The paper focuses on the performance of the originally Italian ballet Excelsior by the National Theatre in Prague in 1885. The aim of the paper is to present the Excelsior ballet in the context of the national revival, the ideas of the productions of the National Theatre as a reflection of the national identity and the positivism of that time. The ballet Excelsior represented a celebration of that section of society whose rise in the social hierarchy was laid on the foundations of progress, of industrial development, which it supported and of course benefited from. Unwilling to see, even at that time, the various problems that were also linked to this progress, it was lulled into a conviction, or rather presented itself as a social class creating the conditions for a better life.