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Apollos Angels
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Book Synopsis Apollo's Angels by : Jennifer Homans
Download or read book Apollo's Angels written by Jennifer Homans and published by Granta Books. This book was released on 2013-01-03 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Apollo's Angels is a major new history of classical ballet. It begins in the courts of Europe, where ballet was an aspect of aristocratic etiquette and a political event as much as it was an art. The story takes the reader from the sixteenth century through to our own time, from Italy and France to Britain, Denmark, Russia and contemporary America. The reader learns how ballet reflected political and cultural upheavals, how dance and dancers were influenced by the Renaissance and French Classicism, by Revolution and Romanticism, by Expressionism and Bolshevism, Modernism and the Cold War. Homans shows how and why 'the steps' were never just the steps: they were a set of beliefs and a way of life. She takes the reader into the lives of dancers and traces the formal evolution of technique, choreography and performance. Her book ends by looking at the contemporary crisis in ballet now that 'the masters are dead and gone' and offers a passionate plea for the centrality of classical dance in our civilization. Apollo's Angels is a book with broad popular appeal: beautifully written and illustrated, it is essential reading for anyone interested in history, culture and art.
Book Synopsis Apollo's Angels by : Jennifer Homans
Download or read book Apollo's Angels written by Jennifer Homans and published by Random House Incorporated. This book was released on 2010 with total page 643 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lavishly illustrated history of ballet explores its evolution as an art form and its reflection of politics and culture throughout the past three centuries, in an account by a former professional ballerina and dance critic for The New Republic that provides authoritative coverage of key influences.
Download or read book Mr. B written by Jennifer Homans and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2023-11-07 with total page 817 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • “A fascinating read about a true genius and his unrelenting thirst for beauty in art and in life.”—MIKHAIL BARYSHNIKOV Winner of the Plutarch Award for Best Biography and the Marfield Prize for Arts Writing • Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award, and the Kirkus Prize • Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize Based on a decade of unprecedented research, the first major biography of George Balanchine, a broad-canvas portrait set against the backdrop of the tumultuous century that shaped the man The New York Times called “the Shakespeare of dancing”—from the bestselling author of Apollo’s Angels New York Times Editors’ Choice • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, NPR, Oprah Daily Arguably the greatest choreographer who ever lived, George Balanchine was one of the cultural titans of the twentieth century—The New York Times called him “the Shakespeare of dancing.” His radical approach to choreography—and life—reinvented the art of ballet and made him a legend. Written with enormous style and artistry, and based on more than one hundred interviews and research in archives across Russia, Europe, and the Americas, Mr. B carries us through Balanchine’s tumultuous and high-pitched life story and into the making of his extraordinary dances. Balanchine’s life intersected with some of the biggest historical events of his century. Born in Russia under the last czar, Balanchine experienced the upheavals of World War I, the Russian Revolution, exile, World War II, and the Cold War. A co-founder of the New York City Ballet, he pressed ballet in America to the forefront of modernism and made it a popular art. None of this was easy, and we see his loneliness and failures, his five marriages—all to dancers—and many loves. We follow his bouts of ill health and spiritual crises, and learn of his profound musical skills and sensibility and his immense determination to make some of the most glorious, strange, and beautiful dances ever to grace the modern stage. With full access to Balanchine’s papers and many of his dancers, Jennifer Homans, the dance critic for The New Yorker and a former dancer herself, has spent more than a decade researching Balanchine’s life and times to write a vast history of the twentieth century through the lens of one of its greatest artists: the definitive biography of the man his dancers called Mr. B.
Book Synopsis 101 Stories of the Great Ballets by : George Balanchine
Download or read book 101 Stories of the Great Ballets written by George Balanchine and published by Anchor. This book was released on 1975-05-20 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Authored by one of the ballet's most respected experts, this volume includes scene-by-scene retellings of the most popular classic and contemporary ballets, as performed by the world's leading dance companies. Certain to delight long-time fans as well as those just discovering the beauty and drama of ballet.
Book Synopsis Ballet in Western Culture by : Carol Lee
Download or read book Ballet in Western Culture written by Carol Lee and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of the development of ballet from the origins of dance through the 20th century.
