In Getting Started in Ballet, A Parent's Guide to Dance Education, authors Anna Paskevska and Maureen Janson comprehensively present the realities that parents can anticipate during their child's training and/or career in ballet. It can be daunting and confusing when parents discover their child's desire to dance. Parental guidance and education about dance study typically comes from trial by fire. This book expertly guides the parental decision-making process by weaving practical advice together with useful information about dance history and the author's own memoir. From selecting a teacher in the early stages, to supporting a child through his or her choice to dance professionally, parents of prospective dancers are lead through a series of considerations, and encouraged to think carefully and to make wise decisions. Written primarily as a guide book for parents, it is just as useful for teachers, and this exemplary document would do well to have a place on the bookshelf in every dance studio waiting room. Not only can dance parents learn from this informative text, but dance teachers can be nudged toward a greater understanding and anticipation of parents needs and questions. Getting Started in Ballet fills a gap, conveniently under one cover, welcoming parents to regard every aspect of their child's possible future in dance. Without this book, there would be little documentation of the parenting aspect of dance. Dance is unlike any other training or field and knowing how to guide a young dancer can make or break them as a dancer or dance lover.

Alla Osipenko is the gripping story of one of history's greatest ballerinas, a courageous rebel who paid the price for speaking truth to the Soviet state. The daughter of a distinguished Russian aristocratic and artistic family, Osipenko was born in 1932, but raised almost in a cocoon of pre-Revolutionary decorum and protocol. In Leningrad she studied directly under Agrippina Vaganova, the most revered and influential of all Russian ballet instructors. In 1950, she joined the Mariinsky (then-Kirov) Ballet, where her lines, shapes, movement both exemplified the venerable traditions of Russian ballet and projected those traditions into uncharted and experimental realms. She was the first of her generation of Kirov stars to enchant the West when she danced in Paris in 1956. Five years later, she was a key figure in the sensational success of the Kirov in its European debut. But Osipenko's sharp tongue and candid independence, as well as her almost-reckless flouting of Soviet rules for personal and political conduct, soon found her all but quarantined in Russia. An internationally acclaimed ballerina at the height of her career, she found that she would now have to prevail in the face of every attempt by the Soviet state and the Kirov administration to humble her. Throughout the book, Osipenko talks frankly and freely in a way that few Russians of her generation have allowed themselves to. She discusses her traumatic relationship to the Soviet state, her close but often-fraught relationship with her family, her four husbands, her lovers, her colleagues, her son's arrest for selling dollars in Leningrad and subsequent death. This biography features a cast of characters drawn from all sectors of Soviet and post-Perestroika society.

American-Soviet Cultural Diplomacy: The Bolshoi Ballet's American Premiere is the first full-length examination of a Soviet cultural diplomatic effort. Following the signing of an American-Soviet cultural exchange agreement in the late 1950s, Soviet officials resolved to utilize the Bolshoi Ballet's planned 1959 American tour to awe audiences with Soviet choreographers' great accomplishments and Soviet performers' superb abilities. Relying on extensive research, Cadra Peterson McDaniel examines whether the objectives behind Soviet cultural exchange and the specific aims of the Bolshoi Ballet's 1959 American tour provided evidence of a thaw in American-Soviet relations. Interwoven throughout this study is an examination of the Soviets' competing efforts to create ballets encapsulating Communist ideas while simultaneously reinterpreting pre-revolutionary ballets so that these works were ideologically acceptable. McDaniel investigates the rationale behind the creation of the Bolshoi's repertoire and the Soviet leadership's objectives and interpretation of the tour's success as well as American response to the tour. The repertoire included the four ballets, Romeo and Juliet, Swan Lake, Giselle, and The Stone Flower, and two Highlights Programs, which included excerpts from various pre- and post-revolutionary ballets, operas, and dance suites. How the Americans and the Soviets understood the Bolshoi's success provides insight into how each side conceptualized the role of the arts in society and in political transformation. American-Soviet Cultural Diplomacy: The Bolshoi Ballet's American Premiere demonstrates the ballet's role in Soviet foreign policy, a shift to "artful warfare," and thus emphasizes the significance of studying cultural exchange as a key aspect of Soviet foreign policy and analyzes the continued importance of the arts in twenty-first century Russian politics.

