Arthur Saint-Leon, the choreographer of Coppélia, was an indefatigable and articulate letter writer. This collection, translated and edited by Ivor Guest, dates mostly from the 1860s, when Saint-Leon dominated the ballet in both Paris and St. Petersburg, and casts new light on the man and his work.

A portrait of one of the greatest choreographers of all time chronicles his career as a dance student in Russia, his work with Diaghilev and on Broadway, and his founding of the School of American Ballet and The New York City Ballet.

A series of 8 letters reflecting the great Danish choreographer August Bournonville's views on the ballet of his time.

The dancer and choreographer Jean-Georges Noverre's Letters On Dancing and Ballets were first published in Stuttgart in 1760, and set forth his ideas for the reform of ballet, ideas which were considered revolutionary in their day and indeed anticipated changes to be carried out more than a century later by Laban, Fokine, and Jooss. At a time when court ballet had degenerated into a meaningless succession of conventional dances, Noverre advocated a unity of design and a logical progression from introduction to climax in which the whole was not sacrificed to the part and anything unnecessary to the theme was eliminated. Movement was to be defined by the tone and time of the music, and choreographers were advised to avoid over-complicated steps and turn to nature for natural means of expression which could be understood by all. He advocated also the reform of costume, and lived to see masks, full-bottomed wigs and cumbersome dresses abandoned in favor of attire better suited to the roles portrayed. Noverre's Letters can be said without exaggeration to be one of the most important dance books ever published, and through its influence Noverre can be seen as the grandfather of ballet as we know it.

From adagio to voyage, over 800 steps, movements, poses, and concepts are fully defined. A pronunciation guide and cross-references to alternate names for similar steps and positions also included.

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.

IN offering to English and American readers this abridged edition of The Life and Letters of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, my introduction must of necessity take the form of some justification of my curtailments and excisions. The motives which led to this undertaking, and the reasons for my mode of procedure, may be stated in a few words. In 1900 I published a volume dealing with Tchaikovsky, which was, I believe, the first attempt to embody in book form all the literatureÑscattered through the byways of Russian journalismÑconcerning the composer of the Pathetic Symphony. In the course of a year or twoÑthe book having sold out in England and AmericaÑa proposal was made to me to prepare a new edition. Meanwhile, however, the authorised Life and Letters, compiled and edited by the composerÕs brother, Modeste Ilich Tchaikovsky, was being issued in twenty-five parts by P. I. Jurgenson, of Moscow. This original Russian edition was followed almost immediately by a German translation, published in Leipzig by the same firm. In November, 1901, the late P. I. Jurgenson approached me on the subject of a translation, but his negotiations with an American firm eventually fell through. He then requested me to find, if possible, an English publisher willing to take up the book. Both in England and America the public interest in Tchaikovsky seemed to be steadily increasing. Frequent calls for copies of my small bookÑby this time out of printÑtestified that this was actually the case. An alternative course now lay before me: to revise my own book, with the help of the material furnished by the authorised Life and Letters, or to take in hand an English translation of the latter. The first would have been the less arduous and exacting task; on the other hand, there was no doubt in my mind as to the greater value and importance of Modeste TchaikovskyÕs work. The simplestÑand in many ways most satisfactoryÑcourse seemed at first to be the translation of the Russian edition in its entirety. Closer examination, however, revealed the fact that out of the 3,000 letters included in this book a large proportion were addressed to persons quite unknown to the English and American publics; while at the same time it contained a mass of minute and almost local particulars which could have very little significance for readers unversed in every detail of Russian musical life.Ê