BOOK CATEGORIES
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Leonide Massine and the 20th Century Ballet by Leslie Norton
This work provides a biography of Massine and a detailed analysis of his major ballets, including those for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, and American Ballet Theatre. The work integrates biographical study with an examination of Massine’s works from an array of perspectives. By examining the music and composers, set design, and literary sources, it places the work in the larger context of the dance, opera, major visual art movements, literature, and theater of the period. Analyses of ballets include synopses, scenery and costumes, music, choreography, critical survey, and summary. The work concludes with an epilogue summarizing Massine’s impact on the development of ballet in the twentieth century, and includes both informal and performance photographs.
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All in the Dances : A Brief Life of George Balanchine by Terry Teachout
Literary and arts critic Teachout has written a freer and more interpretative book, one focused on the reception of Balanchine's work. Teachout emphasizes Balanchine's profound musical knowledge and utter lack of pretension and the radicalness of his "plotless" ballets, with their "daredevil energy" and spare costumes and stage settings (works best described as "sound made visible"). Funny, even catty, Teachout conjures a far more tyrannical figure than Gottlieb, but he is sensitive in his chronicling of Balanchine's marriages and divorces and generates great excitement with his spirited descriptions of Balanchine's triumphs, from the perennially popular Nutcracker to the revolutionary Agon. Teachout shares Gottlieb's view of the great choreographer as a man indelibly marked by a brush with death, an artist determined to live in the present. Balanchine told his dancers, "Do it now! There is only now." But thanks to Gottlieb and Teachout, Balanchine's ephemeral art also has a future.
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George Balanchine : The Ballet Maker (Eminent Lives) by Robert Gottlieb
In this loving biography, Robert Gottlieb chronicles the life and achievements of ballet's foremost choreographer. Drawing on his own involvement with the New York City Ballet and his relationships with Balanchine, Lincoln Kirstein (who brought Balanchine to America), and many of Balanchine's leading colleagues, Gottlieb has produced a compelling portrait of a vital man, one of the creative masters of the twentieth century.
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Balanchine: Celebrating a Life in Dance by Costas
Balanchine, Celebrating a Life in Dance is a tribute to twentieth-century ballet’s most influential choreographer. Even before founding