The Cambridge Companion to BalletMarion Kant 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. |
Contents
3 English masques | 32 |
4 The baroque body | 42 |
the ballet daction | 53 |
the | 65 |
John Weaver and | 78 |
dance and reform | 87 |
9 The French Revolution and its spectacles | 98 |
18301850 | 113 |
13 Russian ballet in the age of Petipa | 151 |
16 The soul of the shoe | 184 |
the Ballets Suedois and | 201 |
the new Russian and | 212 |
19 George Balanchine | 224 |
20 Balanchine and the deconstruction of classicism | 237 |
a cultural icon | 246 |
23 Giselle in a Cuban accent | 263 |
the women | 126 |
French | 138 |
24 European ballet in the age of ideologies | 272 |
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Common terms and phrases
Acad´emie aesthetic Alicia Alonso Alonso Angiolini artistic audience August Bournonville B¨orlin Balanchine Balanchine’s ballerina ballet d’action ballet de cour ballet master Ballets Russes Ballets Su´edois baroque dance became body Bournonville character Chinese choreographer classical ballet colour composer contemporary costume court ballet created critics Cuban culture dancers dancing master danse defined Diaghilev drama European expression Fˆete female Festival figures final finally find first five Fokine French genre gestures Giselle grand Imperial Imperial Ballet influence Italian l’art La Sylphide legs Lev Ivanov libretto Lopukhov male Maryinsky masque melody modern dance movement nature nineteenth nineteenth-century Noverre Noverre’s Nutcracker opera pantomime Paris Op´era performance Petipa plot production reflected repertory Revolution revolutionary role romantic ballet Royal Royal Danish Ballet Russian scene score shoe Sleeping Beauty social Soviet specific St Petersburg stage steps story style Swan Lake Sylphide Taglioni Tchaikovsky technique theatre theatrical theme tradition twentieth century virtuosity Weaver women
Popular passages
Page 15 - The Loves of Mars and Venus, first performed as an afterpiece at Drury Lane Theatre on 2 March 1717 and described in the scholarly programme accompanying the production as 'A Dramatick Entertainment of Dancing, Attempted in Imitation of the Pantomimes of the Ancient Greeks and Romans
Page 10 - Ballets, opéra et autres ouvrages lyriques, par ordre chronologique, depuis leur origine, avec une table alphabétique des ouvrages et des auteurs.