Ballet Books
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Royal Ballet: A Season in Pictures: 2018 / 2019
Book SynopsisA beautiful gift book packed with pictures from over twenty productions from the year 2018-19 at The Royal Ballet - a richly illustrated companion to The Royal Ballet company.Table of ContentsWelcome to the Royal Ballet: A Season in Pictures 2018/19 The 2018/19 Season at a Glance Photographs Artists and Staff at the Royal Ballet 2018/19
£21.99
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC The Royal Ballet in 2020: 2019 / 2020
Book Synopsis"Captures the resilience of the company." – The i newspaper In March 2020, Liam Scarlett's production of Swan Lake opened at the Royal Opera House, beginning its anticipated 3-month run. That same month, the UK government ordered theatres and arts centres across the country to close immediately as the COVID-19 pandemic starting its fast and destructive spread around the world. At the Royal Opera House, The Royal Ballet Company were furloughed and training programmes quickly set up virtually. Audiences who previously crowded into the venue were confined to their homes, with many switching their engagement to streamed digital performances live from the venue. This changed the audience experience significantly - not only because of the nature of the performance dramatically, but because it brought in new international audiences almost overnight. This book of photographs captures a period unlike any other, a journey that starts with the Company in "normal" times and develops into plans being made for a gradual in-person return to the Royal Opera House under strict COVID safety measures, such as mask-wearing, extensive COVID testing and artists working in "bubbles". Through a selection of striking photographs, the book showcases the remarkable resilience of The Royal Ballet throughout this year, a resilience that's shared by so many arts organisations affected equally dramatically by the pandemic. This Season in Pictures volume contains photographs of classic Royal Ballet productions, including Swan Lake, Coppélia and The Nutcracker, dancers engaged in community projects, socially distanced performances on The Royal Ballet stage, performances with totally empty auditoria and dancers in rehearsal wearing face masks.Trade ReviewCaptures the resilience of the company during this extraordinary period [when theatres were forced to close], with gorgeous photographs of classic productions – ‘Swan Lake’, ‘Coppélia’ and ‘The Nutcracker’ – along with shots of socially distanced performances and dancers rehearsing in masks. * The i newspaper *
£21.99
Art / Books Titian Metamorphosis Art Music Dance A
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£23.74
Art / Books Titian / Metamorphosis: Art Music Dance; A
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£675.00
Ugly Duckling Presse Costume En Face: Primer Darkness
Book SynopsisAs the founding father of the radical dance form that he called Butoh, Tatsumi Hijikata (1928-1986) is a legendary figure in the history of art and contemporary dance. Though influenced by Western artists and writersthe expressionist dance of Mary Wigman, the writings of Artaud, de Sade, Bataille, and Genet, and the drawings and paintings of Goya, Picasso, Toyen, Beardsley, and othershe was dedicated to the particular experience of the marginalized, Japanese suffering body after World War II. In the mid-1970s, Hijikata became concerned with developing notation for his Butoh, and some of these Butoh-fu notations remain, largely in the form of notebooks transcribed by his disciples. Costume en Face is the first publication of one of Hijikata's notebook notations in either English or Japanese. In it we can see, for the first time, the profound interconnectedness of language and body in Hijikata's process of composition.
£11.00
Skira Eleonora Abbagnato: Photographed by Massimo Gatti
Book SynopsisEleonora Abbagnato is the prima ballerina at the Opéra de Paris. This original volume reveals her artistic versatility through the photographs of four celebrated ballets. The book opens with an original interview by Valeria Crippa, journalist and ballet critic. Comprehensible to all, the ballerina’s answers outline the technical aspects of choreography, the difficulty of interpreting the score and the way in which she studies her role in each case and prepares to offer a unique and unrepeatable performance. This is the ideal gift for aspiring dancers and those who always dreamed of taking up this career.
