Dancing Shakespeare is the first history of ballets based on William Shakespeare’s works from the birth of the dramatic story ballet in the eighteenth century to the present. It focuses on two main questions: "How can Shakespeare be danced?" and "How can dance shed new light on Shakespeare?" The book explores how librettists and choreographers have transposed Shakespeare’s complex storylines, multifaceted protagonists, rhetoric and humour into non-verbal means of expression, often going beyond the texts in order to comment on them or use them as raw material for their own creative purposes. One aim of the monograph is to demonstrate that the study of wordless performances allows us to gain a deeper understanding of Shakespeare’s texts. It argues that ballets based on Shakespeare’s works direct the audience’s attention to the "bare bones" of the plays: their situations, their characters, and the evolution of both. Moreover, they reveal and develop the "choreographies" that are written into the texts and highlight the importance of movements and gestures as signifiers in Shakespeare’s plays. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of literature, dance, and music, as well as to an international readership of lovers of Shakespeare, ballet, and the arts.

In the mid-eighteenth century, Sarah Fielding (1710-68) was the second most popular English woman novelist, rivaled only by Eliza Haywood. The History of Ophelia, the last of her seven novels, is an often comic epistolary fiction, narrated by the heroine to an unnamed female correspondent in the form of a single protracted letter. This Broadview edition includes a critical introduction and valuable appendices that contain contemporary reviews of the novel, Richard Corbould's illustrations to the Novelist’s Magazine edition, and excerpts from Sarah Fielding’s Remarks on Clarissa.

Coyote Tales is about a coyote and his coat. Coyote looks like any other coyote at first sight. His coat is fur on the outside, but it turns into a different coat when need be. This coat has many pockets with all the answers to any questions you might have, and that is where the adventure begins. In Coyote Tales, Coyote meets Little Warrior, not yet six winters old, who couldn't find his parents. Then he meets Ophelia, an octopus that has found herself out of the ocean and in a place she has never been. She has many experiences. And lastly, Coyote meets his old friend Raccoon who also lives in the woods. They take a trip to town and get into all kinds of trouble. Fortunately, Coyote has his other coat, and they all find answers there. Coyote is a jokester, and he brings about balance of wisdom and folly. Writing Coyote Tales was one of the best experiences of my life. I thank God for them as I know he had a very big hand in the writing of them. I hope they bring laughter and joy to all who read them.

MOTHERS TALK BACK! In 1999 Ophelia Speaks, Sara Shandler’s collection of writings by and about adolescent girls, became a bestseller. Two years later, Nina Shandler, Ed.D., psychologist by profession and Sara’s mother, invited mothers of adolescent girls from all over the country to talk back, giving them the chance, perhaps for the first time, to speak out about feelings too often considered taboo. Culled from written submissions and interviews with hundreds of women from all walks of life and from every part of the country, the concerns voiced in Ophelia’s Mom reflect the universal experience of mothers facing one set of changes while their daughters are facing another. With humor, insight, rage, sadness, jealousy, pride, joy, and, ultimately, optimism, these mothers talk candidly about rejection and separation, feminism versus Girl Power, love and sex, friends, school, drugs and alcohol, divorce, menstruation and menopause, the mother-daughter bond, and much more. As these mothers reveal how this life passage has reshaped them as well as their children, you’ll realize that you’re not crazy, and you’re certainly not alone in your frustration, confusion, and exhilaration over raising an adolescent daughter.

Rumour’s got a lot to say for itself, and the message is clear: the regulator’s ready. You know. The magickal regulator. The bright and shiny thing with which we, Team Improbable, propose to restore magick to a fading Britain. Somebody’s got to test it, and that somebody is us. Which means wading into the depths of a long-dead realm that nobody’s entered in centuries. And I may have had some practice at that, but this time it’s different. This time, somebody’s still home. And they really aren’t happy about trespassers. Looks like disaster’s on the agenda. Again. Not to worry, though. Where there’s life, there’s hope. And… dancing. Ves and Jay return in a fresh bout of magickal madness! Grab your dancing shoes and hang onto your hat. It’s going to be wild.

