Insights and guidelines for teaching the best students "Not since Noverre and Fokine has a master teacher sought to clarify the present state of ballet. The goals John White sets for each level of training, the psychological philosophies he sets forth for teachers, the emphasis on a positive approach to teaching and forming relationships with students and parents can be read over and over again throughout a teacher's career."--Charles Flachs, Massachusetts Academy of Ballet "It has been an inestimable privilege to have worked with John White for more than ten years. This book, along with his first, provides an outstanding opportunity for generations of teachers to learn from him as well. Bravo "--Michele MacDonald, St. Louis Center of Creative Arts Staying true to the Russian Academy of Ballet (St. Petersburg) pedagogy he has taught for forty years, "Advanced Principles in Teaching Classical Ballet" is a continuation of the work John White began in his first book. Designed for teachers, company directors, and advanced dancers, the book explores the importance of disciplined dancing, choreography, acting, conditioning, and performance. White's writing style is as straightforward as he is unyielding in his insistence on excellence. White also confronts serious issues dealing with the future of classical ballet and what is needed to maintain its rightful place as an important theater art. He argues that theatergoers with high expectations deserve nothing less than masterful choreography performed by superior dancers. Decidedly not a primer, "Advanced Principles in Teaching Classical Ballet" is a must-read for anyone serious about teaching and performing ballet. John White, former soloist and ballet master of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba and interim ballet master of the Pennsylvania Ballet Company, is codirector of the Pennsylvania Academy of Ballet.

From adagio to voyage, over 800 steps, movements, poses, and concepts are fully defined. A pronunciation guide and cross-references to alternate names for similar steps and positions that vary from the Russian to the French or Italian schools are also invaluable aids.

"Golden Autumn 3" is the third installment in composer/pianist Fariborz Lachini's celebrated series of piano albums called Golden Autumn that includes his original writings for solo piano, some of which were originated from the themes he created for film scores. This is the companion songbook for Fariborz Lachini's CD of the same name. Fall in Love Again Silver Winter A Thousand Leaves Forever in My Dreams Sepidar Autumn Whispers It's Snowing Leaves of Light Fragments of Autumn Blue Sky Autumn in My Heart Calling Out for You Signs of Rain On the Wind Autumn Eve

ISMN: 979-0-706060-02-6 Corresponding MP3s: http: //www.amazon.com/Golden-Autumn-3-Pieces-Piano/dp/B003YBM18G Single Sheet Music or complete eBook downloads, 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 literature on Balanchine is vast, but it is primarily biographical. "Balanchine Variations "is the first book to concentrate on the ballets themselves, providing critical analysis and detailed descriptions of what the dancers actually do. Beginning with "Apollo" (1928), Balanchine's first extant work, and ending with one of his last ballets, "Ballo della Regina" (1978), Nancy Goldner offers detailed insights into more than twenty individual ballets. Based on lectures given across the United States, under the auspices of the Balanchine Foundation, they are intended to illuminate his art. Goldner discusses the history of each ballet, places each in the context of Balanchine's life and sensibility. She also addresses his taste in music and whether his style can be considered particularly American. The ballets Balanchine choreographed for the New York City Ballet are danced by companies around the world, and this innovative book is sure to become an indispensable guide to dancers and spectators alike.

Dance is a uniquely significant art form, whose primary material is not simply the 'body', but energy as it is used and experienced in movement. Energy is central to discourses of modernity and modernism, in which choreographers and dancers can actively intervene through their innovative uses of energy. Mary Wigman, Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham are key choreographers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, whose rhythmic innovations challenged established norms of energy usage in their socio-cultural contexts, enabling their contemporaries to engage differently with dominant economies of energy. This book explores their rhythmic innovations by combining discussion of cultural contexts with close analysis of specific dance works. Uses of energy in dance are described and analysed with the aid of concepts drawn from Rudolf Laban's writings, and are theorized with reference to historical, social and cultural contexts and to phenomenological and post-structuralist approaches to the embodied subject, constructing the argument that choreographical innovation - including recent work using digital technologies - involves a process of 'kinesthetic imagination'.