£25.50
Skira Brendan Fernandes: Re/Form
Book Synopsis
£29.75
Indiana University Press Dancing Modernism Performing Politics
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Almost every page offers provocative commentary on the aesthetics and politics of modern dance." —Signs "[An] important step . . . in the ineluctable dance by postmodern historians across a bridge that spans the gaps among disciplines, between theory and practice, and between present and past." —Theatre Journal "This complex and important book needs to be read by anyone interested in dance history or the cultural politics of dance." —Dance Theatre Journal "Mark Franko's Dancing Modernism / Performing Politics is challenging, groundbreaking, insightful, and . . . an important contribution to the field of dance scholarship." —Dance Research JournalTable of ContentsForeword: Geneaology and Event in the Work of Mark Franko, by Juan Ignacio VallejosPrefaceIntroduction: The Politics of Expression1. The Invention of Modern Dance2. Bodies of Radical Will3. Emotivist Movement and Histories of Modernism: The Case of Martha Graham4. Expressivism and Chance Procedure: The Future of an Emotion5. Some Notes on Yvonne Rainer, Modernism, Politics, Emotion, Performance, and the AftermathAppendix: Left-Wing Dance Theory: Articles on Dance from New Theatre, New Masses, and Daily WorkerNotesBibliographyIndex
£45.00
Yale University Press Stravinskys Ballets
Book SynopsisIgor Stravinsky was a towering composer of the twentieth century and closely linked to dance. His early commissions for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes - "The Firebird", "Petrouchka", and "The Rite of Spring" - put him on the international map. This survey analyses each of Stravinsky's ballet pieces.Trade Review"This excellent source offers a unique approach to analysis of ballet, recording its history—as seen through the life and work of Stravinsky—and reflecting the impact of Russian culture on ballet and music of the 20th century. With its 33 pages of endnotes and 4-page bibliography of primary sources, this book is a scholarly delight."—C.T. Bond, Choice -- C.T. Bond * Choice *
£27.50
University of California Press Reading Dancing
Book SynopsisOutlines four models for representation in dance which are illustrated through an analysis of the works of contemporary choreographers and through historical examples beginning with court ballets of the Renaissance.Trade Review"Susan Foster is a new breed of dancer and choreographer." * New York Times *"Foster proposes a context from which the reader might make, see, or write about dance." * CHOICE *"No other dance book had posited an alternative aesthetic and historical framework beyond its own disciplinary content. In advance of the turn to the body in social theory, dance therefore became a major contributor to the rethinking of history advanced by new historicists, and an art form that could be "read" within the context of history and politics. . . . Although dance studies is a growing field for undergraduate studies, its critical status depends on texts such as Reading Dancing that can be debated more widely." * Times Higher Education *Table of Contents Illustrations Preface CHAPTER ONE Reading Dance: Composing the Choreographer, the Dancer, and the Viewer Deborah Hay George Balanchine Martha Graham Merce Cunningham Four Bodies and Subjects CHAPTER TWO Reading Choreography: Composing Dances Frames Modes of Representation Styles Vocabularies Syntaxes Reading the Performance CHAPTER THREE Readings in Dance's History: Historical Approaches to Dance Composition Allegorical Dance in the Late Renaissance Neoclassical Dance in the Eighteenth Century Expressionist Dance in the Early Twentieth Century Objectivist Dance from 1950 to the Present CHAPTER FOUR Writing Dancing: The Viewer as Choreographer in Contemporary Dance The Grand Union Meredith Monk Twyla Tharp Writing Bodies and Subjects Notes Selected Bibliography Index
£26.10
University of California Press Kinetic Cultures
Book SynopsisBelle époque Paris adored dance. Whether at the music hall or in more refined theaters, audiences flocked to see the spectacles offered to them by the likes of Isadora Duncan, Diaghilev's flashy company, and an embarrassment of Salomés. After languishing in the shadow of opera for much of the nineteenth century, ballet found itself part of this lively kinetic constellation. In Kinetic Cultures, Rachana Vajjhala argues that far from being mere delectation, ballet was implicated in the larger republican project of national rehabilitation through a rehabilitation of its citizens. By tracing the various gestural complexes of the periodbodybuilding routines, appropriate physical comportment for women, choreographic vocabularies, and moreVajjhala presents a new way of understanding histories of dance and music, one that she locates in gesture and movement.
£46.75
MP-FLO Uni Press of Florida Remembering Nureyev The Trail of a Comet
Book SynopsisA memoir that looks at the artists Rudolf Nureyev's and Rudi van Dantzig's relationship.
£26.06
MP-FLO Uni Press of Florida Broadway Balanchine and Beyond A Memoir
Book SynopsisIn this memoir of a roller coaster career on the New York stage, former actor and dancer Bettijane Sills offers a highly personal look at the art and practice of George Balanchine, one of ballet's greatest choreographers, and the inner workings of his world-renowned company during its golden years.
£15.26
University Press of Florida Balanchines Apprentice From Hollywood to New
Book SynopsisIn this long-awaited memoir, dancer and choreographer John Clifford offers a highly personal look inside the day-to-day operations of the New York City Ballet and its creative mastermind, George Balanchine. Balanchine's Apprentice is the story of Clifford and the guiding inspiration for his life's work in dance.Trade Review"Even those not enraptured by ballet will find Clifford’s extraordinary career and bond with Balanchine, who died in 1983, affecting. For ballet devotees, this intimate account is required reading.”—Publishers Weekly“Though Balanchine's works and influence have been well documented, the male perspective has been somewhat lacking, and Clifford is to be commended for this sparkling read, an appreciative yet clear-eyed tribute to his mentor and a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes of ballet.”—Library Journal“A close-up look by an astute and engaging observer, neither self-important nor falsely modest, at one of the supreme artists of the past century and a celebration of the astonishing work and the astonishing company he created.”—Wall Street Journal
£22.46
University of Pittsburgh Press Prodigal Son
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£39.17
University Press of Mississippi To Dance to Live
Book SynopsisThalia Mara's story spans the history of dance in the twentieth century and the rise of the arts in her adopted city of Jackson, Mississippi. To Dance, to Live: A Biography of Thalia Mara gives the first full account of a life devoted to the arts.