Composer and cultural official Nicolas Nabokov (1903-78) led an unusual life even for a composer who was also a high-level diplomat. Nabokov was for nearly three decades an outstanding and far-sighted player in international cultural exchanges during the Cold War, much admired by some of the most distinguished minds of his century for the range of his interests and the breadth of his vision. Nicolas Nabokov: A Life in Freedom and Music follows Nabokov's life through its fascinating details: a privileged Russian childhood before the Revolution; exile, first to Germany, then to France; the beginnings of a promising musical career, launched under the aegis of Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes with Ode in 1928; his twelve-year "American exile" during which he occupied several academic positions; his return to Europe after the war to participate in the denazification of Germany; his involvement in anti-Stalinist causes in the first years of the Cold War; his participation in the Congress for Cultural Freedom; his role as cultural adviser to the Mayor of Berlin and director of the Berlin Festival in the early 1960s; the resumption of his American academic and musical career in the late 1960s and 1970s. Nabokov is unique not only in that he was involved on a high level in international cultural politics, but also in that his life intersected at all times with a vast array of people within, and also well beyond, the confines of classical music. Drawing on a vast array of primary sources, Vincent Giroud's first-ever biography of Nabokov will be of interest readers interested in twentieth-century music, Russian music, Russian emigration, and the Cold War, particularly in its cultural aspects. Musicians and musicologists interested in Nabokov as a composer, or in twentieth century Russian composers in general, will find in the book information not available anywhere else.

Often called the Picasso, Stravinsky, or Frank Lloyd Wright of the dance world, Martha Graham revolutionized ballet stages across the globe. Using newly discovered archival sources, award-winning choreographer and dance historian Mark Franko reframes Graham's most famous creations, those from the World War II era, by restoring their rich historical and personal context. Graham matured as an artist during the global crisis of fascism, the conflict of World War II, and the post-war period that ushered in the Cold War. Franko focuses on four of her most powerful works, American Document (1938), Appalachian Spring (1944), Night Journey (1948), and Voyage (1953), tracing their connections to Graham's intense feelings of anti-fascism and her fascination with psychoanalysis. Moreover, Franko explores Graham's intense personal and professional bond with dancer and choreographer Erick Hawkins. The author traces the impact of their constantly changing feelings about each other and about their work, and how Graham wove together strands of love, passion, politics, and myth to create a unique and iconically American school of choreography and dance.

