From Sylphs to Sleeping Princesses: Romantic Ballet in the Arc of 19th-Century Fairytale Retelling

Ballet’s transition from the classical style to the Romantic in the early nineteenth century also required a narrative pivot: to create the aesthetic experience the Romantics sought, librettists and scenarists moved away from ancient times and places of myth to the supernatural landscape of fantasy and fairy tales. Dance historians frequently acknowledge Romantic ballet’s affinity for the fairy tale, yet ballet is still often perceived as outside the arc of fairytale retellings. Using La Sylphide (1832) and Sleeping Beauty (1890) as case studies, this paper will demonstrate how the process of creating and staging a fairytale ballet became less original and more reliant on adaptation as ballet engaged more and more directly with literary fairy tales throughout the nineteenth century. The development of the Romantic style and its evolution was a key factor in the exchange of influence between fairy tale and ballet during this period.

Jacqueline N. Smith is a DPhil candidate in English Language & Literature at the St Hugh’s College, Oxford. She holds BA and MA degrees from Brigham Young University in Utah, USA. Inspired by her background as a dancer, Jacqueline’s doctoral research investigates the exchange of influence between Romantic ballet and the fairy tale—with particular interest in how the nineteenth-ce ntury feminization of ballet affects the way these tales were constructed, portrayed, and consumed. Her thesis, titled “Fairy Tales en pointe: Ballets That Made the Tale & Tales That Made the Ballet,” takes a categorical case-study approach grounded in fairytale history and adaptation theory to fill in some of the gaps left by previous attention to performance records for some of the most beloved fairy-tale ballets. This research advocates a more nuanced perspective of originality in folklore retelling, where the unique advantages and limitations of a visual/auditory medium can have historical, canonical, and cultural significance.