£21.56
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913
Book SynopsisThis pioneering study of ballets staged in Parisian music halls brings to light a vibrant dance culture central to the renewal of French choreography at the fin de siècle. This pioneering study of Parisian music-hall ballet brings to light a vibrant dance culture that was central to the renewal of French ballet at the turn of the twentieth century. Long thought a lost period for ballet in France, the fin de siècle in fact saw a flourishing of choreographic activity. More than four hundred ballets were created to great acclaim, half of which were full-scale pantomime-ballets, with entertaining narratives, catchy music, titillating choreography, lavish sets and costumes, appealing corps girls, and star ballerinas. Most of these productions were staged not at the elite Paris Opéra but in the city's trendiest commercial venues: music halls. Between 1871 and 1913, the Folies-Bergère, the Olympia, and the Casino de Paris brought together the era's leading authors of light theater and comic opera to produce a flurry of imaginative ballets that combined the conventional structures of high art with the popular idioms of mass entertainment. They also drew unprecedented numbers of people who had never before attended ballet. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913 rediscovers this repertoire and culture, supplying a missing chapter in the history of French dance. Sarah Gutsche-Miller is Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Toronto.Trade Review[A] compelling contribution to French dance and music history. The author's new and important insights contribute much to our understanding of the dramatic achievements of the 'historical avant-garde' in the early decades of the twentienth century. * DANCE RESEARCH REVIEW *Gutsche-Miller's work not only illuminates the supposed 'Dark Ages' of French ballet, but also provides a vital corrective to conventional wisdom about the cultural context into which Diaghilev launched his troupe. A lucid and lively history that vividly reconstructs the art world of Parisian music-hall ballet at its three principal venues: the Folies-Bergères, the Olympia, and the Casino de Paris. Serves as a caution against focusing too narrowly on activities at only the most powerful and prestigious 'high art' institutions. The book's generous appendices...will prove an invaluable reference for scholars wishing to investigate thsi repertory further. MUSIC & LETTERS [Helena Kopchick Spencer] * . *Gutsche-Miller's meticulous research provides a glimpse of these now-lost ballets, created at the impressive rate of four to six new works per year. Points to canny ways that composers used music to evoke place, atmosphere, and character . . . Gutsche-Miller's greatest contribution lies in her insistence that this popular genre is worthy of serious scholarly inquiry. * NINETEENTH-CENTURY FRENCH STUDIES *Table of ContentsList of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction The Venues and the Shows Music Halls for Tout-Paris Creative Artists: Authors, Composers, and Choreographers The Ballet-Divertissement Real Pantomime-Ballets: The Choreographic Conventions of 1890s Music-Hall Ballet Music as Storyteller: The Musical Conventions of 1890s Music-Hall Ballet As Pleasing to the Ear as to the Eye: A Popular Musical Style The Stories of Music-Hall Ballet: Romance, Flirtations, and Other Pleasures A Delight to Behold: Glitter, Glamour, and Girls Appendix A: Tables of Ballets Staged by the Folies-Bergere, the Olympia, and the Casino de Paris Appendix B: Synopses of Ballets Staged at the Folies-Bergere, the Olympia, and the Casino de Paris Notes Bibliography Index
£99.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Narratives of Identity in Alban Berg's Lulu
Book SynopsisThis book explores the crossroads between autobiographical narratives and musical composition in Alban Berg's Lulu, unveiling aspects of encoded social customs, gender identity, and personal experiences within musical structures. Exploring the crossroads between autobiographical narrative and musical composition, this book examines Berg's transformation of Frank Wedekind's Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora -- the plays used in the formationof the libretto for Lulu -- according to notions of gender identity, social customs, and the aesthetics of modernity in the Vienna of the 1920s and 1930s. While Berg modernized several aspects of the plays and incorporatedserial techniques of composition from Arnold Schoenberg, he never let go of the idealistic Wagnerian perspectives of his youth. In fact, he went as far as reconfiguring aspects of Richard Wagner's life as an ideal identity to beplayed out in the compositional process. In composing the opera, Berg also reflected on the most important cultural figures in fin-de-siècle Vienna that affected his worldview, including Karl Kraus, Emil Lucka, Otto Weininger, andothers. Combining analysis of Berg's correspondence, numerous sketches for Lulu, and the finished work with interpretive models drawn from cultural studies and philosophy, this book elucidates the ways in which Berg grappled at the end of his life with his self-image as an "incorrigible romantic," and explains aspects of his musical language that have been considered strange or anomalous in Berg scholarship. Silvio J. dos Santos isassistant professor of musicology at the University of Florida.Trade ReviewDr. dos Santos has not only contributed a uniquely compelling work to the existing