he's famous for his mistresses he had a couple of wives for his shoes he loved fashion and for building the Palace of Versailles he was the king of France and for being Europe's longest serving monarch he was genius he was a rock and roll star and from his iconic appearance as the Rising Sun in la balle de la nuit or the ballet of the night of 1653 louis xiv would become synonymous with the art of ballet he was the king who danced defining and popularizing an art form that was the very essence of nobility uniting politics and dance like never before and placing ballet firmly at the heart of civilized culture Louie was the flame that would ignite a revolution in dance that would give birth to the ballet that we know today [Music] I've always been fascinated by louis xiv of france since i first read about him as a young boy starting to learn ballet myself even at that young age i was aware of the prejudice against boys learning to dance and it seemed to me extraordinary that here was a king of roughly my own age who danced who did ballet like me and even 300 years after his death Lewis still remains for me ballets first great icon under his reign classical ballet took its first steps towards becoming an art form in its own right not just in France but across the whole of Europe now I want to truly uncover Louis contribution as I make him the subject of a brand new dance piece for the Birmingham Royal Ballet the King dances is inspired by the ballet de la nuit a landmark performance that reputedly lasted all night and featured at its climax a 14 year old Louis dancing the role of the Rising Sun Louie xiv was born on the 5th of September 1638 his parents louis xiii and anna boss tria had taken 22 years to produce an heir and Louise Berthe was hailed as a miracle he was dear Don a literally God given in 1643 Lewis father who had also been Hakeem downs had died making Louis the King of France at the tender age of 4 in the France that Louis inherited dance was a crucial part of the social hierarchy a gentleman needed to have three skills horse riding fencing and dancing and as the future King Louie would have been expected to learn to dance almost as soon as he could walk ballet dancers today trained for years to become the living embodiment of an ideal of noble behavior that harks back to an era when everything was done with effortless refinement and regal grace only now this only takes place within the confines of a dance studio or onstage for a paying public [Music] but in Louie's day although there were public entertainments like the commedia dell'arte ballet was reserved for the upper class for the nobility and it only took place at the royal courts originating in 15th century Italy where they were called Belletti these dancers were adopted by the French who called them ballet de coeur court ballets and were danced by royalty nobility and foreign dignitaries who ain't to entrace their peers in the audience the ballet de corps well they were big cool spectacles that involved singing recitations different kind of dancing pantomime and they were very different from the type of ballet that that we have today there weren't really constructed around the narrative but more like a loose theme like the seasons or the arts of the music and were they just entertainment what what purpose did they serve if you go right back to the 16th century they had this kind of magical belief that by performing dance you could bring down celestial influence and he was all about trying to recreate harmony on earth and then it really becomes a kind of early modern form of propaganda you know in the days they didn't have television that was one way of representing with a twist the latest events the idea was that they were you know trying to promote the glory of France the grandeur of daemonic so they were kind of PR exercises really one man who certainly saw the value of using these early ballets as propaganda was Cardinal Mazarin who together with Louise mother Anne of Austria ruled over France whilst Louie was still a child [Music] Catina Messiah in the 16th century has been the most powerful politician in France is of modest extraction was born in Italy and after the death of retires he became prime minister in France and how did Muslim influence Louie Mathis is precisely responsible for the education of fluid and in several fields in the artistic fields in the and especially in the political fields he was his Godfather was interior that's what I understood yeah and governor golly honking the taste of the king for Italian paintings for architecture for political representation and the dance is coming entirely from NASA a ballet class today typically starts at the bar and then progresses to the center of the studio where the dancers run through a drill of exercises all based around the five basic ballet positions from first to fifth from what I've read louis xiv is supposed to have done a ballet class every day for 20 years taught by the dancing master pierre Beauchamp but what kind of class would he have done the first lesson is to turn out and from the hips for a good balance because it's easier to go like that and then like that then come sir that is very very famous and I suppose later as well that that that turnout from the top of the leg allowed dancers to lift legs exactly because it's it's very functional yeah it's like that you can't do water reclaimer so that's good for you the dancing masters of Louie's time were