Challenging and unsettling their predecessors, modern choreographers such as Matthew Bourne, Mark Morris and Masaki Iwana have courted controversy and notoriety by reimagining the most canonical of Classical and Romantic ballets.

In this book, Vida L. Midgelow illustrates the ways in which these contemporary reworkings destroy and recreate their source material, turning ballet from a classical performance to a vital exploration of gender, sexuality and cultural difference.

Reworking the Ballet: Counter Narratives and Alternative Bodies articulates the ways that audiences and critics can experience these new versions, viewing them from both practical and theoretical perspectives, including:

• eroticism and the politics of touch
• performing gender
• cross-casting and cross-dressing
• reworkings and intertextuality
• cultural exchange and hybridity.

Celebrating the diversity of dance across the South Pacific, this volume studies the various experiences, motivations and aims for dance, emerging from the voices of dance professionals in the islands. In particular, it focuses on the interplay of cultures and pathways of migration as people move across the region discovering new routes and connect

This special collectors edition celebrates a unique collaboration between two of Londons greatest cultural institutions. Together The Royal Ballet and the National Gallery commissioned three acclaimed contemporary artists Chris Ofili, Conrad Shawcross and Mark Wallinger to work with international choreographers and composers to create three new ballets inspired by the Titian paintings Diana and Callisto, Diana and Actaeon and The Death of Actaeon. As well as designing the sets and costumes, the artists also produced new works for a show at the National Gallery. The book tells the story of this extraordinary, complex project from conception to stage and gallery. The artists notebooks, sketches and other material from the studio are reproduced to show how they evolved their initial ideas into working designs. Numerous views of the dancers rehearsals, the creation of the sets and the gallery installations, as well as dozens of unseen photographs of the performances themselves, take the reader behind the scenes to see the many processes and people involved in transforming the artists vision into a finished production. An introduction by National Gallery curator Dr Minna Moore Ede, explains how the collaboration came to fruition and unfolded. Dame Monica Masons foreword completes this stunning volume. Limited edition of 250 copies Presented with three original artists prints in a clothbound clamshell case.

The story of the splendidly unpredictable Russian dancer who ruffled the feathers of the Bloomsbury set and became the wife of John Maynard Keynes Born in 1891 in St Petersburg, Lydia Lopokova lived a long and remarkable life. Her vivacious personality and the sheer force of her charm propelled her to the top of Diaghilev's Ballet Russes. Through a combination of luck, determination and talent, Lydia became a star in Paris, a vaudeville favourite in America, the toast of Britain and then married the world-renowned economist, and formerly homosexual, John Maynard Keynes. Lydia's story links ballet and the Bloomsbury group, war, revolution and the economic policies of the super-powers. She was an immensely captivating, eccentric and irreverent personality: a bolter, a true bohemian and, eventually, an utterly devoted wife.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER
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, emigre 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."
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY "THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW" - "LOS ANGELES TIMES - SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE - PUBLISHERS WEEKLY"

From the bestselling author of WATCH OVER ME, Daniela Sacerdoti's latest Seal Island novel is a romantic, moving and uplifting story of three different lives, connected by a thread. ** Over 1 million copies sold of Daniela Sacerdoti's novels ** Three separate lives. Three broken hearts. Haunted by his wife's death, Matt arrives on Seal Island determined to be alone and unable to escape his grief. In the island's hospital, a young woman named Rose lies in a coma, trapped by the memories of events leading up to her accident. Grace, the island's doctor, is at the heart of the community. Only she knows how much she regrets turning down the chance of love and a family years ago. For these three people hope seems gone. But life is about to offer an unexpected new beginning... Readers adore the captivating novels of Daniela Sacerdoti 'A love story that will satisfy even the most hopeless romantics' Daily Express 'Beautifully written and atmospheric' The Sun 'A great book' Lesley Pearse 'Emotional. I couldn't put it down' Daily Mail 'I fell in love with this book' Prima magazine

Challenging and unsettling their predecessors, modern choreographers such as Matthew Bourne, Mark Morris and Masaki Iwana have courted controversy and notoriety by reimagining the most canonical of Classical and Romantic ballets. In this book, Vida L. Midgelow illustrates the ways in which these contemporary reworkings destroy and recreate their source material, turning ballet from a classical performance to a vital exploration of gender, sexuality and cultural difference. Reworking the Ballet: Counter Narratives and Alternative Bodies articulates the ways that audiences and critics can experience these new versions, viewing them from both practical and theoretical perspectives, including: eroticism and the politics of touch performing gender cross-casting and cross-dressing reworkings and intertextuality cultural exchange and hybridity.

