Noverre, the celebrated ballet-master of France, is considered the father of the ballet and classic dancing generally. The brothers Gardel and Dauberval based their ideas upon the principles of Noverre. It was he who drove the masks, paniers, and padded coat-skirts from the stage and made it human. ‘A ballet,’ he said, ‘is a picture, or rather a series of pictures, connected by the action which forms the subject of the ballet. To me the stage is a canvas on which the composer paints his ideas, notes his music and displays scenery colored by appropriate costumes. A picture is an imitation of Nature; but a good ballet is Nature itself, ennobled by all the charms of art. The music is to dancing what the libretto is to the music.’ According to his theory the action of the dancer should be an instrument for the rendering of the written idea. Before Noverre laid the foundation to his _ballet d’action_, dancing had existed as an auxiliary form to opera and was lacking in any signs of life. The dancers wearing powdered hair piled up a foot on their heads, and the men in their long-skirted coats made the impression more of a big puppet-show than of a living dance. This made the use of intricate and plastic movements of the body and, moreover, of mimic expressions, absolutely impossible. This is Noverre’s argument: ‘I wish to reduce by three-quarters the ridiculous paniers of our danseuses. They are opposed equally to freedom, to quickness and to the prompt and animated action of the dance. They deprive the figure of its elegance and of the just proportions which it ought to possess. They diminish the beauty of the arms; they bury, so to speak, the graces. They embarrass and distract the dancer to such a degree that the movement of her panier sometimes occupies her more seriously than that of her limbs.’