body of literature on Berg's music, but he has also proved that fluency in multiple methodologies and fields of inquiry can give scholars access to analyses of unprecedented nuance and scope. Cultural historians will benefit from his work as much as theorists of early twelve-tone music. * GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW *Succeeds in demonstrating how very detailed and multifaceted the engagement is, in Berg's Lulu, with the presence of Wagner['s music] and with ideas related to that presence. We can hope that [Dos Santos's] monograph is the impetus for further new insights about Lulu and for Berg research generally. -- Kordula Knaus * DIE MUSIKFORSCHUNG *[Santos has] much to say about the dramatic representation of Lulu herself, and the role of a tonality-acknowledging 12-tone technique in that representation. Makes good use of the multiplicity of recent work on Berg's manuscripts and other archival materials to outline a response to Wagner, and to modern life, that was more psychological (not excluding a possible element of erotomania) than philosophical or spiritual. -- Arnold Whittall * MUSICAL TIMES *In Narratives of Identity in Alban Berg's 'Lulu,' Silvio dos Santos goes above and beyond prior Berg scholarship with inspired and admirably thorough research. This complex and significant volume, based on expert examination of Berg's score, is the most important study of Lulu's character to come across my path in many years. A compelling narrative, which promises to be of lasting importance to scholars, musicians, and the opera-loving public. -- Mark DeVoto, Tufts UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction Between Schoenberg and Wagner Berg as Wagner: In Pursuit of an Ideal Identity Refiguring Tristan The Bild Motif and Lulu's Idenity Marriage as Prostitution Masculine, Feminine, and "In-between": Geschwitz as neue Frau Conclusion: Berg's Wagnerism Notes Bibliography Index
£81.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Tim Draper: From Eastman Theatre's Muses to the
Book SynopsisTells the interwoven stories of revered dance teacher Timothy Draper, the Rochester City Ballet that he founded, and its predecessor, the Eastman Theatre Ballet, established in 1923 as the first professional ballet company in theUnited States. In this engaging book, journalist Wendy Wicks tells the story of revered dance teacher Timothy Draper, the Rochester City Ballet that he founded, and its predecessor, the Eastman Theatre Ballet, established in 1923 as the first professional ballet company in the United States. Draper, who died in 2003 at age forty-nine, trained hundreds of young dancers who have gone on to worldwide careers with illustrious companies. Wicks includes touching reminiscencesfrom these former students, interwoven with Draper's own story. The result is a compelling portrait of a complex and brilliant teacher. Wendy Roxin Wicks is a writer, editor, and publicist specializing in the performingarts. Her work has appeared in Dance Magazine and Dance Spirit Magazine. She is a graduate of Cornell University and is currently a student at the University of Rochester's Margaret Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development.Table of ContentsIntroduction List of Artist Reminiscences Silenced Slippers Born into Rochester's Illustrious Dance Tradition Timmy Miss Olive McCue and the Mercury Ballet Off to Miss Crofton's Training for Trockadero Coconut Grove Coming Home to Build a Dream What They Did for Love Momentum An Embarrassment of Riches Finally Going to the Ball A New Home for a New Decade Living the Dream Hugs, Tim Too Young, Too Soon The School and the Company Go On Our Muses Notes Index
£999.99
University of Utah Press,U.S. Roots and Wings: Virginia Tanner's Dance Life and
Book SynopsisRoots and Wings recounts Virginia Tanner's remarkable career as a dance artist, educator, and founder of the University of Utah's Tanner Dance Program. From her early experiences assisting at Evelyn Davis's dance school in Washington, D.C., to the creation of the Tanner Dance Program at the University of Utah, her influence in the field was pervasive. She channelled children's energy, sharpened their senses, and encouraged youthful, authentic dance expression. Tanner's work endures, continuing to echo with sensitivity and spirit in the bodies of young dancers throughout the United States and abroad. By revealing both the broader and specific themes of Tanner's career and legacy, this narrative fills an important void. While exploring Tanner's story, it also recognizes the value of unique instructional methodologies for teaching dance to young children and the vital role the arts play in children's lives.Trade Review“This work is a significant contribution. Biographical information on people such as Virginia Tanner, who devoted their lives to the development of children through the arts, is almost nonexistent.”—Douglas C. Sonntag, emeritus Director of Dance, National Endowment for the ArtsTable of Contents Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: A Gift of Dance Freely Given Chapter 1 Awakening: Born to a Place and Time Chapter 2 Distant Voices: In Search of a Calling Chapter 3 Inspiration: Summer Schools in the Rockies Chapter 4 Hop- Scotching Chapter 5 Uncharted Territory: Launching a Career Chapter 6 Birth of a Young Company Chapter 7 Balance: The Juggling Act Chapter 8 Springboards: The Buttermilk Tree Chapter 9 Children: Straight Out of Heaven Chapter 10 Imagination: The Beauty of Childhood Chapter 11 Liftoff: When Dreams Take Flight Chapter 12 Invitations: Westward Ho Chapter 13 Virginia: “The Breadwinner” Chapter 14 Sunshine and Sand: Hawaii Beckons Chapter 15 A Master Teacher: IMPACT Calls Chapter 16 Bright with Promise: The Golden Age for the Arts in Education Chapter 17 Bulldozers on the Horizon: A Search for Home Chapter 18 What Joy They Gave Unknowingly Chapter 19 Unstoppable Drive: A Brilliant Journey Coda You Taught My Soul to Dance Notes Bibliography
