Ballet music composers from the 17th–20th centuries, including the likes of Jean-Baptiste Lully, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Igor Stravinsky, and Sergei Prokofiev, were predominantly in France and Russia.
For example, critics of the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) mentioned his writing of ballet music as something demeaning.
The next big step occurred in the early years of the nineteenth century, when principal dancers changed from using hard shoes to ballet pumps.
Following the initiative of Tchaikovsky, ballet composers were no longer writing simple, easily danceable pieces.
There was a violent change in mood when Igor Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring was first performed in 1913, at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris.
In 1924 George Antheil wrote Ballet Mécanique, which was actually for a film of moving objects, not for dancers, but it was pioneering in the use of jazz music.
George Gershwin attempted to bridge this gap with his ambitious score to the film Shall We Dance (1937), composing over one hour of music that spanned from the cerebral and technical to foot-stomping jazz and rumba.
Ottorino Respighi took works by Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868) and strung them together into a ballet titled La Boutique fantasque, premiered in 1919.