both dancers and musicians they would play small violins called projects as they drilled the Great and the good in the dance technique they needed to know for both social dancing and for the ballet decor they learn all the positions one and and two and three and four and five and how to how to go how to move from one to the other yes were the five positions of the feet paralleled by five positions of the arms as they are know in modern ballet the basic rule is that when you have feet like that in first position or second position you have to elevate and that is finished so you have always doing to do that so there it is in the wrist rather than there yes the arm position wrist is to kick start my choreography for the King dancers I've asked baroque dance expert and teacher Edith La Mancha to give a workshop for myself and some of my dancers it proved surprisingly challenging the Baroque dance was the kind of precursor of modern day ballet and we have an awful lot in common in terms of steps and heads and general movements but when I tried to dance this work when she did a small demonstration and some of my dancers and I tried to do this work we realized what a different vocabulary it is and how different the coordination between feet lakes and arms has become I'm not after making something which is absolutely you know through to the baroque I can't learn how to master essentially a different dance technique my dancers they can't retrain and become baroque down specialists but to get the atmosphere to get some of the rules to get some of the tricks and some of the reasoning behind why why they move like this I very rarely seem to see a fifth position well it's true well this parallel is not beautiful hmm it's not beautiful no but it's great to know things and understand things like that why why the arms were slightly lowered why they were in front because these people they wore beautiful costumes because they had beautiful lace half of the time on their sleeves and it was a way of showing the costume off I wanted to try these steps out myself I wanted to have a go at them to know how they feel they don't look difficult they are very difficult they employ a completely different set of muscles to that of modern classical ballet and my old knees have really started hurting after a while I was great [Laughter] there is a theory that dance and the ballet decor were used by the French kings to keep the nobility busy and out of mischief however when Louis was 10 years old a rebellion broke out against higher taxation which quickly snowballed into a civil war called the Fronde which ended up pitting some of the most prominent members of the nobility against Louise mother Anne and First Minister Cardinal Mazarin the throned named after the sleaze used to target the windows of France's most hated man Cardinal Mazarin was to last for almost five years why was Mazarin so disliked by the French people the men reproaches made against masaha during the phones we're linked to is foreign extraction masaha was of Italian origin and was the most wealthy man in France so Masada was disliked because of his wealth and because of the exclusive influence he had on the young King when Louie was 12 years old a mob of Flanders broke into the Palais Royale over there demanding to see the boy King they were tired of the rule of Cardinal Mazarin and wanted to make personal representations to the king himself now legend has it that his mother Anne told Mui to pretend to be asleep and when the Flanders finally got into the Royal bedchamber they were so entranced by the vulnerable beauty of the King that they quietly left it must have been a terrifying experience for Louie in 1653 after almost five years of fighting the Fronde were finally defeated with the aid of some of the British nobility including the future King of England James the second with the rebellion quelled there was only one thing left to do put on a ballet the ballet de la nuit [Music] this is woodsman Manor in Aylesbury which was built in 1883 by the Francophile baron ferdinand Rothschild it houses a unique volume from 1653 containing a hundred and twenty-nine designs for the ballet de la nuit a grand spectacle that was intended to thrust Louis into the limelight and ensure the Fronde errs remain defeated well it was a court battle a ballet de coeur it had six performances at the Palace Theatre of the pity boy born in Paris it was put on for the entertainment of the court but it also had louis xiv himself dancing in it with some of his courtiers and it was divided into four watches of the night and it covered the 12 hours between sunset and sunrise I mean I've heard that it ran in real time for 12 hours I think it did because the the best eyewitness we've got and he went to two performances and that was John Lurie who was a journalist and he goes to the first night where he is he has to queue for three hours just to get into the the theatre when he gets in there he's been assigned a lousy seat he says I'm far away from the action and I'm right up high I can't see a thing and I was stuck there for 13 hours so I think it it probably was pretty well in in real time did the ballet delenn we have a story what was it about it didn't have a narrative that went right through the ballet what it had was a theme and this the theme of this was the passing of the night the inevitability of day following night if you want to put that into ethical terms of good chasing out evil and