£44.25
Afton Historical Society Press Grace & Grit: A History of Ballet in Minnesota
Book Synopsis
£26.99
Boydell & Brewer Ltd America in the French Imaginary, 1789-1914:
Book SynopsisJust as America was observed in French literary and political commentary, we find representations of America in French music, dance, and theatre which serve as the focus of this volume. Following the American Revolution, French authors often viewed the United States as a laboratory for the forging of new practices of liberté and égalité, in affinity with France's own Revolutionary ideals but in competition with lingering anti-American depictions of an inferior, untamed New World. The volume examines French imagining of America through musical/theatrical portrayals of the American Revolution and Republic, soundscapes of the Statue of Liberty, homages to Washington, Franklin and Lafayette and negotiations of Francophone identity in New Orleans. The subject of race features prominently in paradoxical depictions of slavery, freedom, and revolution in the United States and French Caribbean colonies of 'Amérique' and in varied interpretations of American music and gendered identity. Essays consider French constructions of the Indigenous American and Black American 'exotic' that intersect with tropes of noble, pastoral savagery, menacing barbarism and the 'civilising' potency of French culture. Such French constructions reveal both a revulsion of racial alterity and an attraction to the expressive, even subversive, freedom of Americanness. Investigations of French conceptions of America extend to critiques of American orchestral music, Gottschalk's Louisianan-Caribbean Creole works, Buffalo Bill's spectacles and the cakewalk in Paris. With scholarly contributions on music, dance, theatre and opera, the volume will be essential reading for students and scholars of these disciplines.Table of ContentsIntroduction Part I. American liberté, sauvagerie and esclavage 1 Between Amérique and Colonial France: Revolutionary Tales of liberté and esclavage Diana R. Hallman 2 Justamant's Le Bossu and Depictions of Indigenous Americans in Nineteenth-Century French Ballet Marian Smith, Sarah Gutsche-Miller and Helena Kopchick Spencer 3 Louisiana Imagined: Gender, Race and Slavery in Le Planteur (1839) Helena Kopchick Spencer Part II. Myths of America and Intersecting Identities 4 'Brise du Sud': American Identity and War in the Popular Sheet Music of Francophone New Orleans Charlotte Bentley 5 'The Most Seductive Creole Indolence': Louis Moreau Gottschalk in the French Press Laura Moore Pruett 6 Symphonies from the New World: The Myths and Realities of American Orchestral Music in France Douglas Shadle Part III. Soundscapes and Sonic Fantasies 7 Historical Acoustemology in the French Romantic Travelogue: Chateaubriand's Sonic Imagining of the New World Ruth E. Rosenberg 8 La Liberté éclairant le monde: Transatlantic Soundscapes for the Statue of Liberty Annegret Fauser Part IV. America, Commodification and Race at the fin de siècle9 Buffalo Bill and the Sound of America at the 1889 World's Fair Mark A. Pottinger 10 Cakewalking in Paris: New Representations and Contexts of African American Culture César A. Leal Bibliography Index
£85.00
Liverpool University Press Theories of Ballet in the Age of the Encyclopédie
Book SynopsisIn Enlightenment Europe, a new form of pantomime ballet emerged, through the dual channels of theorization in print and experimentation onstage. Emphasizing eighteenth-century ballet’s construction through print culture, Theories of Ballet in the Age of the Encyclopédie follows two parallel paths—standalone treatises on ballet and dance and encyclopedias—to examine the shifting definition of ballet over the second half of the eighteenth century. Bringing together the Encyclopédie and its Supplément, the Encyclopédie méthodique, and the Encyclopédie d’Yverdon with the works of Jean-Georges Noverre, Louis de Cahusac, and Charles Compan, it traces how the recycling and recombining of discourses about dance, theatre, and movement arts directly affected the process of defining ballet. At the same time, it emphasizes the role of textual borrowing and compilation in disseminating knowledge during the Enlightenment, examining the differences between placing borrowed texts into encyclopedias of various types as well as into journal format, arguing that context has the potential to play a role equally important to content in shaping a reader’s understanding, and that the Encyclopédie méthodique presented ballet in a way that diverged radically from both the Encyclopédie and Noverre’s Lettres sur la danse.Trade Review\‘Olivia Sabee provides an important contribution to the study of the circulation of ideas and definitions concerning the art of ballet in Europe in the second half of the eighteenth century. Her publication will be welcomed by specialists of the history of the performing arts, as well as scholars or students interested in the bigger picture of how the encyclopaedic spirit shaped the perception of the arts and served to disseminate new ideas during the Enlightenment period.\’ Béatrice Pfister, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies‘[A] valuable resource for scholars focused on dance, documentation, and communication… Sabee’s book reminds us that encyclopedias are works of art, and as such, they deserve our attention as scholars seek to discover how knowledge travels, or rather dances. Theories of Ballet in the Age of Encyclopédie is compelling because it directs us to consider ballet’s theoretical past as unsettled, and the ongoing circulation of texts as an important part of ballet’s history.’ Michelle LaVigne, Dance Chronicle
