Download or read book Frederick Ashton and His Ballets written by David Vaughan and published by Dance Books Limited. This book was released on 2022-05-03 with total page 574 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sir Frederick Ashton (1904 - 1988) remains one of the great figures of twentieth-century ballet, whose place in British ballet is comparable to Balanchine's in America. Ashton's choreographic career began in 1926, when his first ballet was presented as part of a London revue. In this book, David Vaughan traces that entire career, during which Ashton became first a leading dancer and choreographer, and later Director of the Royal Ballet. Ashton created more than eighty ballets, as well as innumerable smaller works, including dances for operas, musical comedies, and films. Vaughan follows Ashton's development through this immensely creative life, from early works such as Facade and Les Rendezvous, to such masterpieces of his maturity as Symphonic Variations, Scenes de ballet, Daphnis and Chloe, La Fille mal gardée, The Dream, Enigma Variations, and A Month in the Country. Each of his important ballets is described and analysed in detail, and most are illustrated, with over 260 drawings and photographs. As a parallel theme to the accomplishments of this one master, the history of British ballet is presented, from its humble beginnings in the 1920s and 1930s through to the late twentieth century - a story in which Ashton played a crucial part as the choreographer whose works have formed and defined what has come to be recognised as the English style of classical ballet. Finally, though the book is not a biography in the conventional sense, a picture emerges of a wise and witty man, the most modest of geniuses, beloved by all who worked with him. David Vaughan's Frederick Ashton and his Ballets, originally published in 1977 and long unavailable, remains the definitive chronicle of Ashton's choreographic career. This revised edition of Vaughan's seminal work includes a new final chapter and an updated chronology of work, and is an essential book both for historians of twentieth-century ballet and for lover of Ashton's work.

Download or read book Frederick Ashton s Ballets written by Geraldine Morris and published by Dance Books Limited. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this ground-breaking study of style in six ballets by Sir Frederick Ashton, Geraldine Morris examines the contribution they have made to twentieth century dance and art. Central to the discussion are questions about performance and its connection with style. What do we mean by style in dance? How do we identify it? How can it be retained? Can choreographed movement be distinguished from the danse d'ecole? Does any of this matter? Having considered the nature of style and its relationship to early twentieth century training in Britain, Morris goes on to discuss the six works: A Wedding Bouquet, Illuminations, Birthday Offering, Jazz Calendar, Daphnis and Chloe and A Month in the Country. Delivered with verve and enthusiasm, her analysis and examination of Ashton's role, together with that of the dancers, designers, writers and musicians, is both innovative and thought-provoking. The book is intended for dancers, students and dance enthusiasts who have enjoyed these great works and wish to understand them more fully. Having danced with the Royal Ballet during the years when Ashton was the company's Director, the author brings inside knowledge, informed and enlivened by years of studying the dances. The result is exhilarating and enlightening but also controversial. Geraldine Morris is a Senior Lecturer in Dance Studies at the University of Roehampton.

Download or read book Frederick Ashton and His Ballets written by David Vaughan and published by Alfred A. Knopf. This book was released on 1977 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Secret Muses written by Julie Kavanagh and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 675 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A biography of the choreographer Frederick Ashton which traces his progress from Peruvian childhood and unhappy schooldays, through initiation into a homosexual artistic coterie, to a varied career in dance, culminating in public and royal acclaim.

Download or read book Frederick Ashton and His Ballets written by Clive Barnes and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

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 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, LOS ANGELES TIMES, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 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, as Entertainment Weekly notes, brings “a dancer’s grace and sure-footed agility to the page.”

Download or read book Frederick Ashton written by Zoë Dominic and published by London : Harrap. This book was released on 1971 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Wrights Wrongs written by Peter Wright and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-06-23 with total page 713 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter Wright has been a dancer, choreographer, teacher, producer and director in the theatre as well as in television for over 70 years. In Wrights & Wrongs, Peter offers his often surprising views of today's dance world, lessons learned – and yet to learn – from a lifetime's experience of ballet, commercial theatre and television. Peter started his career in wartime, with the Kurt Jooss company. He has worked with such greats as Pina Bausch, Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev, Marcia Haydée, Richard Cragun, Monica mason, Karen Kain, Miyako Yoshida and Carlos Acosta - as well as today's generation of starts including Alina Cajocaru, Marianela Nunez, Natalia Osipova and Lauren Cuthbertson. While now regarded as part of the British ballet establishment, for many years Peter developed his career outside London, particularly in Germany with John Cranko's Stuttgart Ballet. That distance gives him a unique and unrivalled view on ballet companies. His close association with choreographers Frederick Ashton, Ninette de Valois, founder of the Royal Ballet, Kenneth MacMillan and David Bintley gives Peter an authoritative perspective on British ballet. Wrights and Wrongs includes black-and-white photographs from Wright's career, and as Exeunt magazine comments: 'Anyone with an interest in British ballet will find plenty to occupy them in Wright's book... the many dramas and delights of his life in dance spring forth from the page with brio.'