if you want to apply it politically to live in the 14th which is what they were doing this new king aged 14 bringing hope after all towards the end of civil war in France and reasserting the authority of the crown the illustrations in the book at once turn manner are magnificent featuring fantasy characters like werewolves witches anthropomorphic representations of playing games and an howl headed Satan but one image which is missing from this volume is Louis as the Rising Sun which only exists as a separate illustration locked away in Paris what's also missing is any indication of what the actual dancing was like because there was no way of writing down or notating theatrical dance steps at this time although we have no documentation to show us what Louis did as the Rising Sun there is notation from male solo from later in the 17th century which depicts the entrance of Apollo the Sun God and it's possibly the nearest we'll get to knowing how the fourteen-year-old Louie would have danced [Music] all the steps in this solo correspond exactly to the normal vocabulary for what we call hi dancing or noble dancing it's also very interesting because it's very square choreography not too much turning not too many elements it would fit for a very young man [Music] extravagant costumes including masks were an important part of the ballet decor and together with innovative scenery they help transport 17th century audiences to fantastical world's inspired by both classical mythology and contemporary events design still plays a key role in theater today and in the King dances I've enlisted a team of designers to help create the visual world for my choreography it can be quite a process of negotiation to find the best solutions within a tight budget I'm working with people for whom this kind of restriction and this kind of CAP tends to be a spur for greater creativity you know when necessity is the mother of invention if you come if you can't make it work for you haven't got a thousand pounds then you make something which looks as good for 450 pounds and that keeps some that keeps our masters happy I don't think that money was any object when it came to stage in Louise ballets unfortunately I am NOT the king and you have to be a little bit more realistic since 1653 no one has heard what the ballet de l'ennuì would have sounded like in its entirety but at the mc2 complex in Grenoble an extraordinary recording is taking place [Music] from the bare bones of the existing musical archive Sebastian Dorsey has spent three years recreating the orchestral score for the ballet de la nuit at the beginning when I saw the score I told myself 78 dances all in G minor Wow and we have more than one hour only with dances and these dances are very very strange to us today because they are not minuet gavotte and all this normal barak dances very regular dances it's a sort of fantasy sometimes very regular sometimes very strange with interruptions [Music] it's very theatrical isn't it yeah it is and we can imagine it was for all this night we had to impress people we had to convince to seduce to frighten each dance is very very specific the music for the ballet de la nuit is often credited to jean-baptiste Lully the Italian born composer who would rise to prominence under louis xiv becoming the director of the académie Royale de musique which would later become the Paris Opera Ballet we hear that Lily was the composer of this piece it is that true we don't know exactly what imposed the dances maybe lui Constanta very probably but probably other people we don't know exactly probably believe for one to three dances we don't know exactly why do you think that this piece of music is so significant we know really opera at the beginning of the French part but all this time before has been totally unexplored a lot of this ballad music is totally unknown today so it's a special experience for us and especially with this one who have which have been the the most important at this time everything was planned to be a most wonderful performance and probably the best way to put in mind to all these people that the king is grid 14 not only joking but the king of universe I can't think of a more extraordinary way to celebrate the end of a civil war the ballet de la nuit was a major event and the image of Louis as La Salette the Sun King must have been burnt into the imagination of everybody that saw it the eyewitness accounts say that it was phenomenal to see it all the way the xiv himself was a very very good dancer there's so many accounts of that I think it must have been true so what better way what way to convince people by putting on a ballet which showcased the king as a dancer getting across these messages that the hope of France was a strong monarchy under louis xiv louis seems to have been driven by this sense of destiny that he was there to look after france to do what was best for france and it could be the seeds of that were being sown here as a PR stunt the ballet de la nuit was extremely effective the nobles bowed to the teenage Louise authority and confidence in France was restored yet extremes of wealth and poverty still plagued the country where the noble class has made up less than 1% of the population but ruled over the millions of peasants and commoners this is a dance solo for a peasant from 1697 it's an example of what is called a grotesque role which were often danced by noble men or even the king himself [Music] was this the nobility mocking the peasant class did they find them funny I think it was sometime and sometime very ironic oh the feeling of the separation between the classes was very different from ours they were not separated in common lives but the way to do the thing is a ways to show they were well educated and so we can see the the gap between the other and as superior yeah yes but also to filter our far we are from them and so they can make caricature even back in Lewis time dancing was more than just doing the stamps it was about conveying character feeling and emotional it's a choreography that shows your emotions if I want to express I will I will do the suggest if I am sad I will do to let emotions come from the choreography that's the point and I suppose again the the fact that they were masked meaning must come through exactly exactly exactly [Music] Louie didn't actually take the reins of power until he was 22 when his mentor Cardinal Mazarin died Mozza home died the 9th of March 1661 and this date is the beginning of the absolutism in France because the day after the King gathered all the council and said that from now he will rule alone over the country no more prime ministers no more Prime Minister and mother has been the last prime minister in France up to the French Revolution [Music] Cardinal Mazarin who wielded the power in France while slew he was a child and who he no likelihood commissioned the ballet de la nuit is actually the starting point for my new ballet the King dances the composer Stephen Montagu has provided a piano score of the music for the opening of my piece and I have the idea to begin the ballet with the solo for a character who represents both la nuit the knight and Cardinal Mazarin I mean Makai and I play Cardinal Mazarin in the King dances my first take on matter I'm is that is sinister and is very manipulative in the background but always trying to take control see P oops if you watch David in the studio when he's trying to work out how he wants to move to be for me that's a telltale sign is to walk what your character is and how you want to be you know if you keep your eye on on David yes let's do that instead yeah and I'm about a third of the way through this particular section and I've given myself a couple of days to do it so it should be it should be fine of course yeah hmm things are working better than others and I I want to bring out something a bit more in the arms it's not it's not quite it's not quite decorative enough and that's one of the features of baroque dances the arms are very decorative so I've got to bring out a little bit more of that but um yeah day one it's fine one of the things which has always intrigued and fascinated me about dance during Louis time was that it was dominated by men but in 1654 just a year after the ballet de la nuit a new ballet featured a groundbreaking moment louis dancing together with women the first bell is under lucca toss was still performed by all-male cast this is probably due to reasons of propriety but also technical considerations for instance the need to wear full-length costumes if you wear a floor-length dress has no way you can perform really elaborate choreographies women were not supposed to jump or any other undignified movements that could even make their ankles appear or something similarly scandalous and one important event was valid in hasta pili identities which was performed in 1654 and in the opening scene neo famously have Louis appearing as Apollo in the midst of nine beautiful women as the muses the novelty of the scene underlines the new image that is created of doing a task now as a king in full command of his kingdom he is free to think of pleasures but also of ensuring his dynasty so it makes sense to cast real women in that scene [Music] up until this point female roles in the ballet de corps were danced by men wearing masks wigs and female costumes just as some of my male dancers will be doing in the king dancers we can only speculate who decided that real women should dance with the 15 year old Louis perhaps it was Cardinal Mazarin who saw the PR value of making Louis sex symbol but once Louis had said this precedence more and more noble women began to dance together with their male counterparts in the ballet decor female dancers had been liberated not only for social dances but as performers and this was a trend that would spread outwards from France across the whole of Europe [Music] how did men and women dance together at that time did they partner each other was there contact Oh so few contact just your hand [Music] they may be the looking look always you know as if they were in the sky celestial bodies yes yes exactly and so there is an attraction between the both of them [Music] this duet is from jean-baptiste lully 'he's 1682 opera per se it may have been danced by one couple or a group of couples no one knows for sure but it's very different from the full contact par de der of classical ballets today I had intended as in the ballet de la nuit to have an all-male cast for the King dances but my composer Steve Montague wrote me a duet which was so ethereal and delicate that I knew that I couldn't have a man dancing the role of Celine the goddess of the moon [Music] Louise relationships with women his mother his wives his mistresses were very profound he never allowed them to interfere with politics or government but they certainly had a big impact on his outlook on life and I think that Selene represents all of these women [Music] with mahzarin gone Louie would go on to shore up his power base by personally dominating the nobility taking over the army and establishing a monarchy of absolute rule where only his word was the law but before all that he wanted to found the world's first Royal Academy of Dance the académie Royale de dance believed to be founded in a room in the Louvre was formed of 13 dancing masters who would oversee the teaching of both dance and the physical etiquette of daily life this wasn't just about teaching down steps this was about teaching nobility teaching grace race comes from an antique ideal if you don't know grace you cannot be Noble at least in appearance one of the main principle of grace is the opposition of the parts of the body so the ad is going in one way the torso in another way the legs in a separate way and the arms also in accordance to the feet position nobility is superiority so it must show in the body that was the speciality of the dancing master he was the one who can teach you how to be noble it was very important for any nobleman to know how to bow to know how to walk with distinction to know how to carry the body and also to have this picture or body of the nobility at the time with the shrewdest a very backwards and the very straightened body and also this turnout of the feet even in the common life by offering both rules and training on how to comport yourself for social success as well as increasingly structured dance technique French dancing masters provided an attractive package for both nobility and anyone who aspired to climb up the ranks of civilized society soon france's reputation for being at the heart of art and culture eclipsed even the Italians French dance became known as labelled dance or the beautiful dance and it became more and more fashionable French dancing masters became an exportable commodity spreading the gospel of French ballet right across Europe what everybody wanted was to be taught by a French dancing master to be taught French dancing to see French dancers on the stage in the 1690s Antony la baie came over from the Paris Opera and he never went back he stayed for 40 years choreographing for the London stage dancing at court for William the 3rd and ultimately teaching the grandchildren as of George the first so he made a huge career out of this other French dancing masters came and settled and some of them weren't even French they just said they were French in 1670 after 75 roles in 26 performances louis xiv decided to give up dancing in the ballet de coeur even though he'd stopped dancing louise patronage of the ballet continued and in 1674 he asked the dancing master and choreographer Pierre Beauchamp who he had danced with in the ballet de la nuit to codify the five basic positions of ballet by this time ballet its positions and inherent sense of grace was such an integral part of our Socratic life that the five ballet positions weren't only important for dance they were also used in art this famous painting of Louie was made in 1701 by the artist hyacinth rego and shows Louie in an exemplary fourth position it's a position of nobility of majesty a way to to show grace but also superiority order position like the first or the third position which are where the feet are clothes like this are more associated to modest connotations here you have grace but you have also majesty which was important this painting which actually featured Louie's face transposed onto the image of a body double was reproduced countless times and became a hugely influential work of royal art establishing a style of portraiture that was copied across the civilized world fourth position became the de facto stance for the wealthy and powerful it wasn't until 1700 that Ralph ia published a work but perfected the notation system begun by Beauchamp this was a giant leap forward for dance now ballets could be written down with the use of symbols they could be printed published and disseminated French dance labelled dance could be preserved and recreated forever nowadays we can even use our phones to record rehearsals and movements but there's still a place for notation most new ballets like the King dances are still written down in dance notation it's not the same on that bozo and furyay developed but a form called Benesch which was created much later but it still uses the same technique of having symbols for individual movements of the body and floor patterns to create a diagrammatic plan of the dance a bit like a musical score but can be preserved and shared just as perhaps Louis had planned when he commissioned notation to be developed [Music] the peak of Louise rain came in 1679 when Paris gave him the title of Lois Lagoon he put his stamp on the country in terms of industries academies arts politics even the borders of France itself and in 1682 in an audacious attempt to secure his grip on the nobility he moved the royal court the seat of government from paris - versailles Louise use of grand spectacles to promote an image of France as a wealthy and powerful country reached its Apogee in Versailles where feasts mask balls operas plays fireworks and the occasional ballet would almost entirely consume the time and energies of Louis Court however these entertainments didn't come cheap how much money did Louis spend on these ballets and spectacles and did the French people ever resent him because of that well I think he