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This autobiography by Leanne Benjamin with Sarah Crompton reveals the extraordinary life and career of one of the world’s most important ballet dancers of the past 50 years. Leanne was born and raised in the central Queensland town of Rockhampton in a tightly knit hard-working Catholic family. At the age of 3 she attended her first ballet class and at 16 she was accepted into the Royal Ballet School in London and at 18 danced her first leading role on the Royal Opera House stage in the school’s performance of Giselle that catapulted her to a stellar career. The book takes you behind the scenes to find a real understanding of the pleasure and the pain, the demands and the intense commitme...
This autobiography by Leanne Benjamin with Sarah Crompton reveals the extraordinary life and career of one of the worlds most important ballet dancers of the past fifty years. The book takes you behind the scenes to find a real understanding of the pleasure and the pain, the demands and the intense commitment it requires to become a ballet dancer. It is a book for ballet-lovers which will explain from Benjamins personal point of view, how ballet has changed and is changing. It is a book of history: she was first taught by the people who created ballet in its modern form and now she works with the dancers of today, handing on all she has known and learnt. But it is also a book for people who ...
A history of Ballet in Australia by a leading Arts writer. The author explores the influence of renowned touring troupes like Les Ballet Russes and international stars including Anna Pavlova and Margot Fonteyn, and describes the emergence of characteristically Australian and also Indigenous dance forms in a vivid narrative. Richly illustrated.
Situated in a dress circle position on the slopes of the village of Les Avants, overlooking Lake Geneva in Switzerland, Chalet Monet is the magnificent home of Dame Joan Sutherland OM AC DBE and her husband, Maestro Richard Bonynge AC CBE. In his charming, eloquent, conversational style, Richard Bonynge takes us inside the home and life he has shared with Dame Joan, and in so doing provides rare insight into two of the greatest international cultural icons in opera of all time. The Chalet was introduced to Dame Joan and Richard by their close friend Noel Coward who resided in the neighbouring property. The opulence of each of the distinctive rooms over the four floors and vistas from the Cha...
Memoirs.
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Benjamin Hertwig's debut collection of poetry, Slow War, is at once an account of contemporary warfare and a personal journey of loss and the search for healing. It stands in the tradition of Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est" and Kevin Powers’s "Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting." A century after the First World War, Hertwig presents both the personal cost of war in poems such as "Somewhere in Flanders/Afghanistan" and "Food Habits of Coyotes, as Determined by Examination of Stomach Contents," and the potential for healing in unlikely places in "A Poem Is Not Guantánamo Bay." This collection provides no easy answers – Hertwig looks at the war in Afghanistan with the unfl...
'McAllister's triumphant story.' Benjamin Law 'A ripping memoir.' Jane Turner From the backblocks of Perth to international stardom, this is a story of courage to fight against the odds for your passion and succeed. David McAllister has always belonged onstage. As the middle child in a Catholic family who knew nothing about dance, he watched himself twirl in the reflective glass of the TV and dreamed about becoming the next Rudolf Nureyev. As a little boy taking ballet lessons, he was mercilessly bullied. As a young man joining the ranks of The Australian Ballet, he worried that he would never play the prince because he lacked the height and lean limbs of a classical dancer. Every time he he...
"Don't expect just tulle and toe shoes. In this fascinating insider's tale, NYCB dancer Pazcoguin reveals her world. . . . A striking debut." —People Award-winning New York City Ballet soloist Georgina Pazcoguin, aka the Rogue Ballerina, gives readers a backstage tour of the real world of elite ballet—the gritty, hilarious, sometimes shocking truth you don’t see from the orchestra circle. In this love letter to the art of dance and the sport that has been her livelihood, NYCB’s first Asian American female soloist Georgina Pazcoguin lays bare her unfiltered story of leaving small-town Pennsylvania for New York City and training amid the unique demands of being a hybrid professional at...
Discovering she was the illegitimate daughter of the prince of Chantaine took some getting used to for Coco Jordan – especially when she was working as a nanny on a Texas ranch!