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.

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 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.

Hope in a Ballet Shoe tells the story of Michaela DePrince. Growing up in war-torn Sierra Leone, she witnessed atrocities that no child ever should. Her father was killed by rebels and her mother died of famine. Sent to an orphanage, Michaela was mistreated and saw the brutal murder of her favourite teacher. Then Michaela and her best friend are adopted by an American couple, and Michaela begins to take dance lessons. But life in the States isn't without difficulties. Unfortunately, tragedy can find its way to Michaela in America, too, and her past can feel like it's haunting her. The world of ballet is a racist one, and Michaela has to fight for a place amongst the ballet elite, hearing the words 'America's not ready for a black girl ballerina.' And yet . . . Today, Michaela DePrince is an international ballet star, dancing for The Dutch National Ballet at the age of nineteen. This is a heart-breaking, inspiring autobiography by a teenager who shows us that, beyond everything, there is always hope for a better future.

In 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. After getting her start on the stage as a child actor on Broadway, Bettijane Sills joined the New York City Ballet in 1961 as a member of the corps de ballet, working her way up to the level of soloist. As a company dancer who remained outside the spotlight that the principals enjoyed, Sills experienced a side of the company that prima ballerinas did not share in. She tells stories of taking class with Balanchine, dancing in the original casts of some of his most iconic productions, and working with some of the company's most famous dancers. Winningly honest and intimate, Sills lets readers in on the secrets of a world that most people have never seen firsthand. She reveals mistakes she made, the unglamorous parts of tour life, jealousy among company members, and Balanchine's complex relationships with women. She talks about Balanchine's insistence on thinness in his dancers and how her own struggles with weight ended her dancing career. Now a professor of dance who has educated thousands of students on Balanchine's style and legacy, Sills reflects on the highs and lows of a career indelibly influenced by the bright lights of theater and by the man who shaped American ballet.

Uncover the most mesmerising moments in ballet history with this scintillating visual guide. Written with ballet legend Viviana Durante, this book will introduce you to the most famous performers and enthrall you with fascinating stories. Discover more than 70 celebrated dances, from The Nutcracker and Swan Lake to The Rite of Spring. Learn about renowned companies such as The Royal Ballet and the Bolshoi Ballet. Explore the lives of ballet dancers across the centuries, such as Margot Fonteyn, Carlos Acosta, and Darcey Bussell, and meet composers and choreographers, including the likes of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Matthew Bourne. Tracing the history of ballet all the way from its origins at court and the first institutes to the contemporary scene, this comprehensive yet accessible volume offers an unrivalled overview of this dance form. Rarely seen photographs covering key figures, pieces, and performances, alongside compelling facts about each dance - the sources they draw from, their production history, and their reception over time - make for a sumptuous visual treat and an essential gift for all dance and ballet enthusiasts.

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"

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.

This examines in new ways opera and ballet criticism in early nineteenth-century France, taking seriously the motivations and beliefs of journalist critics. Rather than seeing their work as useful primarily for its raw factual information, the essays collected here look carefully at the historical, cultural, and aesthetic background that led critics to write as they did.

Following on from the volume on The King's Theatre, Haymarket, 1778-1791 (published by OUP in 1995), this interdisciplinary study of opera and ballet now turns to London's Pantheon Opera during the period 1789-95. The Pantheon Opera, founded in 1790, aimed to give London a kind of court opera that would feature opera seria and ballet d'action. It tried to hire Mozart to compete with Haydn, but its high aspirations led only to a quick bankruptcy. A recent major archival discovery has permitted startlingly full analysis of the company's repertoire, costumes, staging practices, and finances.

The Life and Works of Lev Ivanov is the first book-length study in any language of this Russian choreographer - Marius Petipa's colleague and Tchaikovsky's collaborator - who is widely celebrated yet virtually unknown. It follows Ivanov from his school days to a career as choreographer in one of the greatest ballet companies in the world - the Imperial Ballet of St Petersburg. That mileu, Ivanov's ballets, and their reception are described and lavishly documented.

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.

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

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

With over one million followers on Instagram, Ballerina Project has the largest network of followers in the world for ballet and has become an online phenomenon. Created by New York City-based photographer Dane Shitagi over the span of eighteen years, Ballerina Project has become the most significant, unique, and creative photographic archive of renowned ballerinas in the world.

The artistry, strength, and dedication of over fifty accomplished ballerinas are beautifully captured here with over 170 inspiring photographs in both black-and-white and full color. Iconic locations across the globe including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Buenos Aires, London, Rome, and Paris create a timeless backdrop to these remarkable portraits.

This unique book is bound in pink satin cloth with gold foil stamping and a pink satin ribbon marker. Introductions by renowned principal ballerinas Isabella Boylston and Francesca Hayward are included.  This is an ideal gift for any aspiring ballerina or ballet photographer.