Originally published in 1899, this is a comprehensive study of the art of Dancing throughout history. It goes into great detail about dancing through the ages, including musical notation, right up to the start of the 1900s. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Hesperides Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork. Contents Include - The Natural and Origin of Dancing - Dancing in Ancient Egypt - Dances of the Greeks - Dancing in Ancient Rome - Religious, Mysterious, and Fanatical Elements in Dancing - Remarkable Dancing of Later Times - The Minuet - Modern Dancing

The art of character dancing in classical ballet is now almost lost, but when this unique book was first published in Russia in 1939 it still thrived. The authors, all brilliant character dancers themselves, were teachers at the Kirov Ballet and its school, and were establishing a five-year course in character dance at the Kirov School. The first part of the book is devoted to class character exercises and the second part gives specific character dances in various national styles. "Character Dance" has been translated and adapted by Joan Lawson, a noted specialist in the subject, who herself studied in Leningrad in the 1930's and was for many years a teacher at he Royal Ballet School in London.

Newly edited and engraved. The composer considered an orchestral suite from his great ballet, but never got around to extracting it. An unknown editor compiled the first version, which was issued by Jurgenson in 1900. The Soviet state publishers produced their own version in 1954, adding 3 dance movements and omitting the finale from the original suite. This new score includes all the movements found in the two different versions of the suite.

Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

1925. Also the pictures of Holbein etched in the author's time, to which are added Mr. Angarola's conception of the period and drawings by way of contemporary comment by Gene Markey. The Praise of Folly is the best known work of the greatest of the renaissance humanists, Erasmus of Rotterdam. Originally meant for private circulation, it scourges the abuses and follies of the various classes of society, especially of the Church. It is a deliberate attempt to discredit the Church and its satire and stinging comment on ecclesiastical conditions are not intended as a healing medicine but a deadly blow. It ends with a straightforward and touching statement of the Christian ideals which Erasmus shared notably with his English friends, John Colet and Thomas More. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.

LimelightAnyone who has ever seen a live performance of ballet knows the thrill of seeing larger-than-life figures on stage dancing in ways that seem superhuman. What are these dancers like beyond the footlights? How have they acquired such artistry and technique? What are the joys and difficulties in sustaining their careers? What dreams would they like to fulfill as performers? Round About the Ballet profiles the stars of the top New York City ballet companies: American Ballet Theatre and the New York City Ballet. Selected by Roy Round, one of the world's leading dance photographers, the dancers profiled represent the very best in ballet today. The dancers are brought to life through stories of their lives, real-life interviews, and the stunning photgraphs of Roy Round. This book is for ballet fans, dance students, collectors of photo books, and people who are curious about the performing arts. This is a book that, once opened, will be hard to put down. HARDCOVER

A lively discussion of North America's favorite ballet-its history, productions, and significance The Nutcracker is the most popular ballet in the world, adopted and adapted by hundreds of communities across the United States and Canada every Christmas season. In this entertainingly informative book, Jennifer Fisher offers new insights into the Nutcracker phenomenon, examining it as a dance scholar and critic, a former participant, an observer of popular culture, and an interviewer of those who dance, present, and watch the beloved ballet. Fisher traces The Nutcracker's historyfrom its St. Petersburg premiere in 1892 through its emigration to North America in the mid-twentieth century to the many productions of recent years. She notes that after it was choreographed by another Russian immigrant to the New World, George Balanchine, the ballet began to thrive and variegate: Hawaiians added hula, Canadians added hockey, Mark Morris set it in the swinging sixties, and Donald Byrd placed it in Harlem. The dance world underestimates The Nutcracker atits peril, Fisher suggests, because the ballet is one of its most powerfully resonant traditions. After starting life as a Russian ballet based on a German tale about a little girl's imagination, The Nutcracker hasbecome a way for Americans to tell a story about their communal values and themselves.

