Search results

Senegal has played a central role in contemporary dance due to its rich performing traditions, as well as strong state patronage of the arts, first under French colonialism and later in the postcolonial era. In the 1980s, when the Senegalese economy was in decline and state fundingwithdrawn, European agencies used the performing arts as a tool in diplomacy. This had a profound impact on choreographic production and arts markets throughout Africa. In Senegal, choreographic performers have taken...

During his career Douglas Wright established himself as New Zealand's leading contemporary dancer and choreographer. He started out with the Limbs Dance Company in 1980, then worked in New York with the Paul Taylor Company and DV8 Physical Theatre in London before forming the Douglas Wright Dance Company in Auckland in 1989. During this time he created over 30 major dance works, which culminated in his 2006 masterpiece 'Black Milk', his last major work. The dance critic Jennifer Shennan wrote, '...

At eighty-seven, Patricia Wilde remains a grande dame of the ballet world. As a young star she toured America in the company of the Ballet Russe. In her heyday in the 1950s and ’60s, she was a first-generation member and principal dancer of New York City Ballet during the uniquely dramatic Balanchine era—the golden age of the company and its hugely gifted, influential, exploitative, and dictatorial director. In Wilde Times, Joel Lobenthal brings the world of Wilde and Balanchine, of Tanaquil Le...

Comprising over 150 black and white photographs of the Australian Ballet, this volume is aimed at anyone interested in dance or photography. The result of an intimate relationship between dancers and photographer, the book captures the poise and athleticism of the art form.

The ballet Don Quixote, with music by Ludwig Minkus and scenario and original choreography by Marius Petipa, is one of the most enduring creations to have emerged from the flowering of the ballet in late 19th-century Russia. Still popular, it has become a standard repertory piece in ballet companies all over the world. The work was first performed in Moscow at the Bolshoi Theater on 14/26 December 1869. The plot, in four acts and eight scenes, was based on an episode which Petipa had developed f...

International vaudeville star and Broadway prima ballerina Jeanne Devereaux performed for millions across Europe and America in her prime. Born Jean Helman, she entered showbiz young as a trouper performing in palatial theaters and was one of the last vaudevillians surviving into the 2010s. In her final years she indulged her passion for research and writing in the Huntington Library's Rothenberg Reading Room, losing none of her intelligence and wit despite a failing memory. Drawing on interview...

The contributors - two Slavicists, a musicologist and an art historian - offer a detailed exploration of the ballet, Petrushka, which premiered in Russia in 1911 and became one of the most important and influential theatrical works of the modernist period.

Bandoneon: Working with Pina Bausch is a new translation of Raimund Hoghe’s original rehearsal diary that documented the legendary Tanztheater Wuppertal’s work on Bandoneon (1980), illustrated with photos of the production by Ulli Weiss, and personal images and notes from the dancers. This unique book records the method Pina Bausch developed and used, as seen by one of her close collaborators, Raimund Hoghe, who worked as dramaturg for the company for a decade (1979–1989). It follows the work...

Robert le Diable: The Ballet of the Nuns offers a new approach to the study of one of the most ground-breaking works in European ballet history. Based on the choreographic notations made by the great nineteeth-century Danish choreographer, August Bournonville, this spectral dance scene has been recreated by Knud Arne Jurgensen with the precision afforded by Labanotation, here recorded by Ann Hutchinson Guest. Supported by extensive historical source materials and study and performance notes, thi...

Italian ballet in the eighteenth century was dominated by dancers trained in the virtuoso style that combined French ballet technique with a vigorous athleticism that made Italian dancers in demand all over Europe. Gennaro Magri's Trattato teorico-prattico di ballo, the only work from the eighteenth century that explains the practices of midcentury Italian theatrical dancing, is a starting point for this investigation of an influential type of ballet and its connections to the operatic and theat...

