If the name of this one isn't familiar to you, just think dancing hippos from Fantasia." Everyone will recognize this delightful piece, and it's wonderfully fun to play. From Ponchielli's ballet "La Gioconda," this version is true to the original with only a few adjustments for practicality."

Dance of the Hours (Danza della ore) was composed for a ballet in the Act III finale to the 1876 opera La Gioconda. The scenario was a simple one: the depiction of the hours of the day using solo and ensemble dances. The opera was a major breakthrough for Ponchielli, and the third-act ballet soon became a favorite in the concert hall and as an independent ballet number. It's fame reached and entirely new level with its use as the background for a ballet-parody in the 1940 Disney film Fantasia, featuring dancing hippos, ostriches, alligators and elephants. Clark McAlister's edition goes back to Ponchielli's original score and was carefully researched consulting first editions, manuscripts and performance material. Originally issued in 2007 by the defunct publisher E.F. Kalmus, we are very pleased to make this excellent edition available in a convenient size study score. The large conductor score and orchestra parts are also exclusively available from Serenissima Music.

Book 2 Building Your Skills covers choosing and owning a piano, the major scale, tied quavers, metronome marks, triplets, plus over twenty pieces including The Entertainer and The Blue Danube. Also includes fascinating items of musical history and biography, an easy-to-follow introduction to the theory of music, and suggested listening to enhance your musical appreciation.

Instrumentation: 2+Picc.2.2.2: 4.2(in Bb).3.0: Timp.Perc(3): Str Three of the appealing dances from The Nutcracker are presented here in an edition that's as close to the original as you'll ever want to come! Including March; Toy Flutes and Trepak, this edition is recommended as an alternative to using the Kalmus ed

The biography of the first African-American prima ballerina Winner of the The Marfield Prize / National Award for Arts Writing (2011) Dancer Janet Collins, born in New Orleans in 1917 and raised in Los Angeles, soared high over the color line as the first African-American prima ballerina at the Metropolitan Opera. Night's Dancer chronicles the life of this extraordinary and elusive woman, who became a unique concert dance soloist as well as a black trailblazer in the white world of classical ballet. During her career, Collins endured an era in which racial bias prevailed, and subsequently prevented her from appearing in the South. Nonetheless, her brilliant performances transformed the way black dancers were viewed in ballet. The book begins with an unfinished memoir written by Collins in which she gives a captivating account of her childhood and young adult years, including her rejection by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Dance scholar Yaël Tamar Lewin then picks up the thread of Collins's story. Drawing on extensive research and interviews with Collins and her family, friends, and colleagues to explore Collins's development as a dancer, choreographer, and painter, Lewin gives us a profoundly moving portrait of an artist of indomitable spirit.