This lively collection of articles on dancer and choreographer Jose Limón provides a valuable insight into the life and times of the important Mexican American choreographer.
Born in Mexico, Limon came to the United States at the age of seven. Caught between his native and adopted cultures, Limon used this cultural tension to shape his craft while working with his mentor Doris Humphrey. Incorporating bold choreography into performances that broke the mold of how male dancers had been perceived, Limon often depicted flawed men caught in complex dramas.
Limon's dance company was the first to be invited by the State Department to represent the U.S. on a tour of South America, and is the first modern dance company to survive the death of its founder.

Relatively little has been written about how ballet teachers become teachers themselves and how each generation passes on its experience to the next. The teacher-dancer relationship within the context of the Russian classical tradition is a theme of "A Life Well Danced". It is presented through the lens of a young girl who lived through emigration and displacement at the time of the Russian Revolution, who experienced this again as an adult after the Second World War and who went on to establish a successful career as a teacher, examiner and choreographer. The book also touches on the teaching and performing of European character dance which is also an under-appreciated field. "A Life Well Danced" was inspired by the author's direct connection through Zybina and her teachers, Nicolai Legat in London, Evgenia Eduardova in Berlin and Elena Poliakova in Belgrade, to the flowering of Russian classical ballet in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when Marius Petipa was choreographing works such as Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty. An interview with Zybina provides the framework for material in memoirs and first-hand accounts that are drawn upon for their lively descriptions of the Imperial Theatre School and the Mariinsky ballet company in St. Petersburg. Born in Moscow, Zybina and her family fled to Europe at the time of the Russian Revolution. Her first marriage to an English diplomat took her to Belgrade and a career as a dancer and ballet mistress in Yugoslavia. The Second World War saw her still in Yugoslavia with her second husband when they and a number of close friends worked in intelligence on behalf of the Allies. A strange twist of events, brought them to England where Zybina established her ballet school and became an examiner for the Federation of Russian Classical Ballet and the Society of Russian Style Ballet Schools.

When Leonard Bernstein first arrived in New York City, he was an unknown artist working with other brilliant twentysomethings, notably Jerome Robbins, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green. By the end of the 1940s, these artists were world famous. Their collaborations defied artistic boundaries and subtly pushed a progressive political agenda, altering the landscape of musical theater, ballet, and nightclub comedy. In Bernstein Meets Broadway: Collaborative Art in a Time of War, award-winning author and scholar Carol J. Oja examines the early days of Bernstein's career during World War II, centering around the debut in 1944 of the Broadway musical On the Town and the ballet Fancy Free. As a composer and conductor, Bernstein experienced a meteoric rise to fame, thanks in no small part to his visionary colleagues. Together, they focused on urban contemporary life and popular culture, featuring as heroes the itinerant sailors who bore the brunt of military service. They were provocative both artistically and politically. In a time of race riots and Japanese internment camps, Bernstein and his collaborators featured African American performers and a Japanese American ballerina, staging a model of racial integration. Rather than accepting traditional distinctions between high and low art, Bernstein's music was wide-open, inspired by everything from opera and jazz to cartoons. Oja shapes a wide-ranging cultural history that captures a tumultuous moment in time. Bernstein Meets Broadway is an indispensable work for fans of Broadway musicals, dance, and American performance history.

From the graceful flutter of Princess Florine at Sleeping Beauty's wedding to the playful jetees in the first act of Giselle, the variation - or short solo work - is one of the key elements of classical ballet. Arguing that true artistry requires in-depth knowledge, former Kirov dancer and teacher Nina Danilova has worked with students for many years to focus on performing individual variations with the greatest extent of technical proficiency and artistic sensitivity. Eight Female Classical Ballet Variations lays out eight of the most important variations in the ballerina's repertoire. Each chapter is divided into five sections: a piano reduction of the score; a contextual note covering the history of the ballet, the plot, and memorable dancers who have performed the role; and instructions for dancing the variation itself, illustrated literally step by step. Accompanied by a comprehensive companion website, Eight Female Classical Ballet Variations pairs Danilova's impeccable technique with her decades of pedagogical experience. Teachers will welcome this classroom-ready guide, and student dancers will leap at the chance to develop their technique and artistry by tackling these variations.

Dancing the World Smaller examines international dance performances in New York City in the 1940s as sites in which dance artists and audiences contested what it meant to practice globalism in mid-twentieth-century America. During and after the Second World War, modern dance and ballet thrived in New York City, a fertile cosmopolitan environment in which dance was celebrated as an emblem of American artistic and cultural dominance. In the ensuing Cold War years, American choreographers and companies were among those the U.S. government sent abroad to serve as ambassadors of American cultural values and to extend the nation's geo-political reach. Less-known is that international dance performance, or what was then-called "ethnic" or "ethnologic" dance, enjoyed strong support among audiences in the city and across the nation as well. Produced in non-traditional dance venues, such as the American Museum of Natural History, the Ethnologic Dance Center, and Carnegie Hall, these performances elevated dance as an intercultural bridge across human differences and dance artists as transcultural interlocutors. Dancing the World Smaller draws on extensive archival resources, as well as critical and historical studies of race and ethnicity in the U.S., to uncover a hidden history of globalism in American dance and to see artists such as La Meri, Ruth St. Denis, Asadata Dafora, Pearl Primus, Jose Limon, Ram Gopal, and Charles Weidman in new light. Debates about how to practice globalism in dance proxied larger cultural struggles over how to reconcile the nation's new role as a global superpower. In dance as in cultural politics, Americans labored over how to realize diversity while honoring difference and manage dueling impulses toward globalism, on the one hand, and isolationism, on the other.

From the author of Apollo's Angels, the first major biography of the figure who modernised dance: an intimate portrait of the man behind the mythology, set against the vibrant backdrop of the century that shaped him Balanchine's radical approach to choreography reinvented the art of dance and his richly evocative ballets made him a lasting legend. Today, nearly thirty years after his death, the man is still so revered that the mysteries of his biography are often overlooked. Who was George Balanchine? Born in Russia under the last Czar, Balanchine experienced the upheavals of World War One, the Russian Revolution, exile, World War Two and the cultural Cold War; he was part of the Russian modernist moment, a key player in Paris in the 1920s, and in New York he revolutionized ballet, pressing it to the forefront of modernism and making it serious and popular art. His influences were myriad. He considered himself Georgian, yet he did not step foot in his ancestral homeland until he was in his fifties. He was deeply influenced by the cold grandeur and sensuous beauty of the Orthodox Church, but equally absorbed by the new rhythms and dance steps coming out of Harlem in the 1930s. He collaborated broadly, with figures like Diaghilev and Stravinsky. A man of muses, Balanchine was married five times, always to young dancers, and consumed by many other loves in between. The difficulties of his life - personal losses, bouts of ill health, debilitating loneliness and dark moods of despair - resonate in his dances, which speak so poignantly of love and loss, and yet the full implications for his art remain unexplored. Now for the first time we look beyond the myth of 'Mr B' - the mask which Balanchine himself helped to create - to see 'Mr B' the man.

Ukrainian dancer and choreographer Serge Lifar (1905-86) is recognized both as the modernizer of French ballet in the twentieth century and as the keeper of the flame of the classical tradition upon which the glory of French ballet was founded. Having migrated to France from Russia in 1923 to join Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, Lifar was appointed star dancer and ballet director at the Paris Opera in 1930. Despite being rather unpopular with the French press at the start of his appointment, Lifar came to dominate the Parisian dance scene-through his publications as well as his dancing and choreography-until the end of the Second World War, reaching the height of his fame under the German occupation of Paris (1940-44). Rumors of his collaborationism having remained inconclusive throughout the postwar era, Lifar retired in 1958. This book not only reassesses Lifar's career, both aesthetically and politically, but also provides a broader reevaluation of the situation of dance-specifically balletic neoclassicism-in the first half of the twentieth century. The Fascist Turn in the Dance of Serge Lifar is the first book not only to discuss the resistance to Lifar in the French press at the start of his much-mythologized career, but also the first to present substantial evidence of Lifar's collaborationism and relate it to his artistic profile during the preceding decade. In examining the political significance of the critical discussion of Lifar's body and technique, author Mark Franko provides the ground upon which to understand the narcissistic and heroic images of Lifar in the 1930s as prefiguring the role he would play in the occupation. Through extensive archival research into unpublished documents of the era, police reports, the transcript of his postwar trial and rarely cited newspaper columns Lifar wrote, Franko reconstructs the dancer's political activities, political convictions, and political ambitions during the Occupation.

Apollo's Angels is a major new history of classical ballet. It begins in the courts of Europe, where ballet was an aspect of aristocratic etiquette and a political event as much as it was an art. The story takes the reader from the sixteenth century through to our own time, from Italy and France to Britain, Denmark, Russia and contemporary America. The reader learns how ballet reflected political and cultural upheavals, how dance and dancers were influenced by the Renaissance and French Classicism, by Revolution and Romanticism, by Expressionism and Bolshevism, Modernism and the Cold War. Homans shows how and why 'the steps' were never just the steps: they were a set of beliefs and a way of life. She takes the reader into the lives of dancers and traces the formal evolution of technique, choreography and performance. Her book ends by looking at the contemporary crisis in ballet now that 'the masters are dead and gone' and offers a passionate plea for the centrality of classical dance in our civilization. Apollo's Angels is a book with broad popular appeal: beautifully written and illustrated, it is essential reading for anyone interested in history, culture and art.

This magnificent new biography of the extraordinary impresario of the arts and creator of the Ballets Russes 100 years ago draws on important new research, notably from Russia. 'Scheijen masterfully recounts the phenomenal way in which Diaghilev contrived, under virtually impossible circumstances, to nurture a sequence of works ... he triumphs in making clear the degree to which, despite the cosmopolitanism of so much of the work, Russia was at the core of Diaghilev' Simon Callow, Guardian 'It's a fabulous, complicated, very sexy story and Sjeng Scheijen takes us through it with a steadying calm that fudges none of the outrage on or off stage' Duncan Fallowell, Daily Express 'Magnificent ... filled with extraordinary glamour' Rupert Christiansen, Daily Mail

This visually stunning publication celebrates a unique collaboration between two of the UK's leading cultural institutions, the National Gallery and The Royal Ballet. Together they commissioned three contemporary artists - Chris Ofili, Conrad Shawcross and Mark Wallinger - to work with international choreographers and composers to create three new ballets inspired by Titian's paintings Diana and Actaeon, The Death of Actaeon and Diana and Callisto. As well as designing all the sets and costumes, the artists also produced entirely new works in response to Titian's masterpieces for a show at the National Gallery. The book tells the story of this extraordinary, complex project from conception to stage and gallery. The artists' notebooks, sketches and other material from the studio are reproduced to show how they evolved their initial ideas into working designs. Numerous views of the dancers' rehearsals, installations and production work, and dozens of unseen photographs of the performances themselves, take the reader behind the scenes to see the many processes and people involved in transforming the artists' vision into a finished production. All three creative teams offer through interviews and personal statements their own reflections on the project and on working with very different art forms. An introduction by National Gallery curator and originator of the project, Minna Moore Ede, explains how it came to fruition and how both aspects of the collaboration unfolded. A foreword by Dame Monica Mason, outgoing director of The Royal Ballet, completes the volume.

The first book from Darcey Bussell in over six years, retired darling of the British Ballet and beloved judge of Strictly Come Dancing, this publishing extravaganza coincides with the superstar ballerina's 50th birthday.

Exquisitely produced, the book is filled with remarkable images of Dame Darcey in various notable locations, such as a pod of the London Eye, on top of the Victoria and Albert memorial, and performing at worldwide events, like the Olympics opening ceremony. The collection includes rare and unseen moments of Darcey shot by some of the most famous photographers, including Lord Snowdon, Mario Testino and Annie Leibovitz, in locations beyond the stage including rehearsals, fashion shoots and more which are accompanied by behind-the-scenes stories and personal anecdotes.

