, or dancing en pointe, which originated in La Sylphide for Maria Taglioni by her choreographer father Filippo Taglioni and spawned a raft of productions known as ballet blancs. These Romantic ballets were adapted from Germanic folklore and combine the long Romantic tutu, pointe work and soft gas lighting to emphasise the unearthly movement of the ballerina. These ballets constitute the Romantic origin of gothic ballet, and the competing rivalries between the Romantic doyennes (such as Taglioni, Fanny Essler and Clara Webster) add to this sense of the Gothic within the Romantic. Geraldine Morris established in her 2017 essay 'Giselle and the Gothic: Contesting the Romantic Idealisation of the Woman' that focusing specifically on the gothic elements of Giselle, as opposed to understanding these tropes as part of the Romantic tradition, afforded greater understanding of the ballet's stylistic and cultural historicity. This paper will examine how pivotal the female ballerina in the Romantic period was to the success of the art form and how their (gothic) movement transformed ballet through an analysis of the three ballet blancs - La Sylphide, Giselle and Copellia - and the careers of their female leads.