This collection presents music from three of the most important scores of the Golden Age of ballet in Paris from 1830-1870. The Romantic ballet had been inaugurated by Meyerbeer's opera Robert le Diable (21 November 1831) with its ghostly Ballet of the Nuns, risen from their graves and dancing in the moonlight, led by their spectral Abbess; a role created by Marie Taglioni (1804-1884) to her father's choreography. La Sylphide (1832), inspired by this situation, was the first fully fledged Romantic ballet. Its graceful and atmospheric score was written by the first violinist at the Opera, Jean Schneitzhoeffer. The story, devised by the great tenor Adolphe Nourrit, similarly introduces spirits and elemental beings, which dominated ballet scenarios for the following decades. Filippo Taglioni's creation provided the fullest realization of the Romantic ideal, especially in the leading character of the story, and its perfect incarnation in the original interpreter, Marie Taglioni, whose stage personality seemed to be made for the part of the Sylphide. The ballet became the source of theatrically romantic fantasies centred around the hopeless and fatal love between a human being and a supernatural creature. It was performed in Paris until 1860, when the work was abandoned. Only in the late 20th century was Taglioni's original version revived in a literal reconstruction by Pierre Lacotte at the Paris Opera on 7 June 1972.Giselle is a central work in the ballet repertory all over the world. It is regarded as the absolute masterpiece of Romantic dance theatre; a wonderful synthesis of style, technique, and dramatic feeling, with an exceptional score. The ballet was devised in 1841 as a result of the collaboration of some of the major talents in literature, choreography and music in the Paris of the time. The author, critic and poet Theophile Gautier, overwhelmed by the art of the ballerina Carlotta Grisi (1819-1899), discovered what he felt would be the perfect theme for her while reading a translation of Heinrich Heine's book on German legend and folklore, D'Allemagne. Here he found the legend of the wilis-maidens who die before their wedding day and who come out of their graves at night in bridal dress to dance until dawn. Should any man be caught in the wood while the wilis are about their rituals, he is doomed to dance on and on until he drops dead from exhaustion. The choreography was created by Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot. The first act is on a realistic level, with an evocation of a medieval rusticity and emotional-sentimental intrigue, while the second act conjures up the supernatural, an ethereal world of magic symbolism. Both public and the critics greeted the work as a triumph. The score was praised for its "elegance, the freshness and clarity of the melodies, the vigour and novelty of the harmonic combinations, and the vivacity that pervades the musical texture from start to finish". The ballet has come down the years in a more-or-less unbroken tradition. Perrot emphasized his own special creative imprint in the productions he supervised in London (1842) and St Petersburg (1856). In Russia he collaborated with Marius Petipa who made his own reconstruction of the ballet in 1884. This version became the model for all later revivals in Russia, as well as for Mikhail Fokine's production for the Ballet Russes in Paris (1910).Byron's famous narrative poem The Corsair inspired several ballets, with Joseph Mazilier's proving the most important (1856). Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges's scenario was of a superior quality. Mazilier was maitre de ballet at the Paris Opera between 1853 and 1859, the years of his fullest creativity. The solo parts were infused with an intense dramatic expressiveness, and there was a splendid mise-en-scene. But the great success of the work was due primarily to the quality of the chief performers: the ballerina Carolina Rosati (1826-1905) and the mime Domenico Segarelli (1820-1860). The spectacular shipwreck finale was a sensational feat engineered by the chief mechanist of the Opera, Victor Sacre, and his crowning glory. Adam's score-consistently rich in melodic inspiration, engaging in the set dances, imaginative in the many extended mime sequences, and more richly symphonic than ever before in his work-reached a height of inspiration in this last music he ever wrote for the stage. Mazilier's ballet gained a world-wide popularity, and became a favourite of the leading ballerinas for decades. Marius Petipa produced his own version in St Petersburg in 1868, with additional music by Cesare Pugni and Leo Delibes. In 1899 Petipa revived the ballet again, for the Maryinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, this time completely re-choreographing it for Pierina Legnani, with additional music by Riccardo Drigo. Performances in the USSR and contemporary Russia derive from this version. Drigo's music for the spectacular pas de deux in act 2 is still performed all over the world as an independent piece.

JOS RAFAEL VILAR VIAJE A TRAV S DE LA HISTORIA DE LA DANZA Este peque o libro surgi de la falta de un texto, accesible y en castellano, para que mis alumnos de historia de la danza pudieran ampliar sus conocimientos, por lo que ste podr servir a muchos lectores, artistas en formaci n o profesionales o s lo ne fitos con inter?'s en este hermoso arte, para conocer y disfrutarlo mejor, porque cuando se conoce de d nde surge una obra o c mo era su entorno, se la disfruta mejor. La danza es un arte que est siempre presente en nuestras vidas, desde las cuevas en la comunidad primitiva, y ha estado indisolublemente ligada a cada etapa de la historia, ya sea como danzas religiosas, de sal n o de escena o, sencillamente l dricas. En este libro viajaremos por sus or genes en la prehistoria, cuando el gesto y la necesidad de comunicarnos se unieron; conocerernos la danza m gica y "Los Misterios"; recorreremos el Renacimiento y los bailes de sal n; pasearemos por el barroco hasta llegar al Ballet comique de la Reine; encontraremos a Noverre y Angiolini; llegaremos con La filie mal gard e al Romanticismo y seguiremos con Giselle, ou Les willis; iremos a Rusia con el Clacisismo y Petipa y Tschaikovsky, disfrutando de El lago de los cisnes y Don Quixote; despu s, asistiremos a la revoluci n de Diaghilev-Fokin-Nijinsky-Stravinsky y admiraremos Petrushka y La consagraci n de la primavera y conoceremos las distintas escuelas; y concluiremos nuestro viaje en las danzas moderna y contempor nea. Este libro es escrito para Ud., para que disfrute la danza. Es mi mejor deseo.