Introducing a ballet class in a book. Created by Lise Friedman, a passionate ballerina as a little girl who grew up to dance with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and photographed by K.C. Bailey, whose dance photography is part of the Lincoln Center Dance Collection, "First Lessons in Ballet" is an intimate and innovative approach that takes the reader right into the studio and teaches basic steps and positions. Each spread works as a lesson. On the left, in a full-length, silhouetted photog...

Grazioso Cecchetti"s dance method was written up by the great teacher himself, yet lay dormant, until the editor of this volume found it and made it accessible to a wider audience'

"Janet Sassoon has had two careers, first as a ballerina with an international reputation and now as a classical dance teacher and coach in international demand. At age seven, Miss Sassoon began her training with the San Francisco Ballet. By age ten, Miss Sassoon was performing in roles with the San Francisco Opera and Ballet companies. At fifteen, she moved to Paris to continue her studies with Leo Staats, Lubov Egorova, Olga Preobrajenska, and Mathilde Kschessinska. Miss Sassoon joined the int...

Nina Anisimova was born in 1909 in imperial St Petersburg. One of the most renowned character dancers of the Stalinist period, she won her way into the hearts of her audience over many decades. Yet few knew that her exemplary career was a fragile construct built atop a dark secret. In 1938, at the height of the Great Terror, Nina vanished. Only a handful of people knew that this famous dancer had not only been arrested by Secret Police as a Nazi Spy, but sentenced to forced labour in a camp in...

On Technique provides a fascinating look into the careers and teaching philosophies of eighteen of the world's most respected ballet masters, principals, and artistic directors. Author Dean Speer sat down with prominent ballet pedagogues and asked each a standard set of questions, including 'What do we mean when we say someone has beautiful technique?' and 'How did you become a dancer?'. Featuring such artists as Peter Boal (artistic director of the Pacific Northwest Ballet) and Bene Arnold (fir...

On Technique provides a fascinating look into the careers and teaching philosophies of eighteen of the world's most respected ballet masters, principals, and artistic directors. Author Dean Speer sat down with prominent ballet pedagogues and asked each a standard set of questions, including 'What do we mean when we say someone has beautiful technique?' and 'How did you become a dancer?'. Featuring such artists as Peter Boal (artistic director of the Pacific Northwest Ballet) and Bene Arnold (fir...

This book is a record of Maria Fay's Floor Barre system. It is also an account of how it evolved during the author's long and varied career as a dancer, teacher, choreographer and coach. She has worked with numerous renowned classical and contemporary companies and vocational schools in Europe and North America in the field of classical ballet and character dancing. In the process of doing so she became constantly aware of the existence of too many critically injured dancers. She observed that t...

Graceful technique and perfect execution are only possible with perfectly fitting pointe shoes. For the first time in print, ballerina Angela Reinhardt has put together over 100 tips and tricks for complete personal pointe shoe tuning, for beginners, students and professionals.Over 280 colour illustrations show how to modify shoes step-by-step, using scissors, needle and thread, hot water and elastic, to adapt them perfectly to the foot and to all types of floor surface, and to help them last as...

This beautifully bound, slip-cased limited edition of Pure Dance has been specially produced for the Venice Biennale, where photographer Dieter Blum has been invited to show his exquisite work. This breathtaking package includes both the book Pure Dance and a 36-page exhibition catalogue. Blum succeeds in capturing the dymanic movement and magic of the classically trained dance artist. Each photograph is a distilled, evocative frozen fragment of an art form that by its nature is fleeting and eph...

Rudolf Laban's provocative, experimental, explosive dance theatre works have lain hidden since the Third Reich deliberately annihilated his name. This book exposes Laban's audacity and his significance for dance theatre today, giving access to his creative practices as he provided dance audiences with shock, amusement, awe, curiosity, beauty and meaning. Dr. Valerie Preston-Dunlop, with collaborating artists and dancers, has researched and recreated for today's audiences four groundbreaking work...