probably spent a huge amount if you looked at one of these big Versailles festivals like the one that took place in July in 1668 we know about 150,000 pounds were spent on just this one day a ballet on its own would have been less expensive and we know that the ballet de la mujer danced in 1662 cost just under 89 thousand pounds if you compare that with the average salary in those days a daily labourer would get about one pound fifty a week possibly going up to three paths but that's about it in terms of knowing what the French public thought is difficult because you know the poor don't leave any records he was very careful to have descriptions of the spectacles he organized or performed in published you know so people would hear of them also in foreign countries yeah it was a means of propaganda obviously [Music] later when he organized all his spectacles in Basayev he said it has to be really extraordinary and that's a way to hold our subjects hearts and spirits more firmly than by acts of beneficence you know to organize these grand spectacles for the foreigners all these expenses that might seem superfluous always create an impression a very advantageous impression of magnificence power wealth and greatness in addition to the spectacles at Versailles an increasing number of ballets were being performed on public stages where it was deemed unseemly for noble women to appear so professional female dancers were needed to fill these roles [Music] in the ceiling here at the foyer della dance in the Paris Opera you can see the queens of ballet and the first of these was mademoiselle de la fontaine who danced in jean-baptiste lully ballet latarian de la mora in 1681 so Julia what do we know about mademoiselle de la fontaine not very much we don't even know her first name she was born around sixteen fifty five and first appeared in the Opera in the tree of the la mujer which was the first ballet in which female dancers were allowed on the opera stage and she was tall and well proportioned and soon became an example of the noble style and she was the first soloist in the Paris Opera and she was even allowed to compose her own entries which was an a unique honor for woman other women quickly followed la Fontaine's example this solo danced by ear infest was originally performed by Mary Teresa Bellini [Music] she was the first professional female dancer to appear in England that was seen as quite an interesting novelty apparently because one critic called her a surprising monster but other critics are delighted [Music] she inspired women to become dancers in England and in 1703 young lady called The Devonshire girl did an imitation of mademoiselle de Cellini in London the third female professional dancer to make an impact during Louise rain was Francois rebel she was significant for three reasons she had a very long distinguished career as a dancer she was the leading French ballerina for almost three decades and she used the expressive powers of dance in her own creation and she was a teacher of the two first real star ballerinas who challenged male predominance in ballet Marie and capita can now go and marry Sally how significant were these three queens of ballet in the development of ballet as we know it well they were pioneers and they were the first female creators at the Opera [Music] they're the very first professional female dancers and of course dancing style baths have evolved a lot since then but I mean it was then that the foundation of present-day ballet was laid [Music] towards the end of his life living along with his court here in the glorious opulence of the Palace of Versailles Louie was plagued by further Wars internal conflict ill health and the death of his first wife and immediate heirs he became increasingly distant from the theater and under the influence of his second wife Madame de Maintenon he was more likely to be seen in a church than at a court ballet but by this time the development of ballet had gained its own momentum and the art would continue to shift and to evolve the belly decor is supposed to have died when Louise stopped dancing but dance didn't sort of stop overnight at the court of fluey there were still balls masked balls masquerades dance interludes in plays etc later on in the 1690s a new form emerged which was known as opera ballet and this was a kind of cross between court ballet and opera it started with a prologue and then you had a series of self-contained acts each one revolving around a separate seam although there's no story in the king dances there is a thematic exploration of Louie's journey to kingship spread across four sections just like in the ballet de la nuit albeit lasting just 35 minutes rather than 12 hours it alternates between being something very formal and Baroque or something very contemporary so it's moving between those two worlds and finding a language which will allow me to do that I never start seriously thinking about a ballet without having a very very strong idea of who the the leading roles will be played by you know there's no point in creating a role in your head doing all that work getting into the studio and finding that you haven't got a dancer that can do it it's as much to do with their creativity as it is with mine you know they create the roles [Music] it's been interesting kind of trying to find a character for Louie and try and put myself in his situation which is a one of you know he's a massively powerful but he was so