The biography of a fascinating cultural hero, Rene Blum and the Ballets Russes uncovers the events in the life of the enigmatic and brilliant writer and producer who perished in the Holocaust. Brother of Leon Blum, the first socialist prime minister of France, Rene Blum was a passionate and prominent litterateur. He was the editor of the chic literary journal Gil Blas where he met such celebrated figures as Claude Debussy, Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, Andre Gide, and Paul Valery. As author Judith Chazin-Bennahum's research illustrates, Blum actually arranged for the publication of Proust's Swann's Way. But Blum's accomplishments and legacy do not end there: after enlisting in World War I, he won the Croix de Guerre and became a national hero. And Blum resurrected the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo after Diaghilev's death. Tragically, he was arrested in 1941 during a roundup of Jewish intellectuals and ultimately sent to Auschwitz.
Based on a treasure trove of previously undiscovered letters and documents, this thoroughly researched narrative not only tells the poignant story of Blum's life but also illustrates Blum's central role in the development of dance in the United States. Indeed, Blum's efforts to save his ballet company eventually helped to bring many of the world's greatest dancers and choreographers--among them Fokine, Balanchine, and Nijinska--to American ballet stages, shaping the path of dance in the United States for years to come."

A richly interdisciplinary study of Strauss's contributions to ballet, his collaboration with prominent dance artists of his time, and his explorations of musical modernism. Richard Strauss contributed music to several ballets during his career, collaborating with prominent dance artists of his time. His ballets include an unfinished Die Insel Kythere (The Island of Cythera), 1900], inspired by French Rococo paintings; Josephslegende (The Legend of Joseph, 1914), choreographed by Leonide Massine for the Ballets Russes; a 1923 Ballettsoiree with dances by Heinrich Kroeller, showcasing the Vienna Ballet and including Strauss's arrangements of music by Francois Couperin; Schlagobers (Whipped Cream, 1924), a "Comic Viennese Ballet" choreographed by Kroeller; and Verklungene Feste: Tanzvisionen aus Zwei Jahrhunderten (Faded Celebrations: Dance Visions from Two Centuries, 1941), premiered in Munich with meta-historical dances by the dancer-choreographer team Pia and Pino Mlakar. In The Ballet Collaborations of Richard Strauss, Heisler considers Strauss's ballet scores alongside story, mise-en-scene, and choreography, revealing Strauss's shift from a parodic conception of classical dance in the years leading up to World War I to a belatedobsession with Romantic-era ballet in its aftermath. Heisler explores issues central to Strauss's relationship to modernism: his mining in Die Insel Kythere (1900) of the decorative aspects of dance, suggesting a shared sensibility with fin-de-siecle Jugendstil and a critique of Romanticism; the dynamics of collective creation and Strauss's penchant for parody in relation to Josephslegende (1914); his stance on interwar cultural politics through the 1923 Ballettsoiree and Schlagobers (1924); and Verklungene Feste (1941) as this composer's autumnal meditation on the conceit of music and dance as vehicles for transcendence. The Ballet Collaborations of Richard Strauss is a richly interdisciplinary study that promises to nuance the popular, critical, and academic reception of this ever-popular composer. Wayne Heisler Jr. is Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Historical and Cultural Studies in Music at The College of New Jersey.

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.

The average length of a professional dancer's career is 10 to 15 years. Similar to professional athletes, once the prime years of physical prowess have passed, retirement is inevitable. After retirement, there are still many years of adult life ahead for dancers. Making the transition to a new career is challenging to many. Motivated by her own career transition, author Nancy Upper interviewed former ballet dancers who have made successful transitions into new careers after they stopped performing. Part 1 of the book features interviews with individuals who remained in ballet-related careers. Part 2 discusses the experiences of four dancers who moved on to careers outside the field of dance. Part 3 focuses on former dancers who have used their non-dance careers to help dancers and to promote ballet awareness. Appendices provide information about marketable qualities dancers develop as a result of their training, career transition tips, transition resources and a graph mapping the transition process.

The stigmatization of mental illness in film has been well documented in literature. Little has been written, however, about the ability of movies to portray mental illness sympathetically and accurately. People Like Ourselves: Portrayals of Mental Illness in the Movies fills that void with a close look at mental illness in more than seventy American movies, beginning with classics such as The Snake Pit and Now, Voyager and including such contemporary successes as A Beautiful Mind and As Good as It Gets. Films by legendary directors Billy Wilder, William Wyler, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and John Cassavetes are included. Through the examination of universal themes relating to one's self and society, the denial of reality, the role of women, creativity, war, and violence, Zimmerman argues that these ground-breaking films defy stereotypes, presenting sympathetic portraits of people who are mentally ill, and advance the movie-going public's understanding of mental illness, while providing insight into its causes, diagnosis, and treatment. More importantly, they portray mentally ill people as ordinary people with conflicts and desires common to everyone. Like the motion pictures it revisits, this fascinating book offers insight, entertainment, and a sense of understanding.

