Mariinsky Theater
View for a Czar
Ballet as evolved in Europe from the 16th through the 19th century was mostly a court art, and a privileged central viewing point was always reserved for the monarch. A French king or a Russian Czar would sit in a special central box on what we nowadays call the first tier. This photograph shows the Czar’s box directly opposite the center of the stage. From that box the Czar would view the ballet in much the same way the eye of a spectator looks at a painting in Alberti’s perspective system would look at the real life scene the painting depicts, as reduced to a two-dimensional space on the canvas. The Czar would see a three-dimensional dance, but like a painting it would be framed by the proscenium. The intricate patterns of the dancers would be best seen from his perspective, and the choreographers had that fact in mind when they choreographed for him. Classical ballet takes its place along with Renaissance painting as an intelligible ordering of buildings (background) and figures (foreground) in rationalized space. The first known treatises on Ballet were also written in Italy during the Renaissance, extolling the same principles.
