Download or read book Bolshoi Confidential Secrets of the Russian Ballet from the Rule of the Tsars to Today written by Simon Morrison and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2016-10-11 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this “incredibly rich” (New York Times) definitive history of the Bolshoi Ballet, visionary performances onstage compete with political machinations backstage. A critical triumph, Simon Morrison’s “sweeping and authoritative” (Guardian) work, Bolshoi Confidential, details the Bolshoi Ballet’s magnificent history from its earliest tumults to recent scandals. On January 17, 2013, a hooded assailant hurled acid into the face of the artistic director, making international headlines. A lead soloist, enraged by institutional power struggles, later confessed to masterminding the crime. Morrison gives the shocking violence context, describing the ballet as a crucible of art and politics beginning with the disreputable inception of the theater in 1776, through the era of imperial rule, the chaos of revolution, the oppressive Soviet years, and the Bolshoi’s recent $680 million renovation. With vibrant detail including “sex scandals, double-suicide pacts, bribery, arson, executions, prostitution rings, embezzlement, starving orphans, [and] dead cats in lieu of flowers” (New Republic), Morrison makes clear that the history of the Bolshoi Ballet mirrors that of Russia 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 Days With Ulanova written by Albert E. Kahn and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2018-12-02 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the great world of dance, Galina Ulanova is considered by many to be as great, if not greater, than Pavlova. Onstage, the miracle of her performances has enraptured vast audiences. But offstage, to the millions of her devotees, she remains an enigma. This exceptional biography—one of a kind—explores the world of Ulanova, and offers a unique look at the woman behind the legend. As a result of his friendship with Ulanova, writer-photographer Albert E. Kahn had the singular opportunity to study Ulanova as dancer, teacher, performer, warm friend, and a shy, modest woman seeking solitude among her beloved birch groves in the Russian countryside. Kahn has captured it all in words and pictures—from the magnificent performances to the intimate glimpses of her day-to-day life. “Days with Ulanova is the most exciting ballet book I have ever seen.”—Anatole Chujoy, Editor of The Dance Encyclopedia “All lovers of the dance, as well as libraries, museums and schools, will welcome this treasure of a book.”—Arthur Todd, New York Times “Mr. Kahn’s work is without precedent in the theatre world. His photographs of Ulanova are undoubtedly the finest imaginary job of visual commentary on any dancer.”—Genevieve Oswald, Curator Dance Collection, Library & Museum of Performing Arts, Lincoln Center “The particular treasure of her life has been lovingly and sensitively apprehended. Mr. Kahn has made us all a wonderfully valuable gift.”—Dance Magazine “This book must rank among the half-dozen most beautiful books on ballet ever published...a monument and a memorial.”—P. W. Manchester, Dance News

Download or read book Bolshoi Confidential Secrets of the Russian Ballet from the Rule of the Tsars to Today written by Simon Morrison and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2016-10-11 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a freezing night in January 2013, an assailant hurled acid in the face of the artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet, Sergei Filin. The crime, organized by a lead soloist, dragged one of Russia’s most illustrious institutions into scandal.

Download or read book Dancing in Petersburg written by Mathilde Kschessinska and published by . This book was released on 2019-03-20 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mathilde Kschessinska, Prima ballerina of the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatre in pre-Revolutionary Russia, tells her life story in these moving and dramatic memoirs.

Download or read book I Maya Plisetskaya written by Maya Plisetskaya and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: divdivMaya Plisetskaya, one of the world’s foremost dancers, rose to become a prima ballerina of Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet after an early life filled with tragedy and loss. In this spirited memoir, Plisetskaya reflects on her personal and professional odyssey, presenting a unique view of the life of a Soviet artist during the troubled period from the late 1930s to the 1990s. Plisetskaya recounts the execution of her father in the Great Terror and her mother’s exile to the Gulag. She describes her admission to the Bolshoi in 1943, the roles she performed there, and the endless petty harassments she endured, from both envious colleagues and Party officials. Refused permission for six years to tour with the company, Plisetskaya eventually performed all over the world, working with such noted choreographers as Roland Petit and Maurice Béjart. She recounts the tumultuous events she lived through and the fascinating people she met—among them the legendary ballet teacher Agrippina Vaganova, George Balanchine, Frank Sinatra, Rudolf Nureyev, and Dmitri Shostakovich. And she provides fascinating details about testy cocktail-party encounters with Khrushchev, tours abroad when her meager per diem allowance brought her close to starvation, and KGB plots to capitalize on her friendship with Robert Kennedy. Gifted, courageous, and brutally honest, Plisetskaya brilliantly illuminates the world of Soviet ballet during an era that encompasses both repression and cultural détente. Still prima ballerina assoluta with the Bolshoi Ballet, Maya Plisetskaya also travels around the world performing and lecturing. At the Bolshoi’s gala celebrating her 75th birthday, President Vladimir Putin presented her with Russia’s highest civilian honor, the medal for service to the Russian state, second degree. Tim Scholl is professor of Russian language and literature at Oberlin College. Antonina W. Bouis is the prize-winning translator of more than fifty books, including fiction, nonfiction, and memoirs by such figures as Andrei Sakharov, Elena Bonner, and Dmitri Shostakovich. /DIV/DIV

Download or read book Imperial Dancer written by Coryne Hall and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2012-05-30 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mathilde Kschessinska (1872-1971) was the mistress of three Russian Grand Dukes and the greatest ballerina of her generation. She is in almost every book about the Romanovs, but so many myths surround her that she has become the stuff of legend. After her own memoirs, this title aims to reveal the real story by looking at what she did not say.