powerful from so young how much confidence would he actually have had and how much guidance would he have had and how scared would he have been [Music] at the turn of the century a combination of international and domestic pressures began to humble the power of the Sun King former allies like England had turned against Louis France was losing Wars and the country was increasingly bankrupt in 1713 at the ripe old age of 75 Louie must have known that he didn't have much longer to live faced with his own mortality and with France in decline he still had the power to enforce one more act that would cement his name in ballets history books [Music] this is the Paris Opera Ballet School where the 161 students still bow and curtsy to every adult they come across just as Lewis quarters would have done in the 17th century it's a tradition which goes hand in hand with the rest of the school where the rock dance classes are still taught and every child receives a free education thanks to Lewis decree in 1713 that there should be free training for the dancers of the Paris Opera thus establishing the world's first school of bombing he had the feeling that just before he died that he had to keep the level of the dancer of the court and the first name of this school was Conservatoire to keep that is very important Conservatoire and the transmission like it's still here it's only from one person to the other one from the master to the student and a week at us tried to qualify so the words are completely in French we are the beginning of ballet but after we receive from everywhere from the Russian from the Italian but we still keep that purity we use the same famous fourth position fifth position you have the nice shoulders you have nice hips and nice face and that is coming from the wicket awesome Louis died 300 years ago on the 1st of September 1715 in this room in Versailles after 72 years on the throne he left France on the brink of bankruptcy but a hugely important superpower both politically and culturally I think he did indeed have a political agenda he did indeed have an idea of France to be the greatest and France was the greatest at that period definitely not only because of the arts but also militarily because of all the wars the bad thing was economically I think really he ruined France and he did a lot of harm to the poorest of the French there was of course famine and at the end of his reign was extremely hard for French people all the wars that he launched that the depth had been multiplied by ten taxes went up a lot in France and that created a lot of despair and was probably now historians say what prompted the French Revolution and politically what sort of systems remain in in France as a result of Louis well obviously he was is an absolute monarch and we are here under Republic today in a democracy but what has remained is this idea that we want a father-like figure to lead the country a strong figure and maybe this is a legacy of Greece the 14th [Music] there are just so many things that we don't know about Louis and his relationship to dance and there's no empirical evidence to explode the multitude of myths that surround the Sun King but what is true is that through his own personal devotion to dance Louis placed ballet right at the heart of the most powerful and influential Court in Europe I think he used ballet as a means of seduction not only for his female partners or their female audience but also for his people and the foreigners who witness that performance and so his extraordinary performance dressed up all in golden rays he was the Sun shedding light on his surroundings basically at the time of Louisa 14th there was an evolution he ordered a notation when you have to invent a notation you have to think about exactly your practice and you have to make real choices in what is important in the movement the fortunes he helped so much dance to develop to keep it and to develop it also the women began to dance and after that there will be stars he founded the Academy do music and he founded the Academy to dance so he was the King dancing King and he loved dance but also he create the job of dancer the King dances is finally finished and I hope that I've infused it with what I've discovered about Louis his relationship with Cardinal Mazarin his role in the history of dance and also how the ballet de la nuit was such a turning point for France with the way presented Louis as the savior of the country louis xiv may or may not have been the king who invented ballet I suppose no one can take the credit for single-handedly creating an entire art form but he remains for me the world's first ballet icon the king who loved to dance and the image of Louis as a 14 year old boy dressed as the Sun burns as brightly now as it did in the ballet de la nuit over 350 years ago [Music] it's taken over two years for all the elements of the King dancers to come together the music the choreography the design and the lighting but for me the piece is the culmination of a lifelong fascination that I've had with louis xiv the King dances isn't an attempt at historic recreation rather it's a particularly modern look at the ballet de la nuit and the journey that ballet and in particular male dancing has taken since 1653 when quite literally men were the kings of dance [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] still to come here on BBC four this evening were heading into the desert with planet Earth in just a