£87.18
West Virginia University Press Fierce and Delicate: Essays on Dance and Illness
Book SynopsisMemoir about ballet and illness from a creative writing teacher whose career as a ballerina was stopped by rheumatoid arthritis.RenÉe Nicholson’s professional training in ballet had both moments of magnificence and moments of torment, from fittings of elaborate platter tutus to strange language barriers and unrealistic expectations of the body. In Fierce and Delicate, she looks back on the often confused and driven self she had been shaped into—always away from home, with friends who were also rivals, influenced by teachers in ways sometimes productive and at other times bordering on sadistic—and finds beauty in the small roles she performed. When, inevitably, Nicholson moved on from dancing, severed from her first love by illness, she discovered that she retained the lyricism and narrative of ballet itself as she negotiated life with rheumatoid arthritis.An intentionally fractured memoir-in-essays, Fierce and Delicate navigates the traditional geographies of South Florida, northern Michigan, New York City, Milwaukee, West Virginia, and also geographies of the body—long, supple limbs; knee replacements; remembered bodies and actual. It is a book about the world of professional dance and also about living with chronic disease, about being shattered yet realizing the power to assemble oneself again, in a new way.Trade Review“Many dancers wrestle with one of the central questions of RenÉe Nicholson’s fabulous book: How does one live as an ex-dancer? The answers Nicholson explores will strongly resonate with those who long to lift the veil that shrouds creative pursuits in unnecessary mystique. I love Nicholson’s powerful prose: how the essays circle in and out of dance, the way movement comes alive on the page, and the articulate grace with which Nicholson writes about sudden disability. In Fierce and Delicate, Nicholson teaches us how to envelop our impossible dreams with gratitude for the life we have now.” RenÉe E. D’Aoust, author of Body of a Dancer “Lyrical and fascinating.”Buzzfeed NewsTable of ContentsPart I A Girl Who Wanted to Fly When I Was a Mouse Five Positions Never Famous Raked Stages: A Twelve-Step Program Coda: Partnering Out of the BluePart II A Woman Tethered to the Earth Hair: A Short History In Sickness A Royal in Appalachia Certified: Dancer Becomes a Teacher Claque Fierce and Delicate Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast Acknowledgments
£17.95
Dance Books Rhythmic Subjects Uses of energy in the dances
Book Synopsis
£46.75
Taylor & Francis Lighting Dance A Study of Technical Philosophical and Psychological Shadows
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£128.25
Taylor & Francis Kinesemiotics Modelling How Choreographed Movement Means in Space Routledge Studies in Multimodality
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£128.25
Taylor & Francis Ltd Floating Bones A Dancers Tensegretic Body as Teacher
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£51.29
Taylor & Francis Ltd Floating Bones
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£24.51
Taylor & Francis From Petipa to Balanchine Classical Revival and the Modernisation of Ballet
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£128.25
Taylor & Francis Dance Discourses Keywords in Dance Research
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£142.50
Taylor & Francis Never Far from Dancing Ballet Artists in New Roles
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£128.25
Taylor & Francis The Lure of Perfection Fashion and Ballet 17801830
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£128.25
Taylor & Francis Ltd Creative Ballet Teaching
Book SynopsisHow do teachers create a classroom environment that promotes collaborative and inquiry-based approaches to learning ballet? How do teachers impart the stylistic qualities of ballet while also supporting each dancer's artistic instincts and development of a personal style? How does ballet technique education develop the versatility and creativity needed in the contemporary dance environment?Creative Ballet Teaching draws on the fields of Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis (L/BMA), dance pedagogy, and somatic education to explore these questions. Sample lesson plans, class exercises, movement explorations, and journal writing activities specifically designed for teachers bring these ideas into the studio and classroom. A complementary online manual, Creative Ballet Learning, provides students with tools for technical and artistic development, self-assessment, and reflection.Offering a practical, exciting approach, Creative Ballet Teaching is a must-rTable of ContentsINTRODUCTIONPART I RETHINKING CREATIVITY, COMMUNITY, AND TECHNIQUE IN THE BALLET CLASSROOMChapter One Drawing inspiration from creative movement: teaching and planning from movement conceptsChapter Two Drawing inspiration from