Before the French Revolution ballet was essentially a courtly diversion. After the Revolution it became popular entertainment. Already in the years immediately prior to the Revolution the mythological stories, beloved by the pre-revolutionary aristocracy, began to be supplanted by a new interest in realism featuring the daily experience of the common people. In this atmosphere the Fille Mal Gardée was born.
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It premiered in Bordeaux in 1789, two weeks after the Bastille was taken. The original music was composed by Peter Ludwig Hertel, and the choreography was by Jean Dauberval (1742 - 1806) student of Jean-Georges Noverre (1727 - 1810), great choreographer and dance theorist. His Lettres sur le Danse (1760), which Voltaire considered brilliant, is still a fundamental book today.
Noverre proposed a new approach, the ballet d’action, concentrating on the drama of the ballet, remaining faithful to the narration, and incorporating elements of pantomime to make it more comprehensible to the spectator. In 1828, Louis Joseph Ferdinand Hérold (1791 - 1833) renewed the musical score. His version is generally used for the ballet today.
A new choreography (1960) by Sir Frederick Ashton (1904 - 1988) has become popular as an alternative to the historical choreography of the ballet.
The Fille Mal Gardée (which means "The Badly Supervised Daughter") narrates the story of two sweethearts’ frustrations set on a small farm. They go up against her mother, who wants her daughter to marry a rich old man for his money, rather than a young, but poor lover. The mother haphazardly gives her consent for her daughter to marry the young suitor; such is her distraction and disregard in caring for her daughter.
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One of the oldest ballets still in repertory in many theatres, the Fille Mal Gardée introduced another new idea that influenced the development of classical ballet. For the first time the expressive language of dance is used to interpret birds. But in this case they are chickens, not the swans that are commonly associated with ballet today.