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Maestro Enrico Cecchetti
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Enrico Cecchetti was born in Rome in 1850. He trained under Lepri, a pupil of the great Carlo Blasis who codified the technique of classical ballet in 1820. Blasis' ideas were developed further by Cecchetti who grouped the classical vocabulary into six sets of exercises, one for each day of the working week. His career took him to St. Petersburg and the Imperial Russian Ballet, where he created the role of The Bluebird and the mime role of Carabosse in The Sleeping Beauty.. Joining Diaghilev's "Ballets Russes" in 1909, Cecchetti became one of the greatest teachers in ballet history. Among his pupils were Anna Pavlova and Vaslav Nijinsky, Alicia Markova, Marie Rambert and Ninette de Valois who founded The Royal Ballet and its school. He died in 1928. |
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His legacy lives on :
Sir Frederick Ashton, choreographer for the Royal Ballet:
“If I had my way, I would always insist that all dancers should daily do the wonderful Cecchetti port de bras. It inculcates a wonderful feeling for line and correct positioning and the use of head movement and épaulement,which - if properly absorbed - will be of incalculable use throughout a dancer's career".
Darcy Bussell O.B.E. trained in the Cecchetti method before being accepted into the Royal Ballet School at 13 years of age:
"The Cecchetti work has given me strength, discipline and co-ordination. It wasn't until I got into the Royal Ballet Company that I realized how lucky I was to have had that training."