It took a while before women began to dance ballet. Women did not enter the scene professionally until 1681. The most famous women dancers of the early and mid 1700’s were Marie Camargo and Marie Salle. Marie Camargo shortened her skirts to show her ankles, and wore soft slippers to dance instead of the conventional high heeled shoes worn at the time. Her chosen shoe style allowed and enabled her to do various steps that weren’t possible before then. She has been credited with inventing the ’entrechat’, known as the high spring, in which the feet are crossed in the air. As for Marie Salle, she discarded the dresses of the era, and wore flowing draperies instead. Their most famous male contemporary was Jean Georges Noverre, whose reforms, anticipating the naturalistic trends of the nineteenth century included the discarding of masks and the wearing of costumes suitable to ballet being performed then. The Romantic Period... In Western Europe, the 19th century saw progress in the d...