Book Synopsis Fairy Godmothers, Inc. by : Saranna DeWylde
Download or read book Fairy Godmothers, Inc. written by Saranna DeWylde and published by Zebra Books. This book was released on 2020-12-29 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A PopSugar Best Romance of December A Bustle Most Anticipated Read for December An Amazon Best of the Month Selection “The best of the fairy tale world. Readers will fall head over heels for both the quirky town and the achingly sweet second-chance romance.” —Publishers Weekly STARRED REVIEW First in a magical new series full of edgy and hilarious antics, this is the read you need to finally give your year the fairy-tale ending it deserves! An enchanting story of love, dreams, and second chances—a delightful read for cold winter nights that fans of Christina Lauren, Tessa Bailey, and Kerry Winfrey can’t miss… If love is the source of all the magic in the universe, and the town of Ever After, Missouri, is the epicenter of enchantment, then the locals are in dire need of a reboot. At least according to resident fairy godmothers Petunia, Jonquil, and Bluebonnet. Their solution? Blow a bit of fairy dust in the direction of those in need of romance. . . . What could possibly go wrong? SOME KIND OF AWFUL . . . Lucky Fujiki’s first name is a cosmic joke. Her luck is so bad, even the number seven steers clear of her. But when her adorable godmothers ask for a favor, Lucky can’t say no. After all, it’s just a little one—to save the world’s magic. Lucky can already feel the bad juju waiting to strike. And her mission is even worse than she imagined: to promote Ever After as a wedding destination by faking a marriage to her first love and long-time ex, Ransom Payne—he of the Embarrassing Incident that neither of them will ever live down . . . OR ALL KINDS OF WONDERFUL? Ransom Payne has spent years building an impressive new reputation for himself, and now his godmothers want him to pretend to wed the one girl he’d like most to forget? Sure, weddings in Ever After could be a huge boon for his chocolate business, but risking more up-close-and-personal time with Lucky? Considering the stakes, it’s a curse he’ll have to bear, at the risk of being humiliated—or perhaps, bewitched . . .
Book Synopsis Moving History/Dancing Cultures by : Ann Dils
Download or read book Moving History/Dancing Cultures written by Ann Dils and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-01 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new collection of essays surveys the history of dance in an innovative and wide-ranging fashion. Editors Dils and Albright address the current dearth of comprehensive teaching material in the dance history field through the creation of a multifaceted, non-linear, yet well-structured and comprehensive survey of select moments in the development of both American and World dance. This book is illustrated with over 50 photographs, and would make an ideal text for undergraduate classes in dance ethnography, criticism or appreciation, as well as dance history—particularly those with a cross-cultural, contemporary, or an American focus. The reader is organized into four thematic sections which allow for varied and individualized course use: Thinking about Dance History: Theories and Practices, World Dance Traditions, America Dancing, and Contemporary Dance: Global Contexts. The editors have structured the readings with the understanding that contemporary theory has thoroughly questioned the discursive construction of history and the resultant canonization of certain dances, texts and points of view. The historical readings are presented in a way that encourages thoughtful analysis and allows the opportunity for critical engagement with the text. Ebook Edition Note: Ebook edition note: Five essays have been redacted, including “The Belly Dance: Ancient Ritual to Cabaret Performance,” by Shawna Helland; “Epitome of Korean Folk Dance”, by Lee Kyong-Hee; “Juba and American Minstrelsy,” by Marian Hannah Winter; “The Natural Body,” by Ann Daly; and “Butoh: ‘Twenty Years Ago We Were Crazy, Dirty, and Mad’,”by Bonnie Sue Stein. Eleven of the 41 illustrations in the book have also been redacted.
