Ballet (French: [balɛ]) is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form of dance with its own vocabulary.
Ballet, theatrical dance in which a formal academic dance technique—the danse d’ecole—is combined with other artistic elements such as music, costume, and stage scenery. The academic technique itself is also known as ballet. Learn more about the history of ballet in this article.