ABSTRACT
The ballet world is an intense, closed, highly specialized community that has reached across borders since its inception in the fourteenth century at Italian courts.1 Dance historian and critic Joan Cass (1993) identifies ballet’s international character by tracing it back to the first ballet production, the court ballet, Ballet Comique de la Reine, by Italian Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx in 1581 in Paris. Yet modern technologies of communication and transportation have increased the opportunities for mobility within a structure of new and old centres and peripheries. Today every major ballet production is a collaboration between people from a number of countries pooling national traditions and styles of choreography, composition, set and costume design.
