Today we explored Versailles, the home of Louis XIV. Along the palace perimeter is a gold gate decorated with suns. We learned that Louis XIV used the sun as his royal symbol and was known as “the sun king.” At age 15, Louis XIV combined two of his fascinations, the sun and the ballet, when danced the role of the Apollo, the sun god, in Le Ballet de la Nuit.
Although ballet originated in Italy, it was only through the work of King Louis XIV that ballet became the renowned artform that it is today. Louis XIV founded one of the first schools of ballet, the Académie Royale de Danse, in 1661 and worked with choreographers, composers and costume designers to build the artform’s opulence (Andros). From his legacy, France became the epicenter of the ballet world, to the point where it is commonly mistaken as ballet’s birthplace.
Since the time of its daily practice and nightly showcase at Versailles in the Hall of Mirrors, ballet has become an athletic art form known for its graceful and powerful performances, highly specific movement vocabulary and intensive training methods. Because of these behavioral characteristics and the unique physicality required, ballet dancers have become the subject of several neuroscientific studies, on topics ranging from areas of the brain activated during a performance to the study of neuromuscular injuries of ballerinas.
In one study performed by Jürgen Hänggi and colleagues, MRI images of professional ballet dancers were compared to a group of non-dancers to understand how ballet training impacts neuroplasticity. They focused on the sensorimotor system, or areas of the brain that are necessary for sensory processing, motor control and how this information is relayed between all of the involved structures.
Researchers found that the ballet dancers had decreased brain volume in some of the regions studied. However, these findings were similar to other studies that demonstrating that oftentimes when a skill is acquired there is a decrease in brain activity in the brain area related to the specific action (Hänggi et al., pg. 2009). In dance, we spend so much time repeating combinations and steps that we gain muscle memory for long sequences, to the point where we no longer have to think through the details of some of the steps. The article predicts that because of this training, certain parts of the brain involved in ballet movement may undergo synaptic pruning, a process where parts of neurons in the brain die to allow for new development.
Resources:
Andros, D. (n.d.). Ballet Timeline. Retrieved from http://michaelminn.net/andros/history/ballet_timeline/index.html
Hanggi, J., Koeneke, S., Bezzola, L., & Jancke, L. (2009). Structural neuroplasticity in the sensorimotor network of professional female ballet dancers. Human Brain Mapping,1196-1206. doi:10.1002/hbm.20928