An irresistible inside look at one of the world's great dance companies, Winter Season is also a sensitive, intimate, and almost painfully honest account of the emotional and intellectual development of a young woman dedicated to one of the most demanding of all the arts. Bentley's association with the New York City Ballet began when she was accepted by the affiliated School of American Ballet at the age of eleven. Seven years later, she became a member of the company. In the fall of 1980, as the winter season opened, she found herself facing an emotional crisis: her dancing was not going well. At 22 she felt that her life had lost direction. To try to make something of her experience, on paper if not on stage, she began to keep a journal, describing her day-to-day activities and looking back on her past. The result is perhaps the closest that most of us will ever come to knowing what it feels like to be a dancer, on stage and off. It also offers memorable glimpses of some notable members of the City ballet, with, at the center, the man whose vision they all served--George Balanchine.

In 1930, dancer and choreographer Martha Graham proclaimed the arrival of "dance as an art of and from America." Dancers such as Doris Humphrey, Ted Shawn, Katherine Dunham, and Helen Tamiris joined Graham in creating a new form of dance, and, like other modernists, they experimented with and argued over their aesthetic innovations, to which they assigned great meaning.

Their innovations, however, went beyond aesthetics. While modern dancers devised new ways of moving bodies in accordance with many modernist principles, their artistry was indelibly shaped by their place in society. Modern dance was distinct from other artistic genres in terms of the people it attracted: white women (many of whom were Jewish), gay men, and African American men and women. Women held leading roles in the development of modern dance on stage and off; gay men recast the effeminacy often associated with dance into a hardened, heroic, American athleticism; and African Americans contributed elements of social, African, and Caribbean dance, even as their undervalued role defined the limits of modern dancers' communal visions. Through their art, modern dancers challenged conventional roles and images of gender, sexuality, race, class, and regionalism with a view of American democracy that was confrontational and participatory, authorial and populist.

"Modern Bodies" exposes the social dynamics that shaped American modernism and moved modern dance to the edges of society, a place both provocative and perilous.

"Pas de Deux" has been widely regarded as the foremost existing textbook on the art of partnering. First published in 1969 in Russian by one of the world's most respected experts on partnering, the original book was created for the Vaganova Ballet Academy in St. Petersburg, the school that produced Pavlova and Nijinsky. This expanded edition contains new text, sketches, and photographs that describe 32 new poses and lifts, along with new information about strengthening exercises and balance points. It is adaptable to instruction based on the Royal Academy of Dancing and the Cecchetti methods, making it invaluable for teachers and dancers of all three major methodologies. Beginning with simple exercises for young dancers, the comprehensive text guides students, teachers, and choreographers safely to complex lifts and tosses. The instruction is useful to all forms of dance, including ballet, jazz, modern dance, ballroom dancing, and ice dancing.

From Christiane Vaussard in Paris, to David Howard in New York City and Larisa Sklyanskaya in San Francisco, Gretchen Warren profiles ten world-renowned master ballet teachers to capture their philosophies, training methods and the classroom presence that makes their instruction magical. Based on extensive interviews and classroom observation, each profile is an entertaining and enlightening mix of personal anecdotes and details about teaching techniques, class content and organisation. Warren also includes a section of signature exercises drawn from each teacher. Because of the master teacher's diversity of styles and methods, as well as their occasional disputes with traditional wisdom, the book offers a brisk stimulant for reflecting on the values of developing and holding true to one's own style and beliefs. Warren combines her years of experience as a dancer and master ballet teacher and her engaging writing style to create a living history of 20th-century classical ballet training. Like their legions of students, readers should appreciate not only these teachers' philosophies, their endless curiosity and their devotion to ballet, but also what distinguishes them. As Warren observes, ""A great teacher, like a great chef, is a master at presentation, at making something - even something as painstakingly difficult as the study of classical ballet - so palatable that students swallow without hesitation. And do so joyfully!"".

"Undoubtedly, Choreography and Narrative is an important contribution to dance history research." Nineteenth-Century French Studies

"This work is a landmark in the field and belongs in all libraries serving undergraduate, graduate, and faculty researchers in dance." Choice

"Invents a new method for writing the history of performance: Foster has found an innovative way of appealing directly to the kinesthetic imagination of her readers, evoking the elusive styles of the pieces she reconstructs." Joseph Roach

"An impressive work of scholarship, this elegantly staged study... uses the concept of a culturally constructed, historically specific body to cut across disciplinary boundaries..." Library Journal

Foster examines the development of ballet, and conceptions of the dancing body, as ballet separated from opera and emerged as an autonomous art form during the turbulence of 18th-century French society and history."

