Appalachian Spring, with music by Aaron Copland and choreography by Martha Graham, counts among the best known American contributions to the global concert hall and stage. In the years since its premiere-as a dance work at the Library of Congress in 1944-it has become one of Copland's most widely performed scores, and the Martha Graham Dance Company still treats it as a signature work. Over the decades, the dance and the music have taken on a range of meanings that have transformed a wartime production into a seemingly timeless expression of American identity, both musically and visually. In this Oxford Keynotes volume, distinguished musicologist Annegret Fauser follows the work from its inception in the midst of World War II to its intersections with contemporary American culture, whether in the form of choreographic reinterpretations or musical ones, as by John Williams, in 2009, for the inauguration of President Barack Obama. A concise and lively introduction to the history of the work, its realization on stage, and its transformations over time, this volume combines deep archival research and cultural interpretations to recount the creation of Appalachian Spring as a collaboration between three creative giants of twentieth-century American art: Graham, Copland, and Isamu Noguchi. Building on past and current scholarship, Fauser critiques the myths that remain associated with the work and its history, including Copland's famous disclaimer that Appalachian Spring had nothing to do with the eponymous Southern mountain region. This simultaneous endeavor in both dance and music studies presents an incisive exploration this work, situating it in various contexts of collaborative and individual creation.

The first translation of the writings of Akim Volynsky, the greatest ballet authority of early twentieth-century Russia Akim Volynsky was a Russian literary critic, journalist, and art historian who became Saint Petersburg's liveliest and most prolific ballet critic in the early part of the twentieth century. This book, the first English edition of his provocative and influential writings, provides a striking look at life inside the world of Russian ballet at a crucial era in its history. Stanley J. Rabinowitz selects and translates forty of Volynsky's articles-vivid, eyewitness accounts that sparkle with details about the careers and personalities of such dance luminaries as Anna Pavlova, Mikhail Fokine, Tamara Karsavina, and George Balanchine, at that time a young dancer in the Maryinsky company whose keen musical sense and creative interpretive power Volynsky was one of the first to recognize. Rabinowitz also translates Volynsky's magnum opus, The Book of Exaltations, an elaborate meditation on classical dance technique that is at once a primer and an ideological treatise. Throughout his writings, Rabinowitz argues in his critical introduction, which sets Volynsky's life and work against the backdrop of the principal intellectual currents of his time, Volynsky emphasizes the spiritual and ethereal qualities of ballet.

Mastering the pas de deux-or "step of two"-requires more than just physical proficiency; it demands genuine commitment between dancers. Respect, patience, and etiquette matter just as much as technique. The best partners communicate effectively through breath, eye contact, and musical cues. In Experiencing the Art of Pas de Deux, professional dance couple Jennifer Kronenberg and Carlos Miguel Guerra demystify the physical, emotional, and artistic intricacies behind the art of two dancing as one. Experienced principal dancers and ballet instructors, Kronenberg and Guerra disclose key components of partnering work often overlooked in classes, such as how to build and maintain the connections necessary for a trusting relationship and thus a successful team. Their combined explanations illuminate choreographic work from both a male and female perspective and detail the responsibilities of each partner. With step-by-step instructions for proper posture, lifts, jumps, turns, and even dance conditioning, each chapter's lesson includes personal anecdotes, offering a more intimate look at how partners can support one another during practices and performances. Additionally, QR code-accessible videos provide brief demonstrations that more fully illustrate newer and complex movements. Offering expert technical pointers and honing in on the secrets to forming successful interpersonal bonds, Kronenberg and Guerra's firsthand look at this "art form within an art form" will allow dancers in every genre to discover the inner workings of the finest and most memorable partnerships.