creative movement: developing body knowledge and improvisation skillsChapter Three Drawing inspiration from dance teachers: teaching students how to use your "tools"Chapter Four Drawing inspiration from dance students: learning from peers Chapter Five Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis: a tool for facilitating creativity, community, and technique PART II IMPROVING BALANCE AND MOTION Chapter Six Discovering the three-dimensional body: Shape Flow Support and Shape Qualities Chapter Seven Balancing three-dimensionally: Spatial Intent and Countertensions Chapter Eight Moving three-dimensionally: Traceforms and Kinesphere PART III DEEPENING DYNAMISMChapter Nine The dynamic palette: introduction to Effort Chapter Ten Fluidity: Free and Bound Flow Chapter Eleven Varying intensity: Strong and Light Weight Chapter Twelve Rhythmical nuance: Sudden and Sustained Time Chapter Thirteen Attentive movement: Direct and Indirect Space Chapter Fourteen Playing with the Effort palette
£36.99
Cambridge University Press Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme
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£15.16
The University of Chicago Press Irina Baronova and the Ballets Russes de Monte
Book SynopsisTells the story of the rise of modern ballet and its popularity through the life story of one of ballet's most glamorous stars, Irina Baronova (1919-2008), prima ballerina for the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo and later for Ballet Theatre in New York.Trade Review"My friend Irina Baronova was a legendary Baby Ballerina of the Ballets Russes and an ambassador of classical ballet in America, but this book shows us the kind, funny, and hardworking woman behind the legend. She was a total pro and an elegant human being. If it's possible, I'm more in awe than ever." -Mikhail Baryshnikov "As a dancer myself, I connected deeply to Baronova's words about what it's like to feel in your soul the extremes of sacrifice, familial rivalry, and tremendous love that come from committing oneself to the art form. These pages made me realize how lucky we are now, we American dancers, because of the pioneering energy and sheer strength of Baronova and the other great dancers of the Ballets Russes who performed tirelessly night after night, stirring and thrilling hearts in every tiny pocket of America. It is something that should never be forgotten and should be instilled in all young dancers. We could never enjoy the careers we have today without these artists paving the way for us. I really couldn't put this book down. I was in tears." -Wendy Whelan, New York City Ballet "This is a beautiful record of the twentieth century lived through dance. It is illuminating and passionate and vivid: imagine Nabokov's Speak Memory photographed and choreographed. I loved it." -Edmund De Waal, author of The Hare with Amber Eyes
£60.49
Hal Leonard Corporation Three Early Ballets the Firebird Petrushka the
Book Synopsis
£999.99
Hal Leonard Corporation Three City Blocks Score
Book Synopsis
£19.12
MW - Rutgers University Press Dying Swans and Madmen Ballet the Body and
Book SynopsisExplores the pairing of classical and contemporary, art and entertainment, high culture and popular culture to reveal the place that ballet occupies in American life. Drawing on examples that range from musicals to tragic melodramas, this book shows how commercial films have produced an image of ballet that is associated with emotions.Trade ReviewAside from cataloguing, describing, and closely reading the plethora of films that comprise the group with which she is concerned, McLean surfaces interesting theoretical issues concerning the genre. This is a unique and original project. -- Lucy Fischer * University of Pittsburgh *Aside from cataloguing, describing, and closely reading the plethora of films that comprise the group with which she is concerned, McLean surfaces interesting theoretical issues concerning the genre. This is a unique and original project. -- Lucy Fischer * University of Pittsburgh *This is a superb and wonderfully readable work, a true contribution to the fields of both cinema studies and dance. -- Karen Backstein * Cineaste *Table of ContentsIntroduction : ballet in tin cans A channel for progress : theatrical dance, popular culture, and (the) American Ballet Gender, genre, and the ballet film through 1947 : part 1, the life of a ballerina is indeed tough Gender, genre, and the ballet film through 1947 : part 2, the man was mad but a genius! If you can disregard the plot : the red shoes in an American context The second act will be quite different : cinema, culture, and ballet in the 1950s Turning points : Ballet and its bodies in the "post-studio" era
£999.99
Princeton Book Company Both Sides of the Mirror The Science Art of
Book SynopsisA technical exploration of the art of ballet incorporating findings in the fields of kinesiology, biomechanics, and physiology
£24.95
Princeton Book Co. Steps in Ballet Basic Exercises at the Barre
Book SynopsisInstructive techniques for practicing ballet away from class are presented in this compilation of three previously published volumes. Elementary barre exercises, basic arm movements and positions of the body, and elevation and connecting steps are detailed with illustrations and helpful pointers that complement the guidance of a ballet instructor. Correct ballet terms are defined and listed in French with phonetic pronunciations. Parents, teachers, and students of ballet will find expert advice in this classic of ballet instruction.