Download or read book Ballerina written by Deirdre Kelly and published by Greystone Books Ltd. This book was released on 2012 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout her history, the ballerina has been perceived as the embodiment of beauty and perfection--the feminine ideal. But the reality is another story. From the earliest ballerinas in the 17th century--who often led double lives as concubines--through the poverty of the corps de ballet dancers in the 1800's and the anorexic and bulimic ballerinas of George Balanchine, starvation and exploitation have plagued ballerinas throughout history. Using the stories of great dancers such as Anna Pavlova, Isadora Duncan, Suzanne Farrell, Gelsey Kirkland, Evelyn Hart, Marie Camargo, and Misty Copeland, Deirdre Kelly exposes the true rigors for women in ballet. She rounds her critique with examples of how the world of ballet is slowly evolving for the better. But to ensure that this most graceful of dance forms survives into the future, she says that the time has come to rethink ballet, to position the ballerina at its center and accord her the respect she deserves.
Download or read book Reading Dance written by Robert Gottlieb and published by Pantheon. This book was released on 2008-11-04 with total page 1362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert Gottlieb’s immense sampling of the dance literature–by far the largest such project ever attempted–is both inclusive, to the extent that inclusivity is possible when dealing with so vast a field, and personal: the result of decades of reading. It limits itself of material within the experience of today’s general readers, avoiding, for instance, academic historical writing and treatises on technique, its earliest subjects are those nineteenth-century works and choreographers that still resonate with dance lovers today: Giselle, The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake; Bournonville and Petipa. And, as Gottlieb writes in his introduction, “The twentieth century focuses to a large extent on the achievements and personalities that dominated it–from Pavlova and Nijinsky and Diaghilev to Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham, from Ashton and Balanchine and Robbins to Merce Cunningham and Paul Taylor and Twyla Tharp, from Fonteyn and Farrell and Gelsey Kirkland (“the Judy Garland of Ballet”) to Nureyev and Baryshnikov and Astaire–as well as the critical and reportorial voices, past and present, that carry the most conviction.” In structuring his anthology, Gottlieb explains, he has “tried to help the reader along by arranging its two hundred-plus entries into a coherent groups.” Apart from the sections on major personalities and important critics, there are sections devoted to interviews (Tamara Toumanova, Antoinette Sibley, Mark Morris); profiles (Lincoln Kirstein, Bob Fosse, Olga Spessivtseva); teachers; accounts of the birth of important works from Petrouchka to Apollo to Push Comes to Shove; and the movies (from Arlene Croce and Alastair Macauley on Fred Astaire to director Michael Powell on the making of The Red Shoes). Here are the voices of Cecil Beaton and Irene Castle, Ninette de Valois and Bronislava Nijinska, Maya Plisetskaya and Allegra Kent, Serge Lifar and José Limón, Alicia Markova and Natalia Makarova, Ruth St. Denis and Michel Fokine, Susan Sontag and Jean Renoir. Plus a group of obscure, even eccentric extras, including an account of Pavlova going shopping in London and recipes from Tanaquil LeClerq’s cookbook.” With its huge range of content accompanied by the anthologist’s incisive running commentary, Reading Dance will be a source of pleasure and instruction for anyone who loves dance.
Book Synopsis Bolshoi Confidential: Secrets of the Russian Ballet from the Rule of the Tsars to Today by : Simon Morrison
Download or read book Bolshoi Confidential: Secrets of the Russian Ballet from the Rule of the Tsars to Today written by Simon Morrison and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2016-10-11 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this “incredibly rich” (New York Times) definitive history of the Bolshoi Ballet, visionary performances onstage compete with political machinations backstage. A critical triumph, Simon Morrison’s “sweeping and authoritative” (Guardian) work, Bolshoi Confidential, details the Bolshoi Ballet’s magnificent history from its earliest tumults to recent scandals. On January 17, 2013, a hooded assailant hurled acid into the face of the artistic director, making international headlines. A lead soloist, enraged by institutional power struggles, later confessed to masterminding the crime. Morrison gives the shocking violence context, describing the ballet as a crucible of art and politics beginning with the disreputable inception of the theater in 1776, through the era of imperial rule, the chaos of revolution, the oppressive Soviet years, and the Bolshoi’s recent $680 million renovation. With vibrant detail including “sex scandals, double-suicide pacts, bribery, arson, executions, prostitution rings, embezzlement, starving orphans, [and] dead cats in lieu of flowers” (New Republic), Morrison makes clear that the history of the Bolshoi Ballet mirrors that of Russia itself.