The current notion of ballet history holds that the theatrical dance of the eighteenth century was simple, earthbound, and limited in range of motion scarcely different from the ballroom dance of the same period. Contemporary opinion also maintains that this early form of ballet was largely a stranger to the tours de force of grand jumps, multiple turns, and lifts so typical of classical ballet, owing to a supposed prevailing sense of Victorian-like decorum. The Styles of Eighteenth-Century Ballet explodes this utterly false view of ballet history, showing that there were in fact a variety of different styles of dance cultivated in this era, from the simple to the remarkably difficult, from the dignified earthbound to the spirited airborne, from the gravely serious to the grotesquely ridiculous. This is a fascinating exploration of the various styles of eighteenth-century dance covering ballroom and ballet, the four traditional styles of theatrical dance, regional preferences for given styles, and the importance of caprice, dance according to gender, the overall voluptuous nature of stage dancing, and finally dance notation and costume. Fairfax takes the reader on an in-depth journey through the world of ballet in the age of Mozart, Boucher, and Casanova.

Cholly Atkins's career has spanned an extraordinary era of American dance. He began performing during Prohibition and continued his apprenticeship in vaudeville, in nightclubs, and in the army during World War II. With his partner, Honi Coles, Cholly toured the country, performing with such jazz masters as Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, and Count Basie. As tap reached a nadir in the fifties, Cholly created the new specialization of "vocal choreography," teaching rhythm-and-blues singers how to "perform" their music by adding rhythmical dance steps drawn from twentieth-century American dance, from the Charleston to rhythm tap. For the burgeoning Motown record label, Cholly taught such artists as the Supremes, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Temptations, Gladys Knight and the Pips, and Marvin Gaye to command the stage in ways that would enhance their performances and "sell" their songs.

"Class Act" tells of Cholly's boyhood and coming of age, his entry into the dance world of New York City, his performing triumphs and personal tragedies, and the career transformations that won him gold records and a Tony for choreographing "Black and Blue" on Broadway. Chronicling the rise, near demise, and rediscovery of tap dancing, the book is both an engaging biography and a rich cultural history.

"Absolutely spellbinding: ballerina Farrell's autobiography is the story of someone doing exactly what she wanted in life, and loving every minute of it. Through her work with George Balanchine, it is also the story of one of the greatest artistic collaborations in dance. . . . An uplifting, splendid memoir."--"Kirkus"

"An extraordinarily moving story."--"New York Times Book Review"

"Farrell's story is not only that of a great dancer but of a great star. . . . this book is important. The subject is great, the views of Balanchine are real and unique."--"Washington Post Book World"

Suzanne Farrell, world-renowned ballerina, was one of George Balanchine's most celebrated muses and remains a legendary figure in the ballet world. This memoir, first published in 1990 and reissued with a new preface by the author, recounts Farrell's transformation from a young girl in Ohio dreaming of greatness to the realization of that dream on stages all over the world. Central to this transformation was her relationship with George Balanchine, who invited her to join the New York City Ballet in the fall of 1961 and was in turn inspired by her unique combination of musical, physical, and dramatic gifts. He created masterpieces for her in which the limits of ballet technique were expanded to a degree not seen before. By the time she retired from the stage in 1989, Farrell had achieved a career that is without precedent in the history of ballet. One third of her repertory of more than 100 ballets were composed expressly for her by such notable choreographers as Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, and Maurice Bejart. Farrell recalls professional and personal attachments and their attendant controversies with a down-to-earth frankness and common sense that complements the glories and mysteries of her artistic achievement.

Suzanne Farrell has staged Balanchine's ballets in New York, Boston, Seattle, and Miami and for the Vienna Opera Ballet, the Kirov, and the Bolshoi. She is the subject of an Academy Award nominated documentary, "Suzanne Farrell--Elusive Muse." A professor of dance at Florida State University in Tallahassee, she also teaches a summer ballet course at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. In the fall of 2000, the Suzanne Farrell Ballet was launched as an ongoing partnership with the Kennedy Center.

