One of the most important ballet choreographers of all time, Marius Petipa (1818 - 1910) created works that are now mainstays of the ballet repertoire. Every day, in cities around the world, performances of Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty draw large audiences to theatres and inspire new generations of dancers, as does The Nutcracker during the winter holidays. These are his best-known works, but others - Don Quixote, La Bayadere - have also become popular, even canonical components of the classical repertoire, and together they have shaped the defining style of twentieth-century ballet. The first biography in English of this monumental figure of ballet history, Marius Petipa: The Emperor's Ballet Master covers the choreographer's life and work in full within the context of remarkable historical and political surroundings. Over the course of ten well-researched chapters, Nadine Meisner explores Marius Petipa's life and legacy: the artist's arrival in Russia from his native France, the socio-political tensions and revolution he experienced, his popularity on the Russian imperial stage, his collaborations with other choreographers and composers (most famously Tchaikovsky), and the conditions under which he worked, in close proximity to the imperial court. Meisner presents a thrilling and exhaustive narrative not only of Petipa's life but of the cultural development of ballet across the 19th and early 20th centuries. The book also extends beyond Petipa's narrative with insightful analyses of the evolution of ballet technique, theatre genres, and the rise of male dancers. Richly illustrated with archival photographs, this book unearths original material from Petipa's 63 years in Russia, much of it never published in English before. As Meisner demonstrates, the choreographer laid the foundations for Soviet ballet and for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, the expatriate company which exercised such an enormous influence on ballet in the West, including the Royal Ballet and Balanchine's New York City Ballet. After Petipa, Western ballet would never be the same.

NOW A MAJOR FILM BY RALPH FIENNES, THE WHITE CROW 'A gripping account of an extraordinary life' Daily Telegraph Born on a train in Stalin's Russia, Rudolf Nureyev was ballet's first pop icon. No other dancer of our time has generated the same excitement - both on and off stage. Nureyev's achievements and conquests became legendary: he rose out of Tatar peasant poverty to become the Kirov's thrilling maverick star; slept with his beloved mentor's wife; defected to the West in 1961; sparked Rudimania across the globe; established the most rhapsodic partnership in dance history with the middle-aged Margot Fonteyn; reinvented male technique; gatecrashed modern dance; moulded new stars; and staged Russia's unknown ballet masterpieces in the West. He and his life were simply astonishing. 'Magnificent, a triumph. Captures every facet of this extraordinary man' Mail on Sunday 'The definitive study of a man who, in his combination of aesthetic grace and psychological grime, can truly be called a sacred monster' Observer 'Undoubtedly the definitive biography' Sunday Telegraph

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.

"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.

"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.

In "Dancing the Fairy Tale, " Laura Katz Rizzo claims that The Sleeping Beauty is both a metaphor for ballet itself, and a powerful case study for examining ballet and its production and performance. Using Marius Petipa and Pyotr Tchaikovsky's classical dance--specifically as it was staged in Philadelphia over nearly 70 years--Katz Rizzo looks at the gendered nature of women staging, coaching, and reanimating this magnificent ballet, and well as the ongoing push-pull between tradition and innovation within the art form.
Using extensive archival research, dance analysis, and American feminist theory, "Dancing the Fairy Tale "places women at the center of a historical narrative to reveal how the production and performance of The Sleeping Beauty in the years between 1937 and 2002 made significant contributions to the development and establishment of an American classical ballet. Katz Rizzo highlights not only what women have done not only behind the scenes, as administrators, producers, or directors of ballet companies and schools, but also as active interpreters embodying the ballet's title role.
In the process, Katz Rizzo also emphasizes the importance of regional sites outside of locations traditionally understood as central to the development of ballet in the United States.