A fitting testament to one of our true national treasures, this glorious and charming book is a wonder to enjoy for years to come.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Bodies of Others explores the politics of gender in motion. From drag ballerinas to faux queens, and from butoh divas to the club mothers of modern dance, this book delves into four decades of drag dances on American stages, tracing the ways in which bodies can be imagined otherwise. Drag dances take us beyond glittery one-liners and into the spaces between gender norms. In these backstage histories, we see dancers who give their bodies over to other selves, opening up the category of realness. When realness becomes a practice, dancing can become a way of restaging the histories of bodies. The book maps out a drag politics of embodiment, connecting drag dances to queer hope, memory, and mourning. There are aging etoiles, midnight shows, mystical seances, and all of the dust and velvet of divas in their dressing-rooms. But these forty years of drag dances are also a cultural history, including Mark Morris dancing the death of Dido in the shadow of AIDS, and the swans of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo sketching an antiracist vision for ballet. Drawing on queer theory, dance history, and the embodied practices of dancers themselves, The Bodies of Others examines the ways in which drag dances undertake the work of a shared queer and trans politics. The book will be of interest to scholars and students working on performance, gender and sexuality, and embodiment.

Martha Ullman West illustrates how American ballet developed over the course of the twentieth century from an aesthetic originating in the courts of Europe into a stylistically diverse expression of a democratic culture. West places at center stage two artists who were instrumental to this story: Todd Bolender and Janet Reed.Lifelong friends, Bolender (1914-2006) and Reed (1916-2000) were part of a generation of dancers who navigated the Great Depression, World War II, and the vibrant cultural scene of postwar New York City. They danced in the works of choreographers Lew and Willam Christensen, Eugene Loring, Agnes de Mille, Catherine Littlefield, Ruthanna Boris, and others who West argues were just as responsible for the direction of American ballet as the legendary George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins. The stories of Bolender, Reed, and their contemporaries also demonstrate that the flowering of American ballet was not simply a New York phenomenon. West includes little-known details about how Bolender and Reed laid the foundations for Seattle's Pacific Northwest Ballet in the 1970s and how Bolender transformed the Kansas City Ballet into a highly respected professional company soon after. Passionate in their desire to dance and create dances, Bolender and Reed committed their lives to passing along their hard-won knowledge, training, and work. This book celebrates two unsung trailblazers who were pivotal to the establishment of ballet in America from one coast to the other.

A companion guide to one of the bestselling Limelight Edition titles, this book by Asaf Messerer, a founder of what has become known as the Bolshoi School, is one of the most celebrated manuals of classic dance instruction in the world. Messerer has gained an international reputation for his classes in classical technique-models of invention and well-rounded exercise, stressing both precision and fluid artistic control. Nearly 500 photographs of principal Bolshoi dancers illustrate the positions and steps indicated, and an introductory section by Messerer outlines his basic plan and philosophy of teaching.

A distinguished dance critic offers an enchanting introduction to the art of ballet As much as we may enjoy Swan Lake or The Nutcracker, for many of us ballet is a foreign language. It communicates through movement, not words, and its history lies almost entirely abroad-in Russia, Italy, and France. In Celestial Bodies, dance critic Laura Jacobs makes the foreign familiar, providing a lively, poetic, and uniquely accessible introduction to the world of classical dance. Combining history, interviews with dancers, technical definitions, descriptions of performances, and personal stories, Jacobs offers an intimate and passionate guide to watching ballet and understanding the central elements of choreography. Beautifully written and elegantly illustrated with original drawings, Celestial Bodies is essential reading for all lovers of this magnificent art form.

Belle-epoque Paris witnessed the emergence of a vibrant and diverse dance scene, one that crystallized around the Ballets Russes, the Russian dance company formed by impresario Sergey Diaghilev. The company has long served as a convenient turning point in the history of dance, celebrated for its revolutionary choreography and innovative productions. This book presents a fresh slant on this much-told history. Focusing on the relation between music and dance, Davinia Caddy approaches the Ballets Russes with a wide-angled lens that embraces not just the choreographic, but also the cultural, political, theatrical and aesthetic contexts in which the company made its name. In addition, Caddy examines and interprets contemporary French dance practices, throwing new light on some of the most important debates and discourses of the day.