Download or read book Frederick Ashton written by Cristina Franchi and published by Oberon Books. This book was released on 2005-04-01 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2004 marks the centenary of the birth of Frederick Ashton, Founder Choreographer of The Royal Ballet, whose work defined the English style of ballet. Inspired to dance by Anna Pavlova, encouraged by Ninette de Valois (Founder of the Royal Ballet), Ashton's career as dancer, choreographer and director, spans the Company's history from its earliest days. His influence is still seen today in the repertory and style that informs the Company, with ballets such as La Fille mal gardée, Ondine and Façade. This is the first of a series of books in the Royal Opera House Heritage Series, featuring a unique collection of images from the Royal Opera House Archives. The Series celebrates some of the legendary figures from the world of ballet and opera who have been associated with the Royal Opera House and its resident Companies, The Royal Ballet and The Royal Opera.

Download or read book To Dance is Human written by Judith Lynne Hanna and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1987-09-15 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring dance from the rural villages of Africa to the stages of Lincoln Center, Judith Lynne Hanna shows that it is as human to dance as it is to learn, to build, or to fight. Dance is human thought and feeling expressed through the body: it is at once organized physical movement, language, and a system of rules appropriate in different social situations. Hanna offers a theory of dance, drawing on work in anthropology, semiotics, sociology, communications, folklore, political science, religion, and psychology as well as the visual and performing arts. A new preface provides commentary on recent developments in dance research and an updated bibliography.

Download or read book Ballet written by Jennifer Jackson and published by The Crowood Press. This book was released on 2021-03-22 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ballet is a detailed guide to creative practice and performance. Compiled by ten leading practitioners, each chapter focuses on an aspect of ballet as a performing art. Together they outline a journey from the underpinning principles of ballet, through an appreciation of different styles and schooling, into the dance studio for practice in class and beyond. With additional insights from highly acclaimed dancers, choreographers and teachers, this practical guide offers advice on fundamental and advanced training and creative development. As well as providing information from dance science research into training well-being, this book supports the individual dancer in their artistic growth, offering strategies for exploration and discovery. Topics include: principles, styles and schooling of classical ballet; fundamental technique and advanced expression; developing versatility and creative thinking; advice on injury management, nutrition and lifestyle; choreography and music and, finally, best practice in the rehearsal studio is covered. 'A wonderfully accessible and comprehensive resource about the individual disciplines involved in ballet', Leanne Benjamin OBE, former Principal of The Royal Ballet and international coach.

Download or read book Marius Petipa written by Nadine Meisner and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019-06-03 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most important ballet choreographers of all time, Marius Petipa (1818 - 1910) created works that are now mainstays of the ballet repertoire. Every day, in cities around the world, performances of Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty draw large audiences to theatres and inspire new generations of dancers, as does The Nutcracker during the winter holidays. These are his best-known works, but others - Don Quixote, La Bayadère - have also become popular, even canonical components of the classical repertoire, and together they have shaped the defining style of twentieth-century ballet. The first biography in English of this monumental figure of ballet history, Marius Petipa: The Emperor's Ballet Master covers the choreographer's life and work in full within the context of remarkable historical and political surroundings. Over the course of ten well-researched chapters, Nadine Meisner explores Marius Petipa's life and legacy: the artist's arrival in Russia from his native France, the socio-political tensions and revolution he experienced, his popularity on the Russian imperial stage, his collaborations with other choreographers and composers (most famously Tchaikovsky), and the conditions under which he worked, in close proximity to the imperial court. Meisner presents a thrilling and exhaustive narrative not only of Petipa's life but of the cultural development of ballet across the 19th and early 20th centuries. The book also extends beyond Petipa's narrative with insightful analyses of the evolution of ballet technique, theatre genres, and the rise of male dancers. Richly illustrated with archival photographs, this book unearths original material from Petipa's 63 years in Russia, much of it never published in English before. As Meisner demonstrates, the choreographer laid the foundations for Soviet ballet and for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, the expatriate company which exercised such an enormous influence on ballet in the West, including the Royal Ballet and Balanchine's New York City Ballet. After Petipa, Western ballet would never be the same.

