Joan Gross, age 13, of Meridian, Miss., for her question:

WHEN WAS THE FIRST BALLET PERFORMED?

Ballet's beginnings can be traced to Italy during the 1400s at the time of the Renaissance. People developed great interest in art and learning. Fancy entertainments included dance performances. But the first ballet, historians say, was staged in 1581.

Catherine de Medici, a member of the ruling family of Florence, became the queen of France in 1547. Catherine introduced into the French court the same kind of entertainments she had known in Italy. They were staged by Balthazar de Beaujoyeulx, a gifted musician. He had come from Italy to be Catherine's chief musician.

One of Beaujoyeulx's entertainments was called the "Ballet Comique de la Reine," and this production is called the world's first ballet. It was a magnificent five and a half hour spectacle performed in 1581 in honor of a royal wedding.

The battle told the ancient Greek myth of Circe, who had the magical power to turn men into beasts. The ballet included specially written instrumental music, singing and spoken verse as well as dancing all based on the story of Circe.     

Dance technique was extremely limited so Beaujoyeulx depended on spectacular costumes and scenery to impress the audience. The ballet was a great success and was much imitated in other European courts.

Paris became the capital of the ballet world. King Louis XIV enjoyed dancing and in 1661 founded the Royal Academy of Dancing to train professional dancers to perform for his court.

Professional ballet began with the king's dancing academy. With serious training, the French professionals developed skills that had been impossible before. Similar companies developed in other European countries. One of the greatest was the Russian Imperial Ballet of St. Petersburg whose school was founded in 1738.

Soon the professional dancers were performing publicly in theaters.

In 1760, the French choreographer Jean Georges Noverre criticized the professional dances, saying they cared too little about the true purpose of ballet. This purpose, he said, was to represent characters and express their feelings.

Noverre urged that ballet dancers stop using masks, bulky costumes and large wigs to illustrate or explain plot and character. He claimed that the dancers could express these things using only their bodies and faces. So long as the dancers did not look strained or uncomfortable doing difficult steps, they could show such emotions as anger, joy, fear and love.

Noverre developed the ballet d'action, a form of dramatic ballet that told the story completely through movement.

During the 1800s, ballet technique was expanded, especially for women, to express new ideas. Women, for example, learned to dance on their toes. This achievement helped them look like heavenly beings visiting the earth but barely touching it.

Romantic ballet presented women as ideal and, for the first time, gave them greater importance than men.