Frederick Ashton's Ballets

Frederick Ashton's Ballets
Author: Geraldine Morris
Publisher: Dance Books Limited
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre: Ballet
ISBN: 9781852731595

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.

Frederick Ashton and His Ballets

Frederick Ashton and His Ballets
Author: David Vaughan
Publisher:
Total Pages: 586
Release: 1999
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN:

This revised edition of Vaughan's seminal work includes a new final chapter and an updated chronology of work. It should be useful for both historians of 20th-century ballet and for lovers of Ashton's work.

Secret Muses

Secret Muses
Author: Julie Kavanagh
Publisher:
Total Pages: 675
Release: 1996
Genre: Choreographers
ISBN: 9780571143528

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.

Apollo's Angels

Apollo's Angels
Author: Jennifer Homans
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 640
Release: 2010-11-02
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0679603905

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.”

Frederick Ashton's Ballets

Frederick Ashton's Ballets
Author: Geraldine Morris
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2024-11-22
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0197747116

The second edition of Frederick Ashton's Ballets: Style, Performance, Choreography adds two further ballets to this ground-breaking study of Frederick Ashton's choreography. It not only examines the contribution these ballets made to twentieth century dance art, but also presents a detailed account of Ashton's work and dances, demonstrating his remarkable choreographic and artistic talent. Having danced with the Royal Ballet Company during the years Ashton was Director, author, Geraldine Morris also draws on her years as an academic in the field. As well as highlighting the dances, the book explores the contribution made by Ashton's collaborators, both designers and musicians. Central is the issue of identity and how style can be retained in dance, despite alterations in training. It considers the problem of how the values of ballet training change, thereby affecting contemporary performances of his works. Through eight works Morris examines the various sources that Ashton used, whether they were dances with words, or those influenced by dancers' movement style, jazz dance, abstraction, mysticism, or narrative. With this new material, the second edition makes a significant contribution to dance scholarship.

Wrights & Wrongs

Wrights & Wrongs
Author: Peter Wright
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 713
Release: 2016-06-23
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1783197196

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.'

Ballet

Ballet
Author: Jennifer Jackson
Publisher: The Crowood Press
Total Pages: 545
Release: 2021-03-22
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1785008315

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.

Sylvia

Sylvia
Author: Léo Delibes
Publisher: Alfred Music
Total Pages: 156
Release: 1996-02-01
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9781457488153

A ballet in three acts and four scenes by Léo Delibes.

Titian Metamorphosis

Titian Metamorphosis
Author: Minna A. Moore Ede
Publisher: Art / Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9781908970046

This visually stunning publication celebrates a unique collaboration between two of the UKs leading cultural institutions, the National Gallery and The Royal Ballet. Together they commissioned three contemporary artists Chris Ofili, Conrad Shawcross and Mark Wallinger to work with international choreographers and composers to create three new ballets inspired by Titian's paintings Diana and Actaeon, 'The Death of Actaeon' and 'Diana and Callisto'. As well as designing all the sets and costumes, the artists also produced entirely new works in response to Titians masterpieces for a show at the National Gallery. The book tells the story of this extraordinary, complex project from conception to stage and gallery. The artists notebooks, sketches and other material from the studio are reproduced to show how they evolved their initial ideas into working designs. Exhibition: National Gallery, London, UK (11.7.-23.9.2012).

Marius Petipa

Marius Petipa
Author: Nadine Meisner
Publisher:
Total Pages: 553
Release: 2019
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0190659297

This cultural biography of the nineteenth-century ballet master Marius Petipa -- creator of The Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake -- tells the full story of his life and work in the remarkable context in which he lived.