The Royal Ballet Yearbook series is back, with extra editorial features and exclusive behind-the-scenes content - in addition to the usual selection of beautiful ballet images. Featuring lavish photographs of last Season's performances, a special preview of the new Season and lively and informative articles, The Royal Ballet 2016/17 is a richly illustrated companion to The Royal Ballet, its history, repertory, dancers and staff.

Over the years, methods of classical ballet instruction have been codified into a variety of canonical approaches. One of the most commonly taught systems is that of the French school. This thirty-three-week training manual parallels the presentation of basic steps, positions, and alignment that first-year, pre-professional students are taught. It fills a gap in existing instructional literature for teachers and students of the French school of classical ballet. Critical elements of placement and alignment are fully described with proper French terminology, and more than one hundred photographs illustrate key positions. Organised for ease of use with a syllabus, The French School of Classical Ballet presents poses and sequences in the order in which a ballet instructor would present them in a typical course-starting with the simplest positions and movements and building on them to gradually increase the level of difficulty. Weekly lesson plans, measurable goals, and an easy-to-follow progression make this a must-have instructional manual, as well as a practical tool for the serious student away from class. The French School of Classical Ballet serves as a blueprint for a complete beginning ballet curriculum or simply as a source of reference for certain steps, positions, or exercises that exemplify French ballet training.

Praise for Balanchine Variations "If you like Balanchine, you must read Nancy Goldner's Balanchine Variations. She has the best ear for music and dance musicality of any dance critic writing today."--Alastair Macaulay, New York Times "The book is modest and, at the same time, utterly self-assured. Anyone who cares about Balanchine should buy it immediately."--Joan Acocella, New Yorker "A remarkable new book. Immediately takes its place among the half-dozen or so essential books on George Balanchine."--Robert Gottlieb in the New York Review of Books In this deliciously evocative new volume, Nancy Goldner returns to offer in-depth discussions of twenty more of George Balanchine's ballets. As in the critically acclaimed Balanchine Variations, Goldner's focus is not on history or biography but on the dances themselves: the technique, the coordination with music, the storytelling, and the evolution of Balanchine's style. This encore performance features provocative and insightful descriptions and analyses of a group of works spanning forty years (1941-1981) and includes profiles of Ballet Imperial, Bugaku, Coppelia, Divertimento No. 15, La Valse, Symphony in C, and Union Jack, among many others. Inspiring, exquisite, and thought-provoking, More Balanchine Variations is both a delightful meditation on and an essential critical examination of some of the twentieth century's most extraordinary works of art. "Pure joy. Even more exciting and wonderfully imaginative than the author's previous volume, this collection of personal essays about some of George Balanchine's most beloved ballets takes a reader through deep levels of Balanchine's sensibility. Nancy Goldner illuminates the organization of the works, their construction on the level of dance technique and its coordination with music, and--most marvelous--the spooky and passionate stories embedded within their 'plotless' maneuvers."--Mindy Aloff, editor of Leaps in the Dark Nancy Goldner, author of Balanchine Variations, was a dance critic for the Christian Science Monitor, the Nation, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Dance News for twenty five years. BALANCHINE is a registered trademark of The George Balanchine Trust.

Written with the full backing and expertise of the renowed Royal Academy of Dancing and following new international examination syllabus, this is a completely new edition of the bestselling BALLET CLASS. From the basic positions of the feet to exercises for the mostadvanced grades. STEP-by-STEP BALLET CLASS is an essential companion for everyone who is learning ballet. It gives a comprehensive selection of exercises taken from each of the examination grades, beginning with Pre-Primary and working up to Grade Five, the most advanced. Clear step-by-step illustrations and explanatory text take the dancer through each exercise in turn and there are checklists of important points to remember. Topics such as how to find a good ballet school, dressing for dance and taking an examination are also included. This important new book will ensure that dancers of all ages get the most out of their ballet tuition, both in and out of the classroom.

The Ballets Russes was perhaps the most iconic, yet at the same time mysterious, ballet company of the twentieth century. Inspired by the unique vision of their founder Sergei Diaghilev, the company gained a large international following. In the mid-twentieth century - during the tumultuous years of World War II and the Cold War - the Ballets Russes companies kept the spirit and traditions of Russian ballet alive in the West, touring extensively in America, Europe and Australia. This important new book uncovers previously-unseen interviews and provides insights into the lives of the great figures of the age - from the dancers Anna Pavlova and Alicia Markova to the choreographers Leonide Massine, George Balanchine and Anton Dolin. The dancers' own words reveal what life was really like for the stars of the Ballets Russes and provide fascinating new insights into one of the most vibrant and creative groups of artists of the modern age.

History is fiction and personal identity nothing more than historical illusion: Eleanora Antinova is the renowned US contemporary artist Eleanor Antin - Eleanor Antin is Eleanora Antinova, a black American ballerina. Shifting the boundaries between art and life this book publishes the exciting memoirs of Antinova found by Eleanor Antin. The ballerina Eleanora Antinova could be called an artist of oblivion. Years ago, the contemporary artist and femininist Eleanor Antin, found an unpublished manuscript of the ballerina's memoirs: the stories of her early modernist forgotten ballets, her romantic entanglements and her friends at the glamorous Ballet Russe with its great maestro, Serge Diaghilev. Generations later Eleanor Antin lived for three weeks in New York as Antinova. Her journal of that time brings back the now forgotten ballerina. For the first time this publication brings together the journal and the memoirs of Antin and Antinova accompanied by a selection of photographs from the performances of the artists..