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.

On a freezing night in January 2013, an assailant hurled acid in the face of the artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet, dragging one of Russia's most illustrious institutions into scandal. In Bolshoi Confidential, renowned musicologist Simon Morrison shows how the attack, and its torrid aftermath, underscored the importance of the Bolshoi to the art of ballet, to Russia, and to the world. With exclusive access to state archives and private sources, Morrison sweeps us through the history of the ballet, from its disreputable beginnings in 1776 to the recent GBP450 million restoration that has returned the Bolshoi to its former glory, even as its prized talent has departed. As Morrison reveals, the Bolshoi has transcended its own fraught history, surviving 250 years of artistic and political upheaval to define not only Russian culture, but also ballet itself.

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.

This cornerstone of the World of Art series is a succinct, vivid and authoritative guide to the rich history of western dance in all its incarnations from 16th-century court ballet to the genre-shattering contortions of 21st-century theatrical dance. Updated for the new millennium to feature the latest styles, performers and technology, this third edition reaffirms its status as the essential introduction to the subject.

Balanchine and the Lost Muse is a dual biography of the early lives of two key figures in Russian ballet, in the crucial time surrounding the Russian revolution: famed choreographer George Balanchine and his close childhood friend, ballerina Liidia (Lidochka) Ivanova. Tracing the lives and friendship of these two dancers from years just before the 1917 Russian Revolution to Balanchine's escape from Russia in 1924, author Elizabeth Kendall sheds new light on a crucial flash point in the history of ballet-one where politics and art meet in legendary St. Petersburg, both culture and nation struggling to reconfigure themselves in the wake of the birth of modern Russia. Drawing upon extensive archival research, Kendall weaves a fascinating tale of this crucial period in the life of the man who would ultimately go on to be the most influential choreographer in modern ballet. Abandoned by his mother on the steps of the St. Petersburg Imperial Ballet Academy in 1913 at the age of nine, Balanchine spent his formative years studying the art of dance in Russia's tumultuous capital city. It was there, as he struggled to support himself while studying and performing ballet, where Balanchine met Ivanonva, the first dancer with whom he would ever compose and dance. A talented and bold dancer who grew close to the Bolshevik elite in her adolescent years, Ivanova was a source of great inspiration to Balanchine-both during their youth together, and later in life, after her tragic and mysterious death just days before she had planned to leave Russia with Balanchine and their friends in 1924. Although he would have a great number of muses, many of them lovers, the dark beauty of his dear friend Lidochka haunted much of his work for years to come. Part biography and part urban cultural history, Balanchine and the Lost Muse presents a sweeping account of the heyday of modern ballet and the culture at the heart of the unmoored ideals, futuristic visions, and human decadence that characterized the Russian Revolution.

The 'ballet d'action' was one of the most successful and controversial forms of theatre in the early modern period. A curious hybrid of dance, mime and music, its overall and overriding intention was to create drama. It was danced drama rather than dramatic dance; musical drama rather than dramatic music. Most modern critical studies of the ballet d'action treat it more narrowly as stage dance, and very few view it as part of the history of mime. Little use has previously been made of the most revealing musical evidence. This innovative book does justice to the distinctive hybrid nature of the ballet d'action by taking a comparative approach, using contemporary literature and literary criticism, music, mime and dance from a wide range of English and European sources. Edward Nye presents a fascinating study of this important and influential part of eighteenth-century European theatre.

Originally published in 1883, and reprinted on numerous occasions, this Cambridge edition of Moliere's classic comedie-ballet provides the original French text, together with an introduction written in English, and English summaries for each of the five acts. A generous notes section and appendices are also contained. This is a rigorously edited edition that will be of value to anyone with an interest in the French language and its literature.

Dancer Robert Barnett trained under legendary choreographer Bronislava Nijinska. His professional ballet career was launched when he joined the Colonel de Basil Original Ballet Russe company. In the late 1940s, when George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein formed the New York City Ballet, Barnett was among of the first generation of dancers. Under Balanchine's direction, he rose from corps de ballet to soloist. In 1958 he became principal dancer and associate artistic director of the Atlanta Ballet-the oldest continuously operating company in America-and served as artistic director for more than thirty years. He was head coach of the American delegation to the International Ballet Competitions in Varna, Bulgaria, in 1980, and in Moscow in 1981. Today he serves as a guest teacher and coach at schools and companies throughout the U.S., and remains remains active with Atlanta Ballet. Barnett's autobiography recounts the life of a dancer and director, offers insight on what is involved in pursuing a professional career in dance and provides a history of ballet in America from the early 1920s through 2018.