Download or read book Balanchine the Lost Muse written by Elizabeth Kendall and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-07 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is the first dual biography of the early lives of two key figures in Russian ballet: famed choreographer George Balanchine and his close childhood friend and extraordinary ballerina Liidia (Lidochka) Ivanova. Tracing the lives and friendship of these two dancers from years just before the 1917 Russian Revolution to Balanchine's escape from Russia in 1924, Elizabeth Kendall's Balanchine & the Lost Muse sheds new light on a crucial flash point in the history of ballet. Drawing upon extensive archival research, Kendall weaves a fascinating tale about this decisive period in the life of the man who would become the most influential choreographer in modern ballet. Abandoned by his mother at the St. Petersburg Imperial Ballet Academy in 1913 at the age of nine, Balanchine spent his formative years studying dance in Russia's tumultuous capital city. It was there, as he struggled to support himself while studying and performing, that Balanchine met Ivanova. A talented and bold dancer who grew close to the Bolshevik elite in her adolescent years, Ivanova was a source of great inspiration to Balanchine--both during their youth together, and later in his life, after her mysterious death just days before they had planned to leave Russia together in 1924. Kendall shows that although Balanchine would have a great number of muses, many of them lovers, the dark beauty of his dear friend Lidochka would inspire much of his work for years to come. Part biography and part cultural history, Balanchine & the Lost Muse presents a sweeping account of the heyday of modern ballet and the culture behind the unmoored ideals, futuristic visions, and human decadence that characterized the Russian Revolution.

Download or read book Swans of the Kremlin written by Christina Ezrahi and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2012-11-30 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Classical ballet was perhaps the most visible symbol of aristocratic culture and its isolation from the rest of Russian society under the tsars. In the wake of the October Revolution, ballet, like all of the arts, fell under the auspices of the Soviet authorities. In light of these events, many feared that the imperial ballet troupes would be disbanded. Instead, the Soviets attempted to mold the former imperial ballet to suit their revolutionary cultural agenda and employ it to reeducate the masses. As Christina Ezrahi's groundbreaking study reveals, they were far from successful in this ambitious effort to gain complete control over art. Swans of the Kremlin offers a fascinating glimpse at the collision of art and politics during the volatile first fifty years of the Soviet period. Ezrahi shows how the producers and performers of Russia's two major troupes, the Mariinsky (later Kirov) and the Bolshoi, quietly but effectively resisted Soviet cultural hegemony during this period. Despite all controls put on them, they managed to maintain the classical forms and traditions of their rich artistic past and to further develop their art form. These aesthetic and professional standards proved to be the power behind the ballet's worldwide appeal. The troupes soon became the showpiece of Soviet cultural achievement, as they captivated Western audiences during the Cold War period. Based on her extensive research into official archives, and personal interviews with many of the artists and staff, Ezrahi presents the first-ever account of the inner workings of these famed ballet troupes during the Soviet era. She follows their struggles in the postrevolutionary period, their peak during the golden age of the 1950s and 1960s, and concludes with their monumental productions staged to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the revolution in 1968.

Download or read book Alla Osipenko written by Joel Lobenthal and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-02 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alla Osipenko is the gripping story of one of history's greatest ballerinas, a courageous rebel who paid the price for speaking truth to the Soviet State. She studied with Agrippina Vaganova, the most revered and influential of all Russian ballet instructors, and in 1950, she joined the Mariinsky (then-Kirov) Ballet, where her lines, shapes, and movements both exemplified the venerable traditions of Russian ballet and propelled those traditions forward into uncharted and experimental realms. She was the first of her generation of Kirov stars to enchant the West when she danced in Paris in 1956. But dancing for the establishment had its downsides, and Osipenko's sharp tongue and marked independence, as well as her almost-reckless flouting of Soviet rules for personal and political conduct, soon found her all but quarantined in Russia. An internationally acclaimed ballerina at the height of her career, she found that she would now have to prevail in the face of every attempt by the Soviet state and the Kirov administration to humble her. In Alla Osipenko, acclaimed dance writer Joel Lobenthal tells Osipenko's story for the first time in English, drawing on 40 interviews with the prima ballerina, and tracing her life from Classical darling to avant-garde rebel. Throughout the book, Osipenko talks frankly and freely in a way that few Russians of her generation have allowed themselves to. Her voice rises above the incidents as unhesitating and graceful as her legendary adagios. Candid, irreverent, and, above all, independent -- Osipenko and her story open a window into a fascinating and little-discussed world.