With the popularity of such reality TV shows as So You Think You Can Dance, dance has become increasingly visible within contemporary culture. This shift brings the ballet body into renewed focus. Historically both celebrated and critiqued for its thin, flexible, and highly feminized aesthetic, the ballet body now takes on new and complex meanings at the intersections of performance art, popular culture, and even fitness. The Evolving Feminine Ballet Body provides a local perspective to enrich the broader cultural narratives of ballet through historical, socio-cultural, political, and artistic lenses, redefining what many considered to be "high art." Scholars in gender studies, folklore, popular culture, and cultural studies will be interested in this collection, as well as those involved in the dance world. Contributors: Kelsie Acton, Marianne I. Clark, Kate Davies, Lindsay Eales, Pirkko Markula, Carolyn Millar, Jodie Vandekerkhove

The John Milton and Ruth Neils Ward Collection of the Harvard Theatre Collection is comprised of thousands of books, scores, librettos, playbills, illustrations, and ephemera relating to public performances that incorporate music and dance in an essential way. The revised and expanded edition of "The King's Theatre Collection: Ballet and Italian Opera in London, 1706-1883" has an additional 200 entries, 20 new illustrations, and several new indexes. With over 1,600 entries and 40 color illustrations, this volume provides a window into the historical significance of the King's Theatre to the cultural life of London and abroad, and will appeal to musicologists, historians, theater scholars, and librarians interested in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century opera and ballet.

Lincoln Kirstein'swriting is a notable example of a wide historical awareness that was fired by passion and guided by taste. He established his interests in art and literature as an undergraduate at Harvard during the late 1920s.There he started the famous quarterly "Hound & Horn," a magazine that published the work of such writers as James Joyce and Gertrude Stein, and also cofounded the Harvard Society for Contemporary Art, which exhibited the work of cutting-edge artists. Best known for his pioneering efforts to cultivate ballet in the United States, he actively pursued a professional partnership with legendary choreographer George Balanchine, with whom he founded both the School of American Ballet and the New York City Ballet. This collection, in paperback for the first time, showcases Kirstein's knowledge of dance, painting, photography, theatre, politics, and literature and combines many of his best-known and most authoritative statements with less familiar but equally brilliant polemics and appreciations. Along with autobiographical essays and poetry, his commentary covers such diverse personalities as composer Igor Stravinsky, photographer Walker Evans, author Ernest Hemingway, actress Marilyn Monroe, and Robert Gould Shaw, leader of the courageous black Civil War regiment. The book also contains photographs from Kirstein's private collection-portraits of himself and other famous artists of the time, such as Diaghilev, Cocteau, and Eisenstein, among others.

A talented young dancer and his brilliant teacher In this long-awaited memoir, dancer and choreographer John Clifford offers a highly personal look inside the day-to-day operations of the New York City Ballet and its creative mastermind, George Balanchine. Balanchine's Apprentice is the story of Clifford-an exceptionally talented artist-and the guiding inspiration for his life's work in dance. Growing up in Hollywood with parents in show business, Clifford acted in television productions such as The Danny Kaye Show, The Dinah Shore Show, and Death Valley Days. He recalls the beginning of his obsession with ballet: At age 11 he was cast as the Prince in a touring production of The Nutcracker. The director was none other than the legendary Balanchine, who would eventually invite Clifford to New York City and shape his career as both a mentor and artistic example. During his dazzling tenure with the New York City Ballet, Clifford danced the lead in 47 works, several created for him by Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, and others. He partnered famous ballerinas including Gelsey Kirkland and Allegra Kent. He choreographed eight ballets for the company, his first at age 20. He performed in Russia, Germany, France, and Canada. Afterward, he returned to the West Coast to found the Los Angeles Ballet, where he continued to innovate based on the Balanchine technique. In this book, Clifford provides firsthand insight into Balanchine's relationships with his dancers, including Suzanne Farrell. Examining his own attachment to his charismatic teacher, Clifford explores questions of creative influence and integrity. His memoir is a portrait of a young dancer who learned and worked at lightning speed, who pursued the calls of art and genius on both coasts of America and around the world.

A look inside a dancer's worldInspiring, revealing, and deeply relatable, Being a Ballerina is a firsthand look at the realities of life as a professional ballet dancer. Through episodes from her own career, Gavin Larsen describes the forces that drive a person to study dance; the daily balance that dancers navigate between hardship and joy; and the dancer's continual quest to discover who they are as a person and as an artist. Starting with her arrival as a young beginner at a class too advanced for her, Larsen tells how the embarrassing mistake ended up helping her learn quickly and advance rapidly. In other stories of her early teachers, training, and auditions, she explains how she gradually came to understand and achieve what she and her body were capable of. Larsen then re-creates scenes from her experiences in dance companies, from unglamorous roles to exhilarating performances. Working as a ballerina was shocking and scary at first, she says, recalling unexpected injuries, leaps of faith, and her constant struggle to operate at the level she wanted-but full of enormously rewarding moments. Larsen also reflects candidly on her difficult decision to retire at age 35. An ideal read for aspiring dancers, Larsen's memoir will also delight experienced dance professionals and fascinate anyone who wonders what it takes to live a life dedicated to the perfection of the art form.

