Jean-Baptiste Landé was a French ballet dancer, active in Sweden, Denmark and Russia. He is the founder of the Russian Ballet Mariinsky Ballet

Mariinsky Ballet

The Mariinsky Ballet is a classical ballet company based at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Founded in the 18th century and originally known as the Imperial Russian Ballet, the Mariinsky Ballet is one of the world's leading ballet companies...

.

Landé was employed at the Polish royal court in Dresden

Dresden

Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....

 when he was engaged by king Frederick I of Sweden

Frederick I of Sweden

Frederick I, , was a prince consort of Sweden from 1718 to 1720, and a King of Sweden from 1720 until his death and also Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel from 1730...

 in 1721. He was appointed dancing master of the Swedish court, and in 1723 he became the director of the French Opera-Theatre in Bollhuset

Bollhuset

Bollhuset, also called ', ', and ' at various times, was the name of the first theater in Stockholm, Sweden; it was the first Swedish theater and the first real theater building in the whole of Scandinavia. The name "" means "The Ball House", and it was built in 1627 for ball sports and used in...

 in Stockholm

Stockholm

Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...

, which he named L'Académie royale de musique et de danse. In 1726, he was a guest ballet master at the first theatre in Denmark, the Lille Grönnegade theatre (1722-1728), where he performed with his wife. He left Sweden in 1728, after a conflict with Charles Langlois (actor)

Charles Langlois (actor)

Charles Langlois was a French actor who spent a large part of his career in Sweden, where he was to play an important part in Swedish theatre history as the originator of the first national theatre in Sweden, and its first director...

, who intruded on his theatre privilege by arranging his own plays at Bollhuset. He went to Denmark, where the theatre was closed in 1728, and tried to start his own theatre, but theatre was banned in Denmark in 1730-1746, and he supported himself as a dance teacher.

In 1734 he was invited to Russia, were he was made dance master at the military academy. After a ballet performance for Empress Anna

Anna of Russia

Anna of Russia or Anna Ivanovna reigned as Duchess of Courland from 1711 to 1730 and as Empress of Russia from 1730 to 1740.-Accession to the throne:Anna was the daughter of Ivan V of Russia, as well as the niece of Peter the Great...

 in 1735, the Russian Ballet School was established in 1738 with Landé as its ballet master. He educated the first dancers in Russia, which were taken from the staff at the royal palace: Timofei Bublikov, Nikolai Choglokov, Afanasy Toporkov, Ivan Shatilov, Nikolai Tolubeyev, Sergei Chalyshkin, Andrei Samarin and Andrei Nesterov, and among the females Yelizaveta, Avdotia Timofeyeva

Avdotia Timofeyeva

Avdotia Timofeyeva , was a Russian ballerina. She belonged to the first group of ballet dancers in the history of Russian ballet. Timofejeva was a part of the first group of ballet students trained by the founder of the Russian ballet, Jean-Baptiste Landé, and was given a position in the ballet of...

 and Axiniaya Sergeyeva.

Landé was the dance instructor of Catherine the Great after her arrival in Russia in 1744.