The Struggle of the Magicians. Choreographed and staged by Georg Gurdjieff for the first time more than a century ago, this ballet became a magnet attracting thousands of spiritually disillusioned men and women to performances in Europe and the U.S. after WW I, then it simply vanished from sight after WW II. Its reappearance in print commemorates the birthday of Mr. Gurdjieff 131 years ago (Jan 13, 1872)

On Technique provides a fascinating look into the careers and teaching philosophies of eighteen of the world's most respected ballet masters, principals, and artistic directors. Author Dean Speer sat down with prominent ballet pedagogues and asked each a standard set of questions, including 'What do we mean when we say someone has beautiful technique?' and 'How did you become a dancer?'. Featuring such artists as Peter Boal (artistic director of the Pacific Northwest Ballet) and Bene Arnold (first ballet mistress of the San Francisco Ballet), this volume offers fascinating insights into the nature of both performance and artistic instruction. Speer's approach reveals sometimes surprising convergences among these world-class talents, despite their varying pedagogical backgrounds and divisions.

Title: The Sleeping Beauty Composer: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Original Publisher: Muzgiz Act II & Act III of Tchaikovsky's complete ballet, The Sleeping Beauty, Op. 66. Performer's Reprints are produced in conjunction with the International Music Score Library Project. These are out of print or historical editions, which we clean, straighten, touch up, and digitally reprint. Due to the age of original documents, you may find occasional blemishes, damage, or skewing of print. While we do extensive cleaning and editing to improve the image quality, some items are not able to be repaired. A portion of each book sold is donated to small performing arts organizations to create jobs for performers and to encourage audience growth.

Vaslav Nijinsky was unique as a dancer, interpretive artist, and choreographic pioneer. His breathtaking performances with the Ballet Russe from 1909 to 1913 took Western Europe by storm. His avant-garde choreography for The Afternoon of the Faune and The Rite of Spring provoked riots when performed and are now regarded as the foundation of modern dance. Through his liaison with the great impresario Diaghilev, he worked with the artistic elite of the time. During the fabulous Diaghilev years he lived in an atmosphere of perpetual hysteria, glamor, and intrigue. Then, in 1913, he married a Hungarian aristocrat, Romola de Pulszky, and was abruptly dismissed from the Ballet Russe. Five years later, he was declared insane. The fabulous career as the greatest dancer who ever lived was over. Drawing on countless people who knew and worked with Nijinsky, Richard Buckle has written the definitive biography of the legendary dancer.

Serge Oukrainsky was born in 1885, in Odessa, Russia. He trained in Paris with Ivan Clustine and first appeared as a mime at the Theatre du Chatelet in 1911. He danced with Pavlova's company from 1913 to 1915 as both soloist and one of Pavlova's partners, and occasional costume designer. After leaving the company he moved to Chicago, where he formed the Pavley-Oukrainsky Ballet with his partner Andreas Pavley, and from 1917 was also principal dancer, choreographer and director of the Chicago Opera Ballet until 1927, at the same time establishing with Andreas Pavley the Pavley-Oukrainsky School of Ballet. Oukrainsky moved to California in 1927, where he served as ballet master to the San Francisco and Los Angeles operas until 1931. After Pavley's mysterious death in 1931 he formed the Serge Oukrainsky Ballet, and began to teach in Hollywood in 1934. He died in 1972. His book tells the story of his early life and initial training and of his dancing career and sometimes difficult relationship with Pavlova.

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2011 in the subject Theater Studies, Dance, grade: 1st, University Of Wales Institute, Cardiff, course: BA (Hons) Dance, language: English, abstract: This study investigates, through a detailed movement analysis of several choreographic works, whether Hofesh Shechter has created a new technique within contemporary dance today. The analysis utilises elements from both Adshead's (1988) model for movement analysis and Stinson's (2006) model for choreography: however adapting elements to consider the form and provide an evaluation through an external observation. In conclusion this study has revealed that irrespective of era; 'Art cannot be divorced from life - it is of life's essence. The central subject matter of all art is emotional value not fact. The art which expresses emotional values in movement is dance. So to dance one must study and explore and know movement' H'Doubler (1998, pxxix)