In the first book to focus exclusively on George Balanchine's early Russian ballets, most of which have been lost to history, Elizabeth Kattner offers new insights into the artistic evolution of a legend through her reconstruction of his first group ballet, Funeral March.

Peter Wright has been a dancer, choreographer, teacher, producer and director in the theatre as well as in television for over 70 years. _x000D_ In Wrights & Wrongs, Peter offers his often surprising views of today's dance world, lessons learned - and yet to learn - from a lifetime's experience of ballet, commercial theatre and television.

"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.

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.

Written with wit, insight, and candor, Balanchine is a book that will delight lovers of biography as well as those with a special interest in dance. For this edition the author has added a thoughtful yet dramatic account of the working out of Balanchine's legacy, from the making of his controversial will to the present day. The author explores the intriguing legal, financial, and institutional subplots that unfolded after the death of the greatest choreographer of the century, but the central plot of his epilogue is the aesthetic issue: In the absence of their creator, can the ballets retain their wondrous vitality? Taper illuminates the fascinating transmission of Balanchine's masterworks from one generation to another, an unprecented legacy in the history of ballet, that most evanescent of the arts.

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.

Musicians who work professionally with ballet and dance companies sometimes wonder if they haven't entered a foreign country-a place where the language and customs seem so utterly familiar and so bafflingly strange at the same. To someone without a dance background, phrases and terms--boy's variation, pas d'action, apotheose-simply don't fit their standard musical vocabulary. Even a familiar term like adagio means something quite different in the world of dance. Like any working professional, those conductors, composers, rehearsal pianists, instrumentalists and even music librarians working with professional ballet and dance companies must learn what dance professionals talk about when they talk about music. In Ballet Music: A Handbook Matthew Naughtin provides a practical guide for the professional musician who works with ballet companies, whether as a full-time staff member or as an independent contractor. In this comprehensive work, he addresses the daily routine of the modern ballet company, outlines the respective roles of the conductor, company pianist and music librarian and their necessary collaboration with choreographers and ballet masters, and examines the complete process of putting a dance performance on stage, from selection or existing music to commissioning original scores to staging the final production. Because ballet companies routinely revise the great ballets to fit the needs of their staff and stage, audience and orchestra, ballet repertoire is a tangled web for the uninitiated. At the core of Ballet Music: A Handbook lies an extensive listing of classic ballets in the standard repertoire, with information on their history, versions, revisions, instrumentation, score publishers and other sources for tracking down both the original music and subsequent musical additions and adaptations. Ballet Music: A Handbook is an invaluable resource for conductors, pianists and music librarians as well as any student, scholar or fan of the ballet interested in the complex machinery that works backstage before the curtain goes up.

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.

For the second catalogue of materials from the John Milton and Ruth Neils Ward Collection of the Harvard Theatre Collection, Professor John Milton Ward has selected over 2,100 items relating to Italian ballet from the seventeenth through the twentieth century. Italian Ballet, 1637-1977 includes published materials (printed scores, librettos, treatises on ballet) as well as hundreds of manuscript scores (many autograph), letters, contracts, choreographic notes, and costume and set designs. Like its predecessor The King's Theatre Collection, Italian Ballet, 1637-1977 was designed to be a useful scholarly resource, with descriptive citations for each ballet and detailed indexes for titles, choreographers, composers, and theaters. Arranged chronologically, Italian Ballet, 1637-1977 allows the researcher to follow the development of Italian ballet from unnamed comic dances performed between the acts of eighteenth-century opera to the large-scale nineteenth-century ballets choreographed by Antonio Pallerini and Luigi Manzotti. The catalogue is meant not only as a reference to the collection at Harvard, but also as an entryway for scholars to delve into this unexplored area of musicology and dance history.