Download or read book The Ballets of Ludwig Minkus written by Robert Ignatius Letellier and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The composer Ludwig Minkus represents one of music’s biggest mysteries. Who was he? Hardly anything is known about him, and yet he occupied an influential position in the theatres of the Imperial ballet in late nineteenth-century Russia. He has been recognised as a predecessor of Tchaikovsky, but as a musician is commonly held to have been so feeble as to be beneath contempt. Yet despite the scorn heaped on him, and his consequent obscurity, Minkus is far from being forgotten. Since the early 1960s his name has slowly begun to re-surface. Two works, Don Quixote (1869) and La Bayadère (1877), have been presented in their entirety for the first time to new audiences all over the world. The musical and dramatic power of both ballets has taken people by surprise. The stories have a very real human appeal, the choreography attracts the admiration of balletomanes, and the music, with its rhythm, verve, and beauty of melody, holds attention and engages the heart wherever it is heard. This introduction seeks to discover something more behind the blank façade of Minkus’s life and work. What do we actually know about him as a man and as an artist? Are we able to apprehend his oeuvre as a whole, and how much can we establish from the available material? What is the nature of the music he created for those few works that have survived the years, and that have come to the fore again recently to delight those who have ears to hear? This study includes iconography from the life and times of the composer, many musical examples from his works, and a comprehensive bibliography and discography.
Download or read book The Life and Ballets of Lev Ivanov written by Roland John Wiley and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book-length study in any language about this Russian artist--Marius Petipa's colleague and Tchaikovsky's collaborator--who is widely celebrated and yet virtually unknown. It follows Ivanov from his infancy in a St Petersburg foundling home through to his career as a dancer, r gisseur, and choreographer in the St Petersburg Imperial Ballet. Ivanov's artistic world is described, as is his legacy-- some dozen works, including Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, and the famous dances from Prince Igor--that inspired Mikhail Fokine in the next generation. The book is richly documented, including the first complete publication of Ivanov's memoirs and hundreds of citations, many published here for the first time, from state documents, reminiscences, and criticism.
Download or read book Dance on Its Own Terms written by Melanie Bales and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-06 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dance on its Own Terms: Histories and Methodologies anthologizes a wide range of subjects examined from dance-centered methodologies: modes of research that are emergent, based in relevant systems of movement analysis, use primary sources, and rely on critical, informed observation of movement. The chapters emphasize dance history and core disciplinary knowledge in three categories of significant dance activity: performance and reconstruction, pedagogy and choreographic process, and notational and other written forms that analyze and document dance. Conceptually, each chapter also raises concerns and questions that point to broadly inclusive methodological applications. Engaging and insightful, Dance on its Own Terms represents a major contribution to research on dance.
Download or read book Choreographics written by Ann Hutchinson Guest and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here for the first time is an account of how each of thirteen historical as well as present-day systems cope with indicating body movement, time, space (direction and level) and other basic movement aspects of paper. A one-to-one comparison is made of how the same simple patterns, such as walking, jumping, turning, etc. are notated in each system.
Download or read book Tchaikovsky s Ballets written by Roland John Wiley and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 1985 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tchaikovsky's Ballets combines analysis of the music of Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, and Nutcracker with a description based on rare and not easily accessible documents of the first productions of these works in imperial Russia. Essential background concerning the ballet audience, the collaboration of composer and ballet-master, and Moscow in the 1860s leads into an account of the first production of Swan Lake in 1877. A discussion of the theatre reforms initiated by Ivan Vsevolozhsky, Director of the Imperial Theatres and Tchaikovsky's patron, prepares us for a study of the still-famous 1890 production of Sleeping Beauty, Tchaikovsky's first collaboration with the choreographer Marius Petipa. Professor Wiley then explains how Nutcracker, which followed two years after Sleeping Beauty, was seen by its producers and audiences in a much less favourable light in 1882 than it is now. The final chapter discusses the celebrated revival of Swan Lake in 1985 by Petipa and Leve Ivanov.
Download or read book Two Essays on Stepanov Dance Notation written by Alexander Gorsky and published by Noverre Press. This book was released on 2019-11-30 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Russian dancer and teacher Vladimir Stepanov (1866 - 1896) developed a system of human movement notation based on the principles of music notation, details of which he published in French as Alphabet des Movements du Corps Humain, in Paris in 1892. It was accepted as a system of notation in both the Mariinsky and Bolshoi ballet schools and much repertory was notated in it. The dancer, choreographer and teacher Alexander Gorsky was a friend of Stepanov and an advocate of his system. In 1899 he published two long essays explaining the system in considerably more detail and with specifi c relevance to the notation of classical ballet, for use as textbooks by the students in the Mariinsky and Bolshoi schools. It is these two essays, translated and edited by the Russian ballet historian Professor Roland John Wiley which are reproduced here.
Download or read book The St Petersburg Imperial Theaters written by Murray Frame and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-07-11 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The opulent St. Petersburg Imperial Theaters were subsidized and administered by the Russian court from the eighteenth century until the collapse of the tsarist order in 1917. This close association raises many questions about the uses of these theaters and where their loyalties lay in early twentieth century Russia. This history begins in 1900 with the theater flourishing but undergoing change, then chronicles the impact of war and revolution, as well as audience and administration, leading up to the effective re-establishment of state control over the theaters by the Bolsheviks in 1920. While the theaters were often allied with the forces of change, their grandeur harked back to the age of the tsars, creating an irony that is explored here in depth. Photographs and diagrams of the theaters are included, along with photographs of the central historical figures, and contemporary cartoons referring to the theaters.
Download or read book Russian Ballet Master written by Marius Petipa and published by Dance Books Limited. This book was released on 1958 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These highly entertaining memoirs of Marius Petipa, the great Franco-Russian choreogapher had never before been translated into English before their first publication in 1958. As virtual dictator of the Russian ballet in the second half of the 19th century, Petipa moulded its course for many years and may have been said to have created the style of classical dancing still known as Russian. His renown is undisputed, and his work lives not only in the pages of dance history but in the ballet repertoire of most Companies today. Petipa's memoirs reveal many interesting details of his career and of the people he worked with, including Tchaikovsky and the young Pavlova, and give an insight into his character and genius that it is not possible to gain from any other source. Written towards the end of his long life, in a mood of disillusion, when his work was neglected and in decline, he would have been delighted to know that his great ballets such as Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, and La Bayadere are more popular today than ever before.
Download or read book A Century of Russian Ballet written by and published by Dance Books Limited. This book was released on 2007 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ballet.
