The Main Themes/Features In A Romantic Ballet

Feature	Context
Soft, floaty and rounded arms	These arms represent the theme of supernatural being all fairy-like. This is what the public wanted to see; to let them forget about the urban industrialisation of their day job. As they’d been working in a factory all day, they didn’t want to see a performance that was showing their every day job; they wanted to come and see something that makes them forget about that and see something different.
Costume – shorter Victorian dresses; Belle Tutu	These tutus represent fashion in that era as in those days the females wore long, big Victorian dresses but for the performance they were cut short, just above the ankles so you could see the foot movements.
Pointe work	The pointe work was used because there would be a realistic story line to the performance but the pointe work would let the characters be less realistic and weightless – idea of fairy-like again and being weightless;  able to fly.
Male role just for support of the female dancer on pointe	During the romantic ballet period, there was a decline in male dancers so they were just used for support in holding the female dancer whilst on pointe.
Sunset/night scenes – supernatural	In the romantic ballet period, they didn’t have electricity obviously, so they used gaslights to make it look like the moon which is linked to supernatural because the moon is used in fairy stories.
Little intricate – beating/fast footwork	They were going against fashion and culture by using shorter dresses so you could see their intricate beating footwork. Vocabulary of movement was developed.