£22.99
Princeton Book Company How to Teach Beginning Ballet
Book SynopsisTrade Review"What an awesomely comprehensive book! You really take nothing for granted in that you cover all aspects of teaching ballet." --Afua Hall, Dance teacher, Miami Conservatory
£29.44
WW Norton & Co Bolshoi Confidential: Secrets of the Russian
Book SynopsisA critical triumph, Simon Morrison’s “sweeping and authoritative” (Guardian) work, Bolshoi Confidential, details the Bolshoi Ballet’s magnificent history from its earliest tumults to recent scandals. On January 17, 2013, a hooded assailant hurled acid into the face of the artistic director, making international headlines. A lead soloist, enraged by institutional power struggles, later confessed to masterminding the crime. Morrison gives the shocking violence context, describing the ballet as a crucible of art and politics beginning with the disreputable inception of the theater in 1776, through the era of imperial rule, the chaos of revolution, the oppressive Soviet years, and the Bolshoi’s recent $680 million renovation. With vibrant detail including “sex scandals, double-suicide pacts, bribery, arson, executions, prostitution rings, embezzlement, starving orphans, [and] dead cats in lieu of flowers” (New Republic), Morrison makes clear that the history of the Bolshoi Ballet mirrors that of Russia itself.Trade Review"The title means what it says. There’s plenty of scandal here: arson, double suicide, dead cats flung at curtain calls. At the same time, the book is energetically researched, beautifully written — fun, relaxed, sophisticated — and full of serious ideas, boldly stated." -- Joan Acocella, dance critic - The New Yorker"The insider look in Bolshoi Confidential is incredibly rich and makes this book a page-turner…Breathtakingly complicated life stories of both people and productions parade through the pages…Its central figures, like Plisetskaya, jump off its pages complex and alive." -- Daria Khitrova - New York Times"Morrison turns to the past in order to unpack the conundrum of the Bolshoi within the enigma-wrapped, mystery-obscured riddle of the Russian state…All of this makes for good, even great, fodder…Sex scandals, double-suicide pacts, bribery, arson, executions, prostitution rings, embezzlement, starving orphans, dead cats in lieu of flowers, and ballerinas refusing to shave their armpits." -- Madison Mainwaring - The New Republic"Masterful. . . . Bolshoi Confidential . . . is much more than a compendium of ballerinas behaving badly. Rather, it offers a rich, fascinating and nuanced examination of the role of the arts in Russian history, one that highlights their profound importance to the creation of a national identity and their troubled relationship with the country’s rulers." -- Douglas Smith - Wall Street Journal"Simon Morrison’s Bolshoi Confidential lifts the curtain on Russia’s best-known cultural institution. An intoxicating mix of grandeur and gossip, it charts luminous performances on stage and sordid machinations in the wings from the age of Catherine the Great to that of Vladimir Putin…Sweeping and authoritative." -- Lucy Ash - The Guardian"A sweeping, grandly intriguing story at the interface of art and power. . . . Morrison frames his story, always readable and brimming with curious anecdotes, with the recent, newsworthy acid attack on artistic director Sergei Filin, a strange episode that exposed not just clashes of individual personalities, but also competing views of what the Bolshoi should be, some of which may have emanated from inside the walls of the neighboring Kremlin. A must for ballet buffs . . . . [and] a look backstage that is both lively and learned." -- Kirkus (starred review)"Charming and astonishingly detailed…The Bolshoi’s dancers, ballets, and composers, its administrators and detractors and supporters—all are tantalizingly depicted here... Balletomanes will drool and sigh, music lovers will be fascinated…A riveting history." -- Booklist (starred review)"Another marvelously informative book from Simon Morrison, dishing this time on Russia’s great musical theater, onstage and off. It is a wonderful read, full of intriguing spectacle and spectacular intrigue." -- Richard Taruskin, author of The Oxford History of Western Music"Simon Morrison has written an engrossing history of one of Russia’s most enduring cultural institutions. Bolshoi Confidential deftly shatters the distinctions between high-brow and low-brow, art and politics, authority and violence." -- Amanda Foreman, author of Georgiana and A World on Fire"A colorful and erudite view on Russia through the tumultuous history of the sumptuous Bolshoi." -- Peter Pomeranzev, author of Nothing is True and Everything is Possible"Simon Morrison’s Bolshoi Confidential is a magisterial portrait of the art, intrigue, and politics buffeting Russia’s great cultural institution, the Bolshoi Ballet." -- Janice Ross, author of Like A Bomb Going Off: Leonid Yakobson and Ballet As Resistance in Soviet Russia"Morrison sweeps readers through the storied company’s 240-year history, describing key figures onstage and off, political ties to various regimes, and the births of many famous ballets." -- Dance Studio Life
£16.99
Seven Stories Press,U.S. A Matter of Appearance: A Memoir
Book Synopsis
£17.00
Haus Publishing Diaghilev and Friends
Book SynopsisMelville's major biography of the Russian impresario brings to life an age of daring sophistication and hedonistic pleasure set against the backdrop of a swiftly changing world. In Paris and London, Diaghilev drew together an amazingly talented group of artists such as Picasso, Bakst and Fokine, as well as dancers like Nijinsky, Lifar and Karsavina, and the composers Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Prokofiev. Diaghilev's destructive and tempestuous affair with his protege Nijinsky and his friendship with Jean Cocteau are closely examined.
£999.99
Brepols N.V. The Queen Danced Alone: Court Ballet in Sweden
Book Synopsis
£83.60
Librarie Philosophique J. Vrin Ballets Russes Et Ballets Suedois: La Musique a
Book Synopsis
£57.15
Zen-on Music Co. Ltd Romeo and Juliet Suite No. 1 Op. 64b
Book Synopsis
£29.25