With its roots in Middle Eastern and North African dance, belly dance is a popular leisure activity in the West with women (and some men) of all ages and body types pursing the activity for diverse reasons. Drawing on empirical research, fieldwork, and interviews with participants, this book investigates the social world and small group cultures of American belly dance, examining the various ways in which people use leisure to construct the self and social relationships. With attention to gender expectations, body image, sexuality, community, spiritual experiences, and the process of identifying with a leisure activity, this book shows how people engage in the same pursuit in a variety of ways. It sheds light on the manner in which dancers strive to deal with the challenges presented by internal power struggles and legitimacy bids, public beliefs, narrow cultural ideals of beauty and often sexualized assumptions about their art. A fascinating study of identity work and the reproduction and challenging of gender norms through a gendered leisure activity, Gendered Bodies and Leisure: The Practice and Performance of American Belly Dance will be of interest to students and scholars researching gender and sexuality, the sociology of leisure, the sociology of the body and interactionist thought.

Starclucks save the day! But can Ophelia live up to the family name? Ophelia Starcluck’s family is jam-packed with famous captains who served on United Bird Featheration starships for the bird planet, Aves. On her first day at a new school, Ophelia hears that Birds of Prey, or BOPs, have returned. When Ophelia meets one, she isn’t sure if the falcon is friend or foe. If they’re up to no good, isn’t it her job to save the day? Chester P. Chickadee was born to royalty. Or he would be royal if his villainous great-grandfather had not lost the throne. But Chester has a plan and the perfect scapegoat. An epic war will begin, Ophelia will be blamed, and Chester’s family will rule again. Once Ophelia realizes Chester’s been lying about the BOPs, she’ll fight like a Starcluck to stop Chester’s evil plans. But when everything falls apart, how will this Starcluck save the day? Ophelia Starcluck and the Rebel Prince is the second adventure in The Starcluck Adventures, a series for ages 8-12. If you like stories with friends, quirky humor, animals, and freezing ice cream toppings, you’ll love Kristen Gwen’s plucky tale. Grab it today before the price goes up!

"Reconstructs the vibrantly intoxicating atmosphere of the theatrical world in the early nineteenth century. Lavishly romantic." --Booklist Christine Balint reimagines the bittersweet life of Harriet Smithson, the tragedienne who brought Shakespeare to the French. Born in County Clare, Ireland, in 1800, Harriet is left in the care of the elderly priest Father Barrett, and is brought up on Lamb's Shakespeare, lime-sherbet sweets, and prayer. A child of traveling players, her ultimate inheritance is Covent Garden, London, the green room, and the theater's rough magic. With the arrival of Charles Kemble's English Theatre troupe in Paris in 1827, the Odeon Theatre is awash with the drama and music of Shakespeare. Harriet is Ophelia. The French Romantics swoon, traffic stops, and the high-society women plait straw in their hair in honor of her mad Ophelia. The fiery composer Hector Berlioz falls in love. In Ophelia's Fan, Balint re-creates the texture and breadth of the nineteenth century and brings alive Harriet Smithson; the actress and the woman, her roles and her loves. Reading group guide included.

"It's the 150th anniversary of the Quincy Academy, and to celebrate, Madame Puant wants the girls to perform a ballet that hasn't been put on since the '80s--when a dancer died during the production. Another tragedy took place the time before that--and the time before that. Is the ballet cursed? Ophelia's about to find out--she just became the lead in the newest production"--

This Cinderella goes from ashes to ashes in the new Victorian-era Fairy Tale Fatal Mystery by the author of Snow White Red-Handed . . . Variety hall actress Ophelia Flax’s plan to reunite her friend Prue with her estranged—and allegedly wealthy—mother, Henrietta, is met with a grim surprise. Not only is the marquise’s Paris mansion a mouse-infested ruin, but Henrietta has inexplicably vanished, leaving behind an evasive husband, two sinister stepsisters, and a bullet-riddled corpse in the pumpkin patch decked out in a ball gown and one glass slipper—a corpse that also happens to be a dead ringer for Prue. Strangely, no one at 15 rue Garenne seems concerned about who plugged this luckless Cinderella or why, so the investigation is left to Ophelia and Prue. It takes them through the labyrinthine maze of the Paris Opera, down the trail of a legendary fairy tale relic, into the confidence of a wily prince charmless, and makes them vulnerable to the secrets of a mysterious couturière with designs of her own on Prue’s ever-twisting family history.