This volume reproduces the piano score of the ballet La Source, a joint composition by Ludwig Minkus and Leo Delibes.After the success of Nemea (1864), the Paris Opera ordered a new grand ballet from the famous choreographer Arthur Saint-Leon to a libretto based on a Persian legend by Charles Nuitter. Saint-Leon involved his musical collaborator in St Petersburg, Ludwig Minkus, in the project, securing for him a hand in the composition of the first and fourth scenes of the of this new work, La Source, a fantastic ballet in three acts. The composition of the other two scenes (the second and third) were entrusted to the young, unknown Leo Delibes, thirty at the time, who had drawn favourable attention to himself in the preparation of the ballet music for the premiere of Meyerbeer's posthumous L'Africaine in 1865. The first performance of La Source was on 12 November 1866 at the Theatre Imperial de l'Opera, with the principal dancers Guglielmina Salvioni (Naila), Eugenie Fiocre (Nouredda) and Louis Merante (Djemil). The ballet as a whole was very successful, with 73 performances until 1876. Saint-Leon immediately began planning another work with Nuitter and Delibes-Coppelia-one which would crown the young French's composer's success with triumph. This was premiered on 25 May 1870, the last of Saint-Leon's work, and the last great success of the French Romantic ballet at the Salle Le Peletier before the crisis of the Franco-Prussian War, and the end of the Second Empire.As regards the music of La Source, Delibes's contribution to the score, his first essay at ballet music, was noted for its vigour and many delightful melodies. In Jouvin's opinion, his music was "vivacious and especially lively," and contrasted effectively with the plaintive melodies of Minkus. "The style of the two composers," observed the critic of La France Musicale (18 November 1866), "is essentially different and easily recognizable at a first hearing. M. Minkus's music has a vague, indolent, and melancholic character, full of grace and languor. That of M. Delibes, fresher and more rhythmic, is much more complicated in orchestration, and sometimes a little more ordinary. I should add that this difference in style is perfectly justified by the: contrasting character of the two parts of the ballet."

Cesare Pugni was born in Genoa on 31 May 1802, and studied in Milan from 1815 to 1822, with Antonio Rollo and Bonifazio Asioli. He became a cymbalist in the theatre orchestra, and on the death of Vincenzo Lavigna, was appointed musical director. He later moved to Paris where he became director of the Paganini Institute and met the great choreographers of the time. He started an artistic collaboration that was to prove one of the most productive in the history of ballet-working closely with Jules Perrot (1810-1892), first in Paris, then in London. Here Pugni presented some of the most renowned ballets of the 19th century, such as Esmeralda (1844) and the Pas de Quatre (1845), which still find their place in some modern repertories. He also worked with Arthur Saint-Leon (1821-1870), Paolo Taglioni (1808-1884), Marius Petipa (1818-1910), and some of the greatest dancers of the century. Pugni followed Perrot to Russia and became official composer of the Imperial theatres in St Petersburg where he composed new ballets, notably Doch' Faraona (Pharaoh's Daughter) (1862) and Koniok Gorbunok (The Little Humpbacked Horse) (1862). His most famous collaboration, with Marius Petipa, dominated these years, lasting until the composer's death on 26 January 1870. Pugni is remarkable for his enormous output of some 300 ballets (either original compositions or in arrangements). Arthur Saint-Leon, famous for Coppelia with Leo Delibes (1870), created The Little Humpbacked Horse to the music of Cesare Pugni for the Imperial Ballet (today the Maryinsky Ballet). The story of Koniok Gorbunok is based on the popular fairy-tale by Petr Yershov (1834), and tells of the spectacular deeds of Ivanushka with the help of the magical Little Humpbacked Horse. The scenario is notable for its humour as well as its fantasy. The ballet is of particular interest as being the first to be based on themes from Russian folklore, a particular interest of Saint-Leon, who chose the subject and the source, and devised the scenario himself. The first performance was on 13 December 1864 at the Imperial Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre in St. Petersburg. The Emperor Alexander II attended the premiere, a great and enduring success. Marius Petipa revived the ballet in 1895 as The Tsar-Maiden for the dancer Pierina Legnani. The work lived on for many years in the repertory of the Imperial Ballet (given in St Petersburg over 200 times), a success continued in Soviet times at the Kirov Ballet, and also the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow in a version by Alexander Gorsky (1901). Alexander Radunsky choreographed his own version of this ballet to a score by Rodion Shchedrin for the Bolshoi Ballet in 1960, a version of which was filmed with Maya Plisetskaya as the Tsar-Maiden and Vladimir Vasiliev as Ivanushka. In 2009 Alexei Ratmansky choreographed a new version for the Maryinsky Ballet, also using Shchedrin's score. A reconstruction of Saint-Leon's original was filmed in 1989 for Russian television with graduates from the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet in the lead roles. The film included narrated sections and illustrations from a popular 1964 Russian edition of Yershov's book.