Download or read book I Was a Dancer written by Jacques D'Amboise and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2011-03-01 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Who am I? I’m a man; an American, a father, a teacher, but most of all, I am a person who knows how the arts can change lives, because they transformed mine. I was a dancer.” In this rich, expansive, spirited memoir, Jacques d’Amboise, one of America’s most celebrated classical dancers, and former principal dancer with the New York City Ballet for more than three decades, tells the extraordinary story of his life in dance, and of America’s most renowned and admired dance companies. He writes of his classical studies beginning at the age of eight at The School of American Ballet. At twelve he was asked to perform with Ballet Society; three years later he joined the New York City Ballet and made his European debut at London’s Covent Garden. As George Balanchine’s protégé, d’Amboise had more works choreographed on him by “the supreme Ballet Master” than any other dancer, among them Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux; Episodes; A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream; Jewels; Raymonda Variations. He writes of his boyhood—born Joseph Ahearn—in Dedham, Massachusetts; his mother (“the Boss”) moving the family to New York City’s Washington Heights; dragging her son and daughter to ballet class (paying the teacher $7.50 from hats she made and sold on street corners, and with chickens she cooked stuffed with chestnuts); his mother changing the family name from Ahearn to her maiden name, d’Amboise (“It’s aristocratic. It has the ‘d’ apostrophe. It sounds better for the ballet, and it’s a better name”). We see him. a neighborhood tough, in Catholic schools being taught by the nuns; on the streets, fighting with neighborhood gangs, and taking ten classes a week at the School of American Ballet . . . being taught professional class by Balanchine and by other teachers of great legend: Anatole Oboukhoff, premier danseur of the Maryinsky; and Pierre Vladimiroff, Pavlova’s partner. D’Amboise writes about Balanchine’s succession of ballerina muses who inspired him to near-obsessive passion and led him to create extraordinary ballets, dancers with whom d’Amboise partnered—Maria Tallchief; Tanaquil LeClercq, a stick-skinny teenager who blossomed into an exquisite, witty, sophisticated “angel” with her “long limbs and dramatic, mysterious elegance . . .”; the iridescent Allegra Kent; Melissa Hayden; Suzanne Farrell, who Balanchine called his “alabaster princess,” her every fiber, every movement imbued with passion and energy; Kay Mazzo; Kyra Nichols (“She’s perfect,” Balanchine said. “Uncomplicated—like fresh water”); and Karin von Aroldingen, to whom Balanchine left most of his ballets. D’Amboise writes about dancing with and courting one of the company’s members, who became his wife for fifty-three years, and the four children they had . . . On going to Hollywood to make Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and being offered a long-term contract at MGM (“If you’re not careful,” Balanchine warned, “you will have sold your soul for seven years”) . . . On Jerome Robbins (“Jerry could be charming and complimentary, and then, five minutes later, attack, and crush your spirit—all to see how it would influence the dance movements”). D’Amboise writes of the moment when he realizes his dancing career is over and he begins a new life and new dream teaching children all over the world about the arts through the magic of dance. A riveting, magical book, as transformative as dancing itself.

Download or read book Ballet in the Cold War written by Anne Searcy and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-10-07 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "During the Cold War, the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union developed cultural exchange programs, in which they sent performing artists abroad in order to generate goodwill for their countries. Ballet companies were frequently called on to serve in these programs, particularly in the direct Soviet-American exchange. This book analyzes four of the early ballet exchange tours, demonstrating how this series of encounters changed both geopolitical relations and the history of dance. The ballet tours were enormously popular. Performances functioned as an important symbolic meeting point for Soviet and American officials, creating goodwill and normalizing relations between the two countries in an era when nuclear conflict was a real threat. At the same time, Soviet and American audiences did not understand ballet in the same way. As American companies toured in the Soviet Union and vice-versa, audiences saw the performances through the lens of their own local aesthetics. Ballet in the Cold War introduces the concept of transliteration to understand this process, showing how much power viewers wielded in the exchange and explaining how the dynamics of the Cold War continue to shape ballet today"--

