19th century a famous dancer, ballet master and teacher of French origin in Russia.
The early years of his life and career were spent in Bordeaux and Madrid. Mr. Petipa is noted for his long career as director of the Russian Ballet. From 1869 to 1903, Marius Petipa led the Russian Ballet, this period is called the Petipa era.
According to Vytautas Grivickas, Marius Petipa is almost unanimously recognized as the most influential classical ballet artist.
Petipa's work combines old ballet traditions (the traditions of Jean Georges Noverre, Charles Lui Didelot, Julles Joseph Perrot continued) and innovations introduced by the ballet master. In his ballets, the traditions of pantomime, with the help of which the plot is taught, and divertissement at the end of the performance are preserved, but it was logically connected with the plot of the performance. Marius Petipa established the structure of the ballet performance and individual numbers. The pantomime and dance episodes are never joined, but run consecutively. Each act is logically complete in terms of plot, music and choreography. The culmination of the performance was the grand pas ((gran pa) (big step) a complex, multi-part musical dance form, born in the Romantic era and completed in M. Petipa's work), which poetically summarized and revealed the beauty of the dance technique, the main soloists participated in it, and the demi-solists and the corps de ballet. Thanks to M. Petipa, the dance of male soloists flourished again.
Marius Petipa invented the pas de deux ((pa de dio) (steps in two) dance in two) structure.
The basis of the choreography in his ballets is academic classical dance. M. Petipa combined the Italian and French ballet schools, demanding perfect performance, neat positions and transitions from the performers. An important place in ballets is occupied by character dances, which Petipa stylized according to the rules of classical dance. The transfer of such dances to the ballet stage is, from a historical point of view, an extremely significant merit of M. Petipa