A leading advocate for the arts in America and recent recipient of the 1997 National Medal of the Arts, the 1997 Kennedy Center Honors, and the George Abbott Carbonell Award for Achievement, Edward Villella was recently inducted into the State of Florida Artist Hall of Fame. Villella also received the Frances Holleman Breathitt Award for Excellence for his contributions to the arts and to education, the thirty-eighth annual Capezio Dance Award, and Award for Lifetime Achievement, becoming only the fourth dance personality to receive National Endowment for the Arts advisory artistic director of the Miami City Ballet, which has won worldwide acclaim under his direction.

"Every commercial ballet teacher should have a copy. . . . offers solid self-evaluation to every teacher--it separates 'the mice and the Nutcracker' "--Richard J. Sias, dancer, choreographer, and associate professor of ballet, Florida State University "The contribution to the dance world is immense. . . . should be read by all teachers of dance as well as students in preparatory schools and colleges. . . . Mr. White challenges us to reexamine what we have accepted as excellence in the past and to push beyond that to find what is possible."--Patricia Walker, founder and director, Children's Ballet Theatre of New Hampshire "A service of great importance for any artist wishing to pursue a career in dance. . . . applicable to both experienced and inexperienced dancers and teachers. It gives guidelines to the art of teaching ballet where none existed before."--Charles Flachs, principal dancer, Nashville Ballet From his experience of 40 years in ballet as a student, performer, ballet master, and dedicated teacher, John White offers this work of inspiration and step-by-step instruction on the art and craft of teaching classical dance. Stressing excellence in both the creative and the practical aspects of teaching, White discusses what it means to be a "master teacher"--someone with both a deep love for dance and an appreciation for the grandeur of the human spirit. Good art is usually uncomplicated, he says. Illustrating with 97 photographs, he presents a method of study that includes such aspects of teaching as constructive warm-up exercises, when to begin pointe shoes, the beneficial aspects of pain, and appropriate music for the classroom, as well as elements of the basic lesson. He discusses how to recognize talent and to refine and develop it. He offers guidelines for establishing and organizing a well-run studio. And he presents his personal insights into the art of classical ballet pedagogy--shaped in particular by his study with ballet masters from the Kirov and Bolshoi ballet companies and by concepts from the famous Vaganova Choreographic School in St. Petersburg. The book also confronts the controversial issue of the widespread mediocrity that is notorious in dance schools. Poor training often brings about the loss of talented students and the premature forced retirement of professional artists from unnecessary injuries. By contrast, White says, good teaching can be an exhilarating challenge and a profound joy. John White is codirector of the Pennsylvania Academy of Ballet, located in a Philadelphia suburb, which he opened with his wife in 1974. He has been a soloist and the ballet master of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba and the head instructor and interim ballet master of the Pennsylvania Ballet Company. Since 1980 he has conducted seminars for dance teacers, training more than 400 teachers during this time. In addition, he was a contributing editor and writer for Ballet Dancer Magazine.

'School of Classical Dance' is the official textbook of the Vaganova School in St. Petersburg, and takes the student and teacher from the basic concepts of the syllabus to the most complex exercises taught at the end of the eight-year course. A thorough and logical presentation of the classical vocabulary, from its basic forms to advanced variations, is followed by a sample lesson for a senior class. The eight-year syllabus of the Vaganova School, now adopted by almost all Russian ballet schools, is then given in full. The authors were both long-time teachers at the Vaganova School. "A book which is to be treasured, one of the great technical manuals of our time" - the Dancing Times.

After a distinguished career as a dancer, Nicolai Serrebrenikov became one of the leading teachers at the Vaganova Choreographic School in St. Petersburg. In this major work on pas de deux, the students and teachers are taken step by step through the fundamentals of double work to the most complex enchainements of the classical repertoire. The translator and editor, Joan Lawson, studied dance with Margaret Morris and Serafina Astafieva, and later became of of the first English ballet dancers to study in Soviet Russia, subsequently becoming a distinguished and much-loved teacher at the Royal Ballet School in London.

Seven lessons follow a young dancer's development, from basic positions and postures to more advanced levels.