Ballet, the discipline of dance Misty Copeland specializes in, originated in Italy in the 15th or 16th century. It was adopted by the French royal court, where it gained a more formalized style and language. Ballet soon became an element of opera; ballet dances appeared in operas alongside vocal performances. In the 1770s, ballet branched out to become a fully realized art form separate from opera (Kant, Marion, and Ivor Guest. “Ballet.” Britannica, 9 Mar. 2024).

By the mid-1800s, ballet was a highly respected and romanticized art form. Classical composers wrote music specifically for ballet, often with specific dancers in mind for certain parts. Both ballet dancers and their choreographers could become celebrities. In the late 1800s, ballet grew in popularity in Russia thanks in part to composers like Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who wrote Swan Lake and The Nutcracker, two of the most popular and famous ballets in the world. Russian dancers, many of them from the world-famous Bolshoi Ballet company, dominated the ballet world for much of the 20th century (Kant). Many of the most famous dancers of the 20th century were Soviet dancers, including Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov, both of whom famously defected from the Soviet Union.