ballet

• WordNet 3.6
  • n ballet a theatrical representation of a story that is performed to music by trained dancers
  • n ballet music written for a ballet
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• Interesting fact: George Anthiel composed film scores, but earlier in his life he had been an avant garde composer. In 1924 his "Ballet mecanique" was performed at Carnegie Hall. The work was scored for a fire siren, automobile horns, and an airplane propeller. After only a few minutes of this racket, an aging gentleman in the orchestra seats tied his handkerchief to his cane and began waving a white flag.
• • Ballet (Her) A bearing in coats of arms, representing one or more balls, which are denominated bezants, plates, etc., according to color.
  • Ballet (Mus) A light part song, or madrigal, with a fa la burden or chorus, -- most common with the Elizabethan madrigal composers; -- also spelled ballett.
  • Ballet An artistic dance performed as a theatrical entertainment, or an interlude, by a number of persons, usually women. Sometimes, a scene accompanied by pantomime and dancing.
  • Ballet The company of persons who perform the ballet.
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• • n ballet A little ball: in heraldry, a bearing in coats of arms, denominated, according to the color, bezants, plates, hurts, etc.
  • n ballet A spectacular dance, more or less elaborate in steps, poses, and costumes, in which a number of performers, chiefly females, take part. It is led or conducted by one or more chief dancers or coryphées, and is usually incidental to an operatic or other dramatic representation.
  • n ballet A complete pantomime or theatrical representation, in which a story is told, and actions, characters, and passions are represented, by gestures and grouping, accompanied by characteristic or illustrative music, dancing, and often rich scenery and decorations.
  • n ballet The corps of dancers who perform ballets.
  • ballet To express by dancing or in a ballet.
  • ballet An obsolete form of ballad.
  • n ballet The music to which a ballet is danced.
  • n ballet In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially in England, a light glee-like madrigal or part-song, often with a fa-la burden. See fa-la.
  • n ballet In the eighteenth century, a series of instrumental dances properly in the same key and usually for stringed instruments; a suite (which see). The dramatic ballet (see def. 2) was the national form of drama in France; it originated in the sixteenth century, and in the seventeenth coalesced with the Italian musical drama, giving rise to the early type of French opera.
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• • n Ballet bal′lā a theatrical exhibition composed of dancing, posturing, and pantomimic action:
  • n Ballet bal′lā (obs.) a dance.
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• Elle Macpherson

  

  “I wanted so badly to study ballet, but it was really all about wearing the tutu. [On the subject of her early aspirations]”
• Claiborne Pell

  

  “People who leave Washington do so by way of the box... ballet or coffin.”
• W. H. Auden

  

  “Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape.”

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