ballad opera English 18th-century comic opera in which songs and musical interludes, usually consisting of existing popular tunes or opera melodies with new words, are interspersed with spoken dialogue. The first ballad opera, The Beggar’s Opera (1728), by John Gay and J.C. Pepusch (1667-1752), was a sharply satirical work that became wildly popular and led to numerous similar works. Ballad opera led directly to the German singspiel and can be seen as the source of the modern musical.
ballade \ba-'lad\ One of several formes fixes in French lyric poetry and song, cultivated particularly in the 14th—15th centuries. It consists of three main stanzas having the same rhyme scheme plus a shortened final dedi¬ catory stanza; all four stanzas have identical final refrain lines. The texts were often solemn and formal, containing elaborate symbolism and clas¬ sical references. Though present in the poetry of many ages and regions, the ballade in its purest form was found only in France and England. Its precursors can be found in the songs of the troubadours and trouveres.
Ballard \'bal-ord\, J(ames) G(raham) (b. Nov. 15, 1930, Shanghai, China) British writer. Ballard spent four years of his childhood in a Japa¬ nese prison camp, an experience he described in Empire of the Sun (1984; film, 1987). His science fiction is often set in ecologically unbalanced landscapes caused by decadent technological excess. His apocalyptic nov¬ els, often shockingly violent, include Crash (1973; film, 1996), Concrete Island (1974), and High Rise (1975). His later works include the short- story collection War Fever (1990) and the novels The Kindness of Women (1991) and Cocaine Nights (1998).
Ballard Vba-brd\, Robert D(uane) (b. 1942, Wichita, Kan., U.S.) U.S. oceanographer and marine geologist. He grew up near San Diego, Calif. As a marine scientist at the Woods Hole (Mass.) Oceanographic Research Institution, he pioneered the use of deep-diving submersibles, participated in the first manned exploration of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and discovered warm water springs and their unusual animal communities in the Galapagos Rift. He is best known for his dramatic discovery of the wreck of the Titanic in 1985. Since then he has gone on to discover ships lost in battle during World War II.
Ballesteros \,bal-9s- , ter-os\ / Seve(riano) (b. April 9, 1957, Pedrena, Spain) Spanish golfer. One of four professional golfing brothers, he fre-
© 2006 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
ballet ► ballot initiative I 157
quently won the British Open (1979, 1984, 1988) and the Masters (1980, 1983) and captained the 1997 European Ryder Cup team to victory. Known for his flamboyant and imaginative style of play, by the late 1990s he had accumulated more than 70 wins in international tournaments.
ballet Theatrical dance in which a formal academic technique (the danse d’ecole) is combined with music, costume, and stage scenery. Developed from court productions of the Renaissance, ballet was renewed under Louis XIV, who in 1661 established France’s Academie Royale de Danse, where Pierre Beauchamp developed the five ballet positions. Early ballets were often accompanied by singing and incorporated into opera-ballets by composers such as Jean-Baptiste Lully. In the 18th century Jean-Georges Noverre and Gasparo Angiolini separately developed the dramatic ballet (;ballet d’action) to tell a story through dance steps and mime, a reform echoed in Christoph Willibald Gluck’s music. Significant developments in the early 19th century included pointe work (balance on the extreme tip of the toe) and the emergence of the prima ballerina, exemplified by Marie Taglioni and Fanny Elssler. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Rus¬ sia became the centre of ballet production and performance, through the work of innovators such as Sergey Diaghilev, Anna Pavlova, Vaslav Nijin¬ sky, Marius Petipa, and Michel Fokine; great ballets were composed by Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Igor Stravinsky. Since then, ballet schools in Great Brit¬ ain and the U.S. have elevated ballet in those countries to Russia’s level and greatly increased its audience. See also American Ballet Theatre; Bal¬ let Russe de Monte Carlo; Ballets Russes; Bolshoi Ballet; New York City Bal¬ let; Royal Ballet.
ballet position Any of the five positions of the feet fundamental to all classical ballet. First codified by Pierre Beauchamp (1636-1705) in 1680, the positions form the base from which a dancer achieves stability or aplomb, the basic law of ballet. Fundamental to all the positions is the turnout, or rotation of the dancer’s legs out from the hips, which creates a firm basis for movement in any direction. Various positions of the arms and hands (port de bras ) complete the figures.
Arabesque executed by Natalya Bessmertnova, with Nikolay Fadeychev, of the Bolshoi Ballet; Swan Lake
NOVOSTI—SOVFOTO
Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo \ba-la-'rils-d3-mo n -ta- , kar-lo\ Ballet company formed in Monte Carlo in 1932. The name derived from Sergey Diaghilev’ s Ballets Russes, which dissolved after his death in 1929. Under Rene Blum and Col. W. de Basil, the company presented works by Leonide Massine and George Balanchine and featured Alexandra Danilova, Andre Eglevsky, and David Lichine. In 1938 clashes split the company into two groups: the Original Ballet Russe (led by de Basil), which toured inter¬ nationally before dissolving in 1948; and the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo
(led by Massine), which toured mainly in the U.S. with Danilova, Alicia Markova, and Maria Tallchief until 1963.
Ballets Russes \ba-la-'riEs\ Ballet company founded in Paris in 1909 by Sergey Diaghilev. Considered the source of modern ballet, the company employed the most outstanding creative talent of the period. Its choreog¬ raphers included Michel Fokine, Leonide AAassine, Bronislava Nijinska, and George Balanchine, and among its dancers were Yekaterina Geltzer, Tamara Karsavina, and Vaslav Nijinsky. Music was commissioned from compos¬ ers such as Igor Stravinsky, Maurice Ravel, Darius Milhaud, Sergey Prokofiev, and Claude Debussy, and ballets featured stage designs by artists Alexan¬ dre Benois, Pablo Picasso, Georges Rouault, Henri Matisse, and Andre Derain.
Ballinger Vbal-in-jorV Richard A(chilles) (b. July 9, 1858, Boones- boro, Iowa, U.S.—d. June 6, 1922, Seattle, Wash.) U.S. secretary of the interior (1909-11). As the reform mayor of Seattle, Wash. (1904-06), he attracted national attention. In 1907 he was appointed commissioner of the General Land Office, and in 1909 he became secretary of the interior. During his two years in that post he sought to make public resources more available for private exploitation. Implicated in a fraudulent Alaskan land- claims scheme, he was cleared after a congressional investigation but resigned in 1911. The episode split the Republicans between conserva¬ tives led by Pres. William H. Tar and progressives loyal to Theodore Roosevelt.
Balliol, John de See John (Scotland)
ballista Xbo-'lis-toV Ancient missile launcher designed to hurl long arrows or heavy balls. The Greek version was basically a huge crossbow fastened to a mount. The Roman ballista was powered by torsion derived from two thick skeins of twisted cords through which were thrust two separate arms joined at their ends by the cord that propelled the missile. The largest could accurately hurl 60-lb (27-kg) weights up to about 500 yards (450 m).
ballistics Science of propulsion, flight, and impact of projectiles. Inter¬ nal ballistics deals with propulsion of projectiles, such as within the bar¬ rel of a gun or at a rocket launch. Guns and rocket engines convert chemical energy of propellants into kinetic energy of projectiles. External ballistics deals with projectile flight. The trajectory, or path, of a projectile is sub¬ ject to the forces of gravity (see gravitation), drag, and lift. Terminal bal¬ listics deals with the impact of projectiles on a target. Wound ballistics deals with the mechanisms and medical implications of trauma caused by bullets and explosively driven fragments, such as shrapnel.