Download or read book Ballet written by DK and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This DK visual guide to ballet history goes beyond other ballet books, with beautiful photography that captures famous dancers and key stories. Discover more than 70 of the most famous ballet dances, from The Nutcracker and Swan Lake to The Rite of Spring. Learn the stories behind renowned companies such as The Royal Ballet and the Bolshoi Ballet. Explore the lives and achievements of dancers across the centuries, such as Margot Fonteyn, Carlos Acosta, and Darcey Bussell. Meet composers and choreographers, from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky to Matthew Bourne. From its origins at court and the first national ballet companies, to the contemporary scene and extraordinary venues that stage the productions, this book covers an impressive history of ballet and provides an invaluable overview of the subject. Filled with rarely seen photographs covering all the key figures, pieces, and performances, and compelling facts about each dance--the sources they draw from, their production history, and their reception over time--Ballet: The Definitive Illustrated Story is an essential gift for all ballet enthusiasts.
Book Synopsis Apollo's Angels by : Jennifer Homans
Download or read book Apollo's Angels written by Jennifer Homans and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-11-02 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER For more than four hundred years, the art of ballet has stood at the center of Western civilization. Its traditions serve as a record of our past. Lavishly illustrated and beautifully told, Apollo’s Angels—the first cultural history of ballet ever written—is a groundbreaking work. From ballet’s origins in the Renaissance and the codification of its basic steps and positions under France’s Louis XIV (himself an avid dancer), the art form wound its way through the courts of Europe, from Paris and Milan to Vienna and St. Petersburg. In the twentieth century, émigré dancers taught their art to a generation in the United States and in Western Europe, setting off a new and radical transformation of dance. Jennifer Homans, a historian, critic, and former professional ballerina, wields a knowledge of dance born of dedicated practice. Her admiration and love for the ballet, asEntertainment Weekly notes, brings “a dancer’s grace and sure-footed agility to the page.” NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW • LOS ANGELES TIMES • SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE • PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Book Synopsis The Joffrey Ballet by : Sasha Anawalt
Download or read book The Joffrey Ballet written by Sasha Anawalt and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a comprehensive history of the American dance troupe, the Joffrey Ballet, and a portrait of Robert Joffrey, the creative personality who inspired it. Written in anecdotal style, the book probes the complex relationship which exists between a culture and its artists.
Book Synopsis Basic Principles of Classical Ballet by : Agrippina Vaganova
Download or read book Basic Principles of Classical Ballet written by Agrippina Vaganova and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2012-04-18 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses all basic principles of ballet, grouping movement by fundamental types. Diagrams show clearly the exact foot, leg, arm, and body positions for the proper execution of many steps and movements. 118 illustrations.
Book Synopsis Apollo's Arrow by : Nicholas A. Christakis
Download or read book Apollo's Arrow written by Nicholas A. Christakis and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2020-10-27 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A piercing and scientifically grounded look at the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic and how it will change the way we live—"excellent and timely." (The New Yorker) Apollo's Arrow offers a riveting account of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic as it swept through American society in 2020, and of how the recovery will unfold in the coming years. Drawing on momentous (yet dimly remembered) historical epidemics, contemporary analyses, and cutting-edge research from a range of scientific disciplines, bestselling author, physician, sociologist, and public health expert Nicholas A. Christakis explores what it means to live in a time of plague—an experience that is paradoxically uncommon to the vast majority of humans who are alive, yet deeply fundamental to our species. Unleashing new divisions in our society as well as opportunities for cooperation, this 21st-century pandemic has upended our lives in ways that will test, but not vanquish, our already frayed collective culture. Featuring new, provocative arguments and vivid examples ranging across medicine, history, sociology, epidemiology, data science, and genetics, Apollo's Arrow envisions what happens when the great force of a deadly germ meets the enduring reality of our evolved social nature.