The internationally acclaimed new book that takes you behind the scenes to reveal how ballet really happens: In a scuffed-up studio, a veteran dancer transmits the magic of an eighty-year-old ballet to a performer barely past drinking age. In a converted barn, an indomitable teacher creates ballerinas as she has for more than half a century. In a monastic mirrored room, dancers from as near as New Jersey and as far as Mongolia learn works as old as the nineteenth century and as new as this morning. Snowflakes "zooms in on an intimate view of one full season in the life of one of America's top ballet companies and schools: Seattle's Pacific Northwest Ballet. But it also tracks the Land of Ballet to venues as celebrated as New York and Monte Carlo and as seemingly ordinary as Bellingham, Washington and small-town Pennsylvania. Never before has a book taken readers backstage for such a wide-ranging view of the ballet world from the wildly diverse perspectives of dancers, choreographers, stagers, teachers, conductors, musicians, rehearsal pianists, lighting directors, costumers, stage managers, scenic artists, marketers, fundraisers, students, and even pointe shoe fitters--often in their own remarkably candid words. The book follows characters as colorful as they are talented. Versatile dancers from around the globe team up with novice choreographers and those as renowned as Susan Stroman, Christopher Wheeldon, and Twyla Tharp to create art on deadline. At the book's center is Peter Boal, a former New York City Ballet star in his third year as PNB's artistic director, as he manages conflicting constituencies with charm, tact, rationality and diplomacy. Readers look over Boal's shoulder as he makes tough decisions about programming, casting, scheduling and budgeting that eventually lead the calm, low-key leader to declare that in his job, "You have to be willing to be hated." "Snowflakes" shows how ballet is made, funded, and sold. It escorts you front and center to the kick zone of studio rehearsals. It takes you to the costume shop where elegant tutus and gowns are created from scratch. It brings you backstage to see sets and lighting come alive while stagehands get lovingly snarky and obscene on their headsets. It sits you down in meetings where budgets get slashed and dreams get funded--and axed. It shows you the inner workings of "Nutcracker, " from kids' charming auditions to no-nonsense marketing meetings, from snow bags in the flies to dancing snowflakes who curse salty flurries that land on their tongues. It follows the tempestuous assembly of a version of "Romeo and Juliet" that runs afoul of so much pressure, disease, injury, and blood that the dancers begin to call it cursed. "Snowflakes" uncovers the astounding way ballets, with no common form of written preservation, are handed down from generation to generation through the prodigious memories of brilliant athletes who also happen to be artists. It visits cattle-call auditions and rigorous classes, tells the stories of dancers whose parents sacrificed for them and dancers whose parents refused to. It meets the resolute woman who created a dance school more than fifty years ago in a Carlisle, Pennsylvania barn and grew it into one of America's most reliable ballerina factories. It shows ballet's appeal to kids from low-income neighborhoods and board members who live in mansions. Shattering longstanding die-for-your-art cliches, this book uncovers the real drama in the daily lives of fiercely dedicated artists in slippers and pointe shoes-and the musicians, stagehands, costumers, donors and administrators who support them. "Where Snowflakes Dance and Swear: Inside the Land of Ballet" brings readers the exciting truth of how ballet actually happens.

First published in 1944, this classic book remains the definitive work on the masterpiece of the Romantic Ballet, Giselle. The book is in two parts, the first dealing with the original 1841 production, the second with technical and critical aspects of the ballet. Part I charts the evolution of the Romantic Ballet, and then gives a detailed description of the original production of Giselle, including a synopsis and accounts of the settings, costumes and creators of the original roles. Part II describes the stage action - the steps, gestures and the meanings they express - and analyses the interpretation of the roles. The book concludes with a survey of dancers who won fame for their performances as Giselle and as Albrecht.

Drawn partly from the scattered remnants of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and partly from extraordinary new talent, Colonel W. de Basil's company of dancers kept alive the heritage of the Russian ballet for a period spanning virtually twenty years. De Basil's Ballets Russes, under various titles, and initially founded in association with Rene Blum, director of ballet at Monte Carlo, not only preserved the greatest of the Diaghilev ballets but mounted many new ones, among them major works by Balanchine, Fokine, Massine, Nijinska and Lichine -the company's one home-grown choreographer. It provided a brilliant showcase for great dancers such as Danilova, Woizikovsky and Massine, whose reputations were already made, and for many younger dancers including the remarkable 'baby ballerinas'. De Basil launched not only the original trio -Toumanova, Baronova and Riabouchinska - but a whole succession of teenage dancers of outstanding natural ability whose superb training had made of them finished artists of the highest quality well before their eighteenth birthdays. Among many other dancers whose careers were influenced by de Basil - a White Russian Cossack officer who emigrated to Paris in 1919 and whose gifts were entrepreneurial rather than artistic - were Tchernicheva, an ex-Diaghilev dancer whom he brought out of retirement to become a leading performer again in her maturity, and Kirsova, suddenly thrust into stardom by rapturous Australian audiences. The story of the de Basil ballet is one of glamour, mystery and the obsessive dedication without which no art form can achieve excellence. Its locations are many - Europe, the USA, Central and South America and Australasia were toured by the company, which appeared not only in the great capitals but in places where classical dance had rarely if ever been seen before. Travelling through the countryside, this multi-national troupe would climb out of their coach to hold class in a wayside field, using the wire fences as barres; and no matter what conditions they had to face backstage, on stage these dancers would create magic. Kathrine Sorley Walker's researches for this eminently readable book have taken her on a tour of duty hardly less exhausting than those of the de Basil company. The result is a riveting account of these little-documented years, by one of Britain's best dance historians and critics, that fills a conspicuous gap in the literature of the ballet.

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900's and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Featuring an eight-page gallery of full-color illustrations, here is a major new biography of Serge Diaghilev, founder and impresario of the Ballets Russes, who revolutionized ballet by bringing together composers such as Stravinsky and Prokofiev, dancers and choreographers such as Nijinsky and Karsavina, Fokine and Balanchine, and artists such as Picasso, Matisse, Bakst, and Goncharova.
An accomplished, flamboyant impresario of all the arts, Diaghilev became a legendary figure. Growing up in a minor noble family in remote Perm, he would become a central figure in the artistic worlds of Paris, London, Berlin, and Madrid during the golden age of modern art. He lived through bankruptcy, war, revolution, and exile. Furthermore he lived openly as a homosexual and his liaisons, most famously with Nijinsky, and his turbulent friendships with Stravinsky, Coco Chanel, Prokofiev, and Jean Cocteau gave his life an exceptionally dramatic quality. Scheijen's magnificent biography, based on extensive research in little known archives, especially in Russia, brings fully to life a complex and powerful personality with boundless creative energy.
A New York Times Editor's Choice

"Piano Adagios 1" is the companion songbook for Fariborz Lachini's CD of the same name. Lachini's compositional style is sometimes categorized as neo-romantic although he prefers to call it light classical. His music has a unique powerful emotional content that speaks to the listener without the words. Requiem for a Love Butterfly in Snow Unafraid Blossom New Beginnings Enigmatic Heart Crossing Unwritten Letter Sad Ballerina Flying Dream Dinner by Candlelight Blue Orchids Only Sound Remains Emerging from theClouds Across theWaves

ISMN: 979-0-706060-05-7 Corresponding MP3s: http: //www.amazon.com/Piano-Adagios-1/dp/B0043WK4VQ Single Sheet Music or complete eBook, compatible with Kindle/iPad/other eBook readers, in PDF format is available from artist's official website for download using your same amazon.com account: http: //www.lachini.com

The Diaghilev Ballet existed from 1909 to 1929; and from its beginningto its end Serge Grigoriev acted as r gisseur-that is to say he was responsible for every aspect of the venture save its finance. In theearly 1950s he began reading back among the "logs" of the Ballet'smany seasons, and decided that he would write what no one elsecould write-the story of Diaghilev's extraordinary enterprise as seenby one of its major participants. His book offers a chronology of the Ballet's history, beginning withthe first preparations in St. Petersburg, through triumphs and setbacks in Paris, disaster in the United States, revolution in Portugal, tothe last phase when, cut off from Russia, the Ballet found an official home in Monte Carlo. Almost without exception, the leading European practitioners of music and painting came to collaborate with Diaghilev. Add the names of the dancers, and virtually all the famous figures in theartistic world of the period find a place in Grigoriev's record. Of Diaghilev himself-the strange genius behind this fabulous adventure, the creative artist who could only create in collaboration with dancer-choreographers-a vivid portrait emerges. He underwent every kind of fortune, good and bad, deserved andundeserved, finally refusing to regard himself as a sick man, gambling with death and losing his stake.