Commemorating the centenary of Tchaikovsky's death, these essays reassess the life and work of the composer from a variety of perspectives, ranging from the musicological and biographical to broader ones addressing his place in the development of the arts in Europe and America. As they make clear, there is much about Tchaikovsky's achievement that has been taken for granted, and the essays included in this collection represent as much acts of reevaluation as of celebration.

After a broad synthesis of Tchaikovsky's relation to the literature, music, and theater of the 18th and 19th centuries, there are sections devoted to Tchaikovsky and his musical contemporaries; Tchaikovsky's lost opera, "The Oprichnik"; Tchaikovsky's mature operatic work; his place in Russian Orthodoxy and nationalism; and contemporary perspectives on his life and works. The volume concludes with discussions on Tchaikovsky scholarship, the place of the composer in American and Russian musical education, and the interpretation and performance of his ballets. It is an important collection for scholars and other researchers involved in Russian music and ballet.

"The Queer Afterlife of Vaslav Nijinsky" is three books in one: an impressionistic account of the dancer's homoerotic career, an analysis of his gay male reception, and an exploration of the limitations of that analysis. The impressionistic account, based on the aestheticism of Walter Pater, focuses on significant gestures made by Nijinsky in key roles, including the Golden Slave, the Specter of the Rose, Narcissus, Petrouchka, and the Faun. The analysis of his reception, based on the semiotics of Roland Barthes, is deconstructive. And the exploration of the the analytical limitations sets the stage for cultural studies that move beyond Barthesian semiotics--beyond, that is, the author's last two books.
Why, given that most of his followers were not gay, describe Nijinsky's queer afterlife? The author's answer is that Nijinsky was the Lord Alfred Douglas of the Ballet Russes. The dancer, however, had even more "lilac-hued notoriety" than Douglas--notoriety based upon common knowledge of his sexual relationship with Serge Diaghilev, upon his having been one of the first sensuous young men to dominate a Western stage recently riven by the homosexual/heterosexual division we are still contending with today, and upon his mastery of leading roles and body languages that had very little to do with conventional masculinity.

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.

Many children dream of being a ballerina. Chin raised with purpose, arms high above head, they twirl clumsily around the living room and leap tirelessly in the air. Sooner or later they're bound to say, "I want to dance." Now what do you do? How do you know if the time is right? Where's the best place to start? In Getting Started in Ballet, Anna Paskevska draws from her training at the Paris Opera Ballet School and and the Royal Ballet School in London and her career as a professional dancer and teacher to offer a step-by-step introduction to dance education for parents with children starting ballet.

Paskevska begins with a historical overview of dance and discusses the fundamental virtues and many life-long skills it imparts. Dance teaches children how to cooperate and support each other's efforts; encourages them to work in harmony with others; helps establish a child's spatial relationships; and promotes discipline and responsibility. Paskevska outlines the proper sequence for training in ballet based on a child's physical and mental development. She clearly demonstrates how ballet's early training, focusing on repetition of simple motion such as exercises at the barre and basic jumps, establish pathways for all later movements not only in ballet, but in modern dance, jazz, and tap as well.

Written in a clear and accessible style and full of anecdotes from Paskevska's long professional dance-related career, Getting Started in Ballet offers helpful information on types of dance schools and how to select the right school for your child. Included is valuable information on choosing a dance instructor, the role both parents and teachers should play in a child's learning experience, and the qualities the ideal teacher should possess. Also discussed are more practical matters such as the appropriate clothing to wear while practicing, the importance of shoes that fit properly, how to secure pointe shoes, tips for avoiding injury, and how to balance training and performing experience during the formative years. A special chapter covers proper diet, eating disorders, and ways to recognize symptoms of imbalance. Finally, Paskevska touches upon the professional world of dance, attending college as a dance major, and advice on choosing careers that benefit from a background in dance.

With forewords by Violette Verdy, a preeminent ballerina affiliated with the New York City Ballet and the Paris Opera Ballet, and Sybil Shearer, a pioneer of American modern dance, as well as an extensive appendix of performing arts schools and dance programs throughout the United States, Getting Started in Ballet gives parents the advice they need to make their child's dance experiences both enjoyable and constructive.