The corps de ballet (French: 'body of the ballet') is the ensemble of dancers who perform as a unified group in a classical ballet company, as distinct from soloists and principal dancers. In the Romantic ballets — Swan Lake, Giselle, La Bayadère — the corps de ballet has a unique function: they are not background decoration but the collective embodiment of an idea. The 32 swans in Swan Lake must move in perfect unison; the shades in La Bayadère descend a long slope in absolute synchrony, creating a hypnotic image of ghostly multiplicity. The corps requires years of training not just in technique but in spatial awareness, breath coordination and the specific discipline of uniformity. Individual expression must be suppressed in service of the whole. The great white acts of 19th-century Romantic ballet — the 'blanc ballets' — were built on the corps's collective power.