Book Synopsis Where Snowflakes Dance and Swear by : Stephen Manes
Download or read book Where Snowflakes Dance and Swear written by Stephen Manes and published by Cadwallader and Stern. This book was released on 2012-09 with total page 912 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The internationally acclaimed new book that takes you behind the scenes to reveal how ballet really happens: In a scuffed-up studio, a veteran dancer transmits the magic of an eighty-year-old ballet to a performer barely past drinking age. In a converted barn, an indomitable teacher creates ballerinas as she has for more than half a century. In a monastic mirrored room, dancers from as near as New Jersey and as far as Mongolia learn works as old as the nineteenth century and as new as this morning. Snowflakes "zooms in on an intimate view of one full season in the life of one of America's top ballet companies and schools: Seattle's Pacific Northwest Ballet. But it also tracks the Land of Ballet to venues as celebrated as New York and Monte Carlo and as seemingly ordinary as Bellingham, Washington and small-town Pennsylvania. Never before has a book taken readers backstage for such a wide-ranging view of the ballet world from the wildly diverse perspectives of dancers, choreographers, stagers, teachers, conductors, musicians, rehearsal pianists, lighting directors, costumers, stage managers, scenic artists, marketers, fundraisers, students, and even pointe shoe fitters--often in their own remarkably candid words. The book follows characters as colorful as they are talented. Versatile dancers from around the globe team up with novice choreographers and those as renowned as Susan Stroman, Christopher Wheeldon, and Twyla Tharp to create art on deadline. At the book's center is Peter Boal, a former New York City Ballet star in his third year as PNB's artistic director, as he manages conflicting constituencies with charm, tact, rationality and diplomacy. Readers look over Boal's shoulder as he makes tough decisions about programming, casting, scheduling and budgeting that eventually lead the calm, low-key leader to declare that in his job, "You have to be willing to be hated." "Snowflakes" shows how ballet is made, funded, and sold. It escorts you front and center to the kick zone of studio rehearsals. It takes you to the costume shop where elegant tutus and gowns are created from scratch. It brings you backstage to see sets and lighting come alive while stagehands get lovingly snarky and obscene on their headsets. It sits you down in meetings where budgets get slashed and dreams get funded--and axed. It shows you the inner workings of "Nutcracker, " from kids' charming auditions to no-nonsense marketing meetings, from snow bags in the flies to dancing snowflakes who curse salty flurries that land on their tongues. It follows the tempestuous assembly of a version of "Romeo and Juliet" that runs afoul of so much pressure, disease, injury, and blood that the dancers begin to call it cursed. "Snowflakes" uncovers the astounding way ballets, with no common form of written preservation, are handed down from generation to generation through the prodigious memories of brilliant athletes who also happen to be artists. It visits cattle-call auditions and rigorous classes, tells the stories of dancers whose parents sacrificed for them and dancers whose parents refused to. It meets the resolute woman who created a dance school more than fifty years ago in a Carlisle, Pennsylvania barn and grew it into one of America's most reliable ballerina factories. It shows ballet's appeal to kids from low-income neighborhoods and board members who live in mansions. Shattering longstanding die-for-your-art cliches, this book uncovers the real drama in the daily lives of fiercely dedicated artists in slippers and pointe shoes-and the musicians, stagehands, costumers, donors and administrators who support them. "Where Snowflakes Dance and Swear: Inside the Land of Ballet" brings readers the exciting truth of how ballet actually happens.
Book Synopsis Anatomy and Kinesiology for Ballet Teachers by : Eivind Thomasen
Download or read book Anatomy and Kinesiology for Ballet Teachers written by Eivind Thomasen and published by Dance Books Limited. This book was released on 1996 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This introductory textbook looks at anatomy and kinesiology from the dancer's point of view. It begins by setting out the basic structures of the human body - bone, muscle, joints and nervous tissue - and then goes on to show how they interact to form anatomical systems. Finally it considers how these systems function in the dance class, addressing issues such as stretching, breathing, balance, warming up and warming down. Easy to follow and clearly illustrated with photographs and diagrams, 'Anatomy and Kinesiology for Ballet Teachers' will prove invaluable for both teachers and students in all styles of dance. Professor Eivind Thomasen was a celebrated orthopaedic surgeon who specialised in the treatment of dancers, and was consultant to the Royal Danish Ballet. Rachel-Anne Rist is Head of Dance at the Arts Educational School, Tring.
