Taglioni, Marie

Taglioni, Marie

(born April 23, 1804, Stockholm, Swed.—died April 24, 1884, Marseille, Fr.) Italian ballet dancer. She trained with her dancer-choreographer father, Filippo Taglioni (1777–1871), and made her debut in Vienna in 1822. In her father's ballet La Sylphide, introduced at the Paris Opéra in 1832, she became one of the first to dance on pointe. She created a delicate new style, marked by floating leaps and balanced poses such as the arabesque, that typified the early 19th-century Romantic style. Her diaphanous white skirts would evolve into the tutu worn by most classical ballerinas. She toured throughout Europe and, after leaving the Opéra in 1837, danced with the Imperial Ballet in St. Petersburg; she retired from dancing in 1847.