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THE LURE OF PERFECTION: FASHION AND BALLET, 1780-1830 offers a unique look at how ballet influenced contemporary fashion and women's body image, and how street fashions in turn were reflected by the costumes worn by ballet dancers. Through years of research, the author has traced the interplay between fashion, social trends, and the development of dance. During the 18th century, women literally took up twice as much space as men; their billowing dresses ballooned out from their figures, sometimes a full 55 inches, to display costly jewelry and fine brocade work; similar costumes appeared on stage. But clothing also limited her movement; it literally disabled them, making the dances themselve...
Teaching Dance Studies is a practical guide, written by college professors and dancers/choreographers active in the field, introducing key issues in dance pedagogy. Many young people graduating from universities with degrees – either PhDs or MFAs – desire to teach dance, either in college settings or at local dance schools. This collection covers all areas of dance education, including improvisation/choreography; movement analysis; anthropology; theory; music for dance; dance on film; kinesiology/injury prevention; notation; history; archiving; and criticism. Among the contributors included in the volume are: Bill Evans, writing on movement analysis; Susan Foster on dance theory; Ilene Fox on notation; Linda Tomko addresses new approaches to teaching the history of all types of dance; and Elizabeth Aldrich writing on archiving.
First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Ballet changed dramatically during the French Revolution. Judith Chazin-Bennahum reveals how the cold, stylized dance movements and weighted ornamental costumes of the 18th-century court ballets developed into the ballet of the Romantic movement, where dancers wore lightweight costumes that allowed them to flow freely across the stage and take to the air. Chazin-Bennahum studies the "livrets "(printed scenarios) of ballets performed in Paris from 1787 to 1801 to illustrate how dance reflected the social and political upheaval of the French Revolution. Ballet s main characters changed from mythological heroes and heroines to the heroes of the Revolution. She examines three major types of ballets and their sources to document these changes: ballets based on classical mythology; ballets inspired by the revolutionary spirit; and ballets rooted in middle-class themes from pastoral drama, traditional comedy, and exotic settings."
René Blum and the Ballets Russes documents the life of the enigmatic and brilliant writer and producer who resurrected the Ballets Russes after Diaghilev died. Based on a treasure trove of previously undiscovered letters and documents, the book not only tells the poignant story of Blum's life, but also illustrates the central role Blum played 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.
Ida Rubinstein (1883–1960) captivated Paris's dancers, composers, artists, and audiences from her time in the Ballets Russes in 1909 to her final performances in 1939. Trained in Russia as an actress and a dancer, her life spanned the artistic freedom of the Belle Époque through the ravages of World War I, the Depression, and finally World War II. This critical biography carefully examines aspects of Rubinstein's life and career that have previously received little attention. These include her early life in Russia, her writing about performance aesthetics, her curated approach to acting and dancing roles, and her encumbered position as a woman and a Jew. Rubinstein used her considerable fortune to produce dozens of plays, lyric creations, and ballets, making her one of the foremost producers of the first half of the twentieth century. Employing the greatest scenic artists, Léon Bakst and Alexander Benois; the distinguished composers Igor Stravinsky, Arthur Honegger, and Claude Debussy; celebrated writers including Paul Valéry and André Gide; and the brilliant choreographer Bronislava Nijinska, Rubinstein transformed twentieth-century theater and dance.
Ballet is a paradox: much loved but little studied. It is a beautiful fairy tale; detached from its origins and unrelated to the men and women who created it. Yet ballet has a history, little known and rarely presented. These great works have dark sides and moral ambiguities, not always nor immediately visible. The daring and challenging quality of ballet as well as its perceived 'safe' nature is not only one of its fascinations but one of the intriguing questions to be explored in this Companion. The essays reveal the conception, intent and underlying meaning of ballets and recreate the historical reality in which they emerged. The reader will find new and unexpected aspects of ballet, its history and its aesthetics, the evolution of plot and narrative, new insights into the reality of training, the choice of costume and the transformation of an old art in a modern world.
He was instrumental in the establishment of the American Ballet Theater and its rise to prominence as one of the world's great ballet companies.
Antonia Mercé, stage-named La Argentina, was the most celebrated Spanish dancer of the early 20th century. Her intensive musical and theatrical collaborations with members of the Spanish vanguard — Manuel de Falla, Frederico García Lorca, Enrique Granados, Néstor de la Torre, Joaquín Nín, and with renowned Andalusian Gypsy dancers — reflect her importance as an artistic symbol for contemporary Spain and its cultural history. When she died in 1936, newspapers around the world mourned the passing of the "Flamenco Pavlova."
By taking a fresh approach to the study of history in general, Alexandra Carter's Rethinking Dance History offers new perspectives on important periods in dance history and seeks to address some of the gaps and silences left within that history. Encompassing ballet, South Asian, modern dance forms and much more, this book provides exciting new research on topics as diverse as: *the Victorian music hall *film musicals and popular music videos *the impact of Neoclassical fashion on ballet *women's influence on early modern dance *methods of dance reconstruction. Featuring work by some of the major voices in dance writing and discourse, this unique anthology will prove invaluable for both scholars and practitioners, and a source of interest for anyone who is fascinated by dance's rich and multi-layered history.