Italian-born dancer, choreographer, teacher, and the founder of the Italian school of ballet technique. Blasis, the scion of a noble family, received an exceptionally fine education in the arts, in mathematics, anatomy and literary studies. He made his debut as a dancer at an early age and achieved great success. During his dancing career he was greatly influenced by Dauberval (the pupil of Noverre and Pierre Gardel who was the ballet master in Opéra in Paris in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and the early part of the nineteenth). In the early 1830s at the height of his dancing career he was forced to retire due to a leg injury. In 1837 Blasis was made Director of the Imperial Ballet Academy in Milan with his wife, Annunziata (his pupil and dancing partner), as Co-Director. During his directorate, the academy, which was connected with la Scala, the Royal Opera, became the leading dancing academy of the world and up to recent times has sent teachers all over the globe to spread the Italian technique. Blasis' books An Elementary Treatise upon the Theory and Practise of the Art of Dancing, published in 1820, and The Code of Terpsichore, published in 1830, were the first comprehensive books of dancing technique, as it is understood today, to appear in print. They influenced ballet academies and teachers throughout the world. Blasis' construction of "the lesson", beginning with the exercises, adagio, pirouettes, and allegro, remain the basis of every ballet dancer's training today. The fundamentals laid down by him are unchanged and the ideals and traditions established during his directorate at the Imperial Academy in Milan still live in every true ballet school.