The Making of a Choreographer


Book Description

Centering on Ninette de Valois's formative years as a choreographer and a shaper of British ballet, this book closely examines her 1934 ballet Bar aux Folies-Bergère, which was inspired by the famous Edouard Manet painting and created for Marie Rambert's comapny, then known as the Ballet Club.




The Royal Ballet: 75 Years


Book Description

This book is a perceptive and critical account of the first 75 years of The Royal Ballet, tracing the company's growth, and its great cultural importance - an indispensable book for all lovers of ballet. In 1931, Ninette de Valois started a ballet company with just six dancers. Within twenty years, The Royal Ballet - as it became - was established as one of the world's great companies. It has produced celebrated dancers, from Margot Fonteyn to Darcey Bussell, and one of the richest repertoires in ballet. The company danced through the Blitz, won an international reputation in a single New York performance and added to the glamour of London's Swinging Sixties. It has established a distinctive English school of ballet, a pure classical style that could do justice to the 19th-century repertory and to new British classics. Leading dance critic, Zoë Anderson, vividly portrays the extraordinary personalities who created the company and the dancers who made such an impact on their audiences. She looks at the bad times as well as the good, examining the controversial directorships of Norman Morrice and Ross Stretton and the criticism fired at the company as the Royal Opera House closed for redevelopment.




Wrights & Wrongs


Book Description

Peter Wright has been a dancer, choreographer, teacher, producer and director in the theatre as well as in television for over 70 years. In Wrights & Wrongs, Peter offers his often surprising views of today's dance world, lessons learned – and yet to learn – from a lifetime's experience of ballet, commercial theatre and television. Peter started his career in wartime, with the Kurt Jooss company. He has worked with such greats as Pina Bausch, Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev, Marcia Haydée, Richard Cragun, Monica mason, Karen Kain, Miyako Yoshida and Carlos Acosta - as well as today's generation of starts including Alina Cajocaru, Marianela Nunez, Natalia Osipova and Lauren Cuthbertson. While now regarded as part of the British ballet establishment, for many years Peter developed his career outside London, particularly in Germany with John Cranko's Stuttgart Ballet. That distance gives him a unique and unrivalled view on ballet companies. His close association with choreographers Frederick Ashton, Ninette de Valois, founder of the Royal Ballet, Kenneth MacMillan and David Bintley gives Peter an authoritative perspective on British ballet. Wrights and Wrongs includes black-and-white photographs from Wright's career, and as Exeunt magazine comments: 'Anyone with an interest in British ballet will find plenty to occupy them in Wright's book... the many dramas and delights of his life in dance spring forth from the page with brio.'




Invitation to the Ballet


Book Description

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.




COME DANCE WITH ME


Book Description




Four Plays for Dancers


Book Description




Envisioning Dance on Film and Video


Book Description

Virtually everyone working in dance today uses electronic media technology. Envisioning Dance on Film and Video chronicles this 100-year history and gives readers new insight on how dance creatively exploits the art and craft of film and video. In fifty-three essays, choreographers, filmmakers, critics and collaborating artists explore all aspects of the process of rendering a three-dimensional art form in two-dimensional electronic media. Many of these essays are illustrated by ninety-three photographs and a two-hour DVD (40 video excerpts). A project of UCLA – Center for Intercultural Performance, made possible through The Pew Charitable Trusts (www.wac.ucla.edu/cip).




Apollo's Angels


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, LOS ANGELES TIMES, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY For more than four hundred years, the art of ballet has stood at the center of Western civilization. Its traditions serve as a record of our past. Lavishly illustrated and beautifully told, Apollo’s Angels—the first cultural history of ballet ever written—is a groundbreaking work. From ballet’s origins in the Renaissance and the codification of its basic steps and positions under France’s Louis XIV (himself an avid dancer), the art form wound its way through the courts of Europe, from Paris and Milan to Vienna and St. Petersburg. In the twentieth century, émigré dancers taught their art to a generation in the United States and in Western Europe, setting off a new and radical transformation of dance. Jennifer Homans, a historian, critic, and former professional ballerina, wields a knowledge of dance born of dedicated practice. Her admiration and love for the ballet, as Entertainment Weekly notes, brings “a dancer’s grace and sure-footed agility to the page.”




Dancing in the Blood


Book Description

The book explores the revolutionary impact of modern dance on European culture in the early twentieth century. Edward Ross Dickinson uncovers modern dance's place in the emerging 'mass' culture of the modern metropolis and reveals the connections between dance, politics, culture, religion, the arts, psychology, entertainment, and selfhood.




The Sadler S Wells Ballet A History And Appreciation


Book Description

A lavishly illustrated chronicle of the world-renowned Sadler's Wells Ballet company, tracing its evolution from humble beginnings to the pinnacle of artistic excellence and innovation, and featuring profiles of its most celebrated dancers and choreographers. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.