The Choreography of Antony Tudor: Focus on Four Ballets presents both an analytical overview of the ballets created for the stage by Antony Tudor and an in-depth critical analysis of four key works: Jardin aux Lilas (1936), Dark Elegies (1937), Pillar of Fire (1942), and The Leaves Are Fading (1975). Tudor was a British choreographer who spent a large part of his working life in the United States, and although he was not prolific in his output, his works include several masterpieces of twentieth-century ballet repertoire. Characteristic of his work is an exceptionally creative and sensitive relationship of choreography with music, a relationship different from that developed by his equally musical contemporary, George Balanchine, in that it privileges subtle layers of dramatic, often psychological, exposition as well as complex mythmical structures. Tudor's ballets invariably involve a psychological human dimension, even when there is no story as such, and it is these two strands - the musical and the dramatic - that the choreographer exploits with consummate skill in the best of his work.

This book contains the full Labanotation score of "Soiree Musicale" with detailed study and performance notes, historical background and photographs. The first Tudor ballet to be made available in published form, "Tudor's Soiree Musicale" marks the first step towards preserving the work of this internationally celebrated choreographer, who pointed the way to a deeper psychological insight into the art of ballet. "Soiree Musicale" is a charming, lively piece which is suited to classroom study and stage performance. Although technically demanding when performed to full tempo, the dances allow for a degree of personal interpretation which can surmount technical problems. Ann Hutchinson Guest was a founder and for twenty years director of the New York City Dance Notation Bureau. She has been at the forefront of the development and use of Labanotation, spearheading new ideas in teaching methods incorporating notation. She is presently director of the Lan

A teaching manual from the founder of the Bolshoi school of Ballet, contains instructions for six advanced classes of ballet.

In Choreography Observed, Jack Anderson has selected writings that focus most directly on choreographers and choreography in order to illuminate the delights and problems of dance and to reveal the nature of this nonverbal but intensely expressive art form.

He was instrumental in the establishment of the American Ballet Theater and its rise to prominence as one of the world's great ballet companies.

Selected writings illuminate a century of international dance.

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.”

Here is a dazzling collection from Joan Acocella, one of our most admired cultural critics: thirty-one essays that consider the life and work of some of the most influential artists of our time (and two saints: Joan of Arc and Mary Magdalene). Acocella writes about Primo Levi, Holocaust survivor and chemist, who wrote the classic memoir, Survival in Auschwitz; M.F.K. Fisher who, numb with grief over her husband’s suicide, dictated the witty and classic How to Cook a Wolf; and many other subjects, including Dorothy Parker, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Saul Bellow. Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints is indispensable reading on the making of art—and the courage, perseverance, and, sometimes, dumb luck that it requires.

Amerikansk balletdanser og koregraf

The long-awaited memoir from one of the most celebrated modern dancers of the past fifty years: the story of her own remarkable career, of the formative years of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and of the two brilliant, iconoclastic, and forward-thinking artists at its center—Merce Cunningham and John Cage. From its inception in the l950s until her departure in the l970s, Carolyn Brown was a major dancer in the Cunningham company and part of the vibrant artistic community of downtown New York City out of which it grew. She writes about embarking on her career with Cunningham at a time when he was a celebrated performer but a virtually unknown choreographer. She describes the heady exhilaration—and dire financial straits—of the company’s early days, when composer Cage was musical director and Robert Rauschenberg designed lighting, sets and costumes; and of the struggle for acceptance of their controversial, avant-garde dance. With unique insight, she explores Cunningham’s technique, choreography, and experimentation with compositional procedures influenced by Cage. And she probes the personalities of these two men: the reticent, moody, often secretive Cunningham, and the effusive, fun-loving, enthusiastic Cage. Chance and Circumstance is an intimate chronicle of a crucial era in modern dance, and a revelation of the intersection of the worlds of art, music, dance, and theater that is Merce Cunningham’s extraordinary hallmark.