full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Ming Luke: What's the point(e) of ballet?

Unscramble the Blue Letters


A baby cursed at brith. A fierce battle of good and evil. A true love awoken with a kiss. spenileg Beauty is one of the world’s favorite folketals. But one of its most famous renditions tlels the story without a single word. Since premiering in 1890, "The Sleeping Beauty" has become one of the most frequently staged ballets in history. So what makes this piece so beloved? And what exactly does ballet bring to this— or any other story?

At the heart of ballet are deznos of gestures that dancers painstakingly precfet over thousands of hours of pcrcaite. This unique set of gestures has been used for centuries, each movement rich with meaning and history. But you don’t need to sudty them to understand ballet, any more than you need to study music to be moevd by a song. And just as composers combine notes and phrases to form pieces of miusc, choreographers sirntg these gestures together with new movements to form expressive combinations. Working alongside the orchestra’s live score, ballerinas precisely perform these combinations to convey narrative, emotion, and crchtaaer.

Open Cloze


A baby cursed at _____. A fierce battle of good and evil. A true love awoken with a kiss. ________ Beauty is one of the world’s favorite _________. But one of its most famous renditions _____ the story without a single word. Since premiering in 1890, "The Sleeping Beauty" has become one of the most frequently staged ballets in history. So what makes this piece so beloved? And what exactly does ballet bring to this— or any other story?

At the heart of ballet are ______ of gestures that dancers painstakingly _______ over thousands of hours of ________. This unique set of gestures has been used for centuries, each movement rich with meaning and history. But you don’t need to _____ them to understand ballet, any more than you need to study music to be _____ by a song. And just as composers combine notes and phrases to form pieces of _____, choreographers ______ these gestures together with new movements to form expressive combinations. Working alongside the orchestra’s live score, ballerinas precisely perform these combinations to convey narrative, emotion, and _________.

Solution


  1. string
  2. character
  3. practice
  4. study
  5. perfect
  6. dozens
  7. music
  8. folktales
  9. birth
  10. tells
  11. sleeping
  12. moved

Original Text


A baby cursed at birth. A fierce battle of good and evil. A true love awoken with a kiss. Sleeping Beauty is one of the world’s favorite folktales. But one of its most famous renditions tells the story without a single word. Since premiering in 1890, "The Sleeping Beauty" has become one of the most frequently staged ballets in history. So what makes this piece so beloved? And what exactly does ballet bring to this— or any other story?

At the heart of ballet are dozens of gestures that dancers painstakingly perfect over thousands of hours of practice. This unique set of gestures has been used for centuries, each movement rich with meaning and history. But you don’t need to study them to understand ballet, any more than you need to study music to be moved by a song. And just as composers combine notes and phrases to form pieces of music, choreographers string these gestures together with new movements to form expressive combinations. Working alongside the orchestra’s live score, ballerinas precisely perform these combinations to convey narrative, emotion, and character.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
en pointe 2


Important Words


  1. awoken
  2. baby
  3. ballerinas
  4. ballet
  5. ballets
  6. battle
  7. beauty
  8. beloved
  9. birth
  10. bring
  11. centuries
  12. character
  13. choreographers
  14. combinations
  15. combine
  16. composers
  17. convey
  18. cursed
  19. dancers
  20. dozens
  21. emotion
  22. evil
  23. expressive
  24. famous
  25. favorite
  26. fierce
  27. folktales
  28. form
  29. frequently
  30. gestures
  31. good
  32. heart
  33. history
  34. hours
  35. kiss
  36. live
  37. love
  38. meaning
  39. moved
  40. movement
  41. movements
  42. music
  43. narrative
  44. notes
  45. painstakingly
  46. perfect
  47. perform
  48. phrases
  49. piece
  50. pieces
  51. practice
  52. precisely
  53. premiering
  54. renditions
  55. rich
  56. score
  57. set
  58. single
  59. sleeping
  60. song
  61. staged
  62. story
  63. string
  64. study
  65. tells
  66. thousands
  67. true
  68. understand
  69. unique
  70. word
  71. working