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet written by Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 1013 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Nearly four hundred and fifty years in, ballet still resonates-though the stages have become international, and the dancers, athletes far removed from noble amateurs. While vibrations from the form's beginnings clearly resound, much has transformed. Nowadays ballet dancers aspire to work across disciplines with choreographers who value a myriad of abilities. Dance theorists and historians make known possibilities and polemics in lieu of notating dances verbatim, and critics do the daily work of recording performance histories and interviewing artists. Ideas circulate, questions arise, and discussions about how to resist ballet's outmoded traditions take precedence. In the dance community, calls for innovation have defined palpable shifts in ballet's direction and resultantly we have arrived at a new moment in its history that is unquestionably recognized as a genre onto its own: Contemporary Ballet. An aspect of this recent discipline is that its dancemakers, more often than not, seek to reorient the viewer by celebrating what could be deemed vulnerabilities, re-construing ideals of perfection, problematizing the marginalized/mainstream dichotomy, bringing audiences closer in to observe, and letting the art become an experience rather than a distant object preciously guarded out of reach. Hence, the practice of ballet is moving to become a less-mediated and more active process in many circumstances. Performers and audiences alike are challenged, and while convention is still omnipresent, choices are being made. For some, this approach has been drawn on for decades, and for others it signifies a changing of the guard, yet however we arrive there, the conclusion is the same: Contemporary Ballet is not a style. That is to say, it is not a trend, phase, or fashionable term that will fade, rather it is a clear period in ballet's time deserved of investigation. And it is into this moment that we enter"--

Download or read book Classicism and Romanticism in Three Ballets by Frederick Ashton written by Steven Ha (Ph. D. in dance studies) and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Classicism and Romanticism in Three Ballets by Frederick Ashton" examines three ballets by the twentieth-century British choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton (1904–1988). I tease apart elements of the aesthetic theories of classicism and romanticism as they manifest in Ashton's choreography and consider how those aesthetic ideologies relate to representations of gender in performance. I present three case studies from different periods in Ashton's career: Les Illuminations (1950), The Dream (1964), and Rhapsody (1980). In choosing a selection of ballets across Ashton's oeuvre, my analysis identifies the strains of romanticism that are crucial to deciphering meaning in each work individually and elucidates the continuous undercurrent of romanticism that challenge conventions of classical ballet. I consider Ashton's relationship to the art form's approach to gender and its emphasis of sexual difference through the heterosexual pas de deux, athleticism of male dancers, and perceptions of ballerinas as muses. I demonstrate how Ashton’s ballets subtly reject these conventions. I then situate each ballet in its historical moment, to further explicate how the ballets’ engagements with discourses of gender in dance also refract concomitant sociopolitical circumstances relating to gender and sexuality. I ground each examination in the dance itself and employ choreographic analysis to substantiate the various claims about romanticism/classicism and gender in each ballet; my examination is further supported by scholarship and archival research in the form of critical reviews and personal accounts from the artists involved. Given the differences in era and context of each ballet, each chapter brings into focus a different set of frameworks for analysis. In the chapter on Rhapsody, I consider notions of virtuosity as they relate to gendered norms and the ballet’s reversal of roles in gendering the artist as male and the muse as female. In terms of The Dream, I examine the male fairy body of Oberon and the dynamics of power in a matriarchal society led by Titania and consider their echoes of Victorian ideals of gender and marriage. Lastly, in examining Les Illuminations, I identify the influence of British romanticism to ascertain the ballet's opposition to dualistic structures such as the Apollonian/Dionysian, and I further speculate on the choreography's political dimensions as a performance of protest by the dancer Nicholas Magallanes, against a backdrop of the Lavender Scare and racism against migrant workers in the mid-twentieth century in the United States. I argue that Ashton’s ballets exemplify a notion of romantic ballet that acknowledges the sustained influence of nineteenth-century romanticism but resists the nineteenth-century periodization of the "romantic ballet.” This dissertation research thus contributes to scholarship that interrogates labels such as “romantic” and suggests the term’s applicability to twentieth-century works in order to emphasize the complexities of a single work of art. Additionally, in choosing Ashton’s ballets as the focus of this study, I bring scholarly attention to a choreographer who is underrepresented in the field of dance studies.

Download or read book Secret Muses written by Julie Kavanagh and published by . This book was released on 2004-09-02 with total page 675 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sir Frederick Ashton, Britain's greatest choreographer, was a major figure on the cultural landscape of the twentieth century and his influence extended far beyond the world of dance. Julie Kavanagh traces Ashton's progress with a keen and sympathetic sense of both the man and his milieu. The drama of his professional and private life - among his close associates were Constant Lambert, Benjamin Britten, W. B. Yeats, the Sitwells and Cecil Beaton - is skilfully interwoven with vivid descriptions of the ballets themselves. 'Not only the best biography of a ballet figure but, far more important, a Proustian recollection of that glamorous near-mythical time, the first half of our now setting century.' Gore Vidal