Download or read book I Maya Plisetskaya written by Maĭi͡a Mikhaĭlovna Pliset͡skai͡a and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plisetskaya rose to become a prima ballerina of Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet after an early life filled with tragedy and loss. In this spirited memoir, she reflects on her personal and professional odyssey, presenting a unique view of the life of a Soviet artist during the troubled period from the late 1930s to the 1990s. 74 illustrations.

Download or read book The Official Bolshoi Ballet Book of Swan Lake written by I︠U︡riĭ Nikolaevich Grigorovich and published by TFH Publications. This book was released on 1986 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Last Days of the Romanov Dancers written by Kerri Turner and published by HarperCollins Australia. This book was released on 2019-02-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Petrograd, 1914. A country on a knife edge. The story of two people caught in the middle – with everything to lose... A stunning debut from a talented new Australian voice in historical fiction. Valentina Yershova's position in the Romanovs' Imperial Russian Ballet is the only thing that keeps her from the clutches of poverty. With implacable determination, she has clawed her way through the ranks, relying not only on her talent but her alliances with influential men that grant them her body, but never her heart. Then Luka Zhirkov - the gifted son of a factory worker - joins the company, and suddenly everything she has built is put at risk. For Luka, being accepted into the company fulfils a lifelong dream. But in the eyes of his proletariat father, it makes him a traitor. As civil war tightens its grip and the country starves, Luka is torn between his growing connection to Valentina and his guilt for their lavish way of life. For the Imperial Russian Ballet has become the ultimate symbol of Romanov indulgence, and soon the lovers are forced to choose: their country, their art or each other... A powerful novel of revolution, passion and just how much two people will sacrifice… 'A wonderful debut from author, Kerri Turner ... Through her own work as a dancer, and thorough historical research, Turner has created figures that literally dance off the page. Like the influence of the ballet company itself, the characters will stay with you long after you have finished reading it.' -- Caroline Beecham, author of Eleanor's Secret and Maggie's Kitchen '...beautiful, daring, deceptive and surprising.' The Australian Women's Weekly 'an accomplished debut' Sunday Mail Adelaide

Download or read book The Bolsheviks Volume I written by John D. Loscher and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2009-09 with total page 654 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In my best guess, Czar Nicholas the Second of Russia is a throwback to something around the year seventeen hundred...perhaps even earlier than that!" William Donaldson would live to see firsthand how these words from his boss were completely accurate. For a recent college graduate like William, such archaic and inflexible viewpoints added up to the Romanov family's ultimate damnation. Time would eventually prove him right... During his travels across the European continent during the summer of 1914, William got to meet a young Winston Churchill, Bernard Law Montgomery, and Adolph Hitler. Arriving in Saint Petersburg, the capital city of Imperial Russia on the day World War I begins, William finds himself forcibly conscripted into the United States Foreign Service. In his eventual role as a civilian military observer, William Donaldson, a most reluctant Attaché to the United States Embassy in St. Petersburg, Russia, would get to witness that demise personally. For an unwilling, but dedicated, American diplomat, such unprecedented access to the Russian military would reveal the malaise and ultimate bankruptcy which was the Imperial Romanov Court at the turn of the twentieth century. Accompanied from battlefield to battlefield along the Eastern Front with his devoted White Russian interpreter and lover, Sonjya Mastrova, William meticulously documents the decline and subsequent devolution of Imperial Russia's sovereign liege. As the military and political situation steadily progresses from bad to worse, William concludes that the final overthrow of the 300-year-old Romanov autocracy is no longer a question of if, but when. The only nagging issue William struggles to determine is simply this: "What type of government will replace the monarchy?"

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 Dancing in Petersburg written by Matilʹda Feliksovna Kshesinskai︠a︡ and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There have been wonderful books about dancing, and superbly evocative ones about old Russia: but here the two themes are fascinatingly wedded. For these are the memoirs of the prima ballerina assoluta of the imperial Russian ballet, Mathilde Kschessinska (the Princess Romanovsky-Krassinsky), with whom, at her first appearance, the Tsarevitch Nicholas fell in love. As a dancer she had few rivals: apart from her marvellous technique she had a star personality, and was adored by the public. At the height of her fame she appeared in London with Diaghilev's company and danced with Nijinsky: she preferred, however, to dance in Russia, and for twenty years she was the adored darling of the great world of Petersburg. After the Revolution, when she was living as an emigre in the South of France, Diaghilev begged her to dance for him in his new Paris season, but to no avail. Kschessinska's memoirs fall roughly into three parts: the glittering fairy-story of her life as prima ballerina in Russia; her flight during the Revolution; and the era in which she established herself as a teacher of the highest rank. It is an extraordinary self-revelation of a great dancer and an utterly human person.

Download or read book Dancing In Petersburg written by Mathilde Kschessinska and published by Da Capo Press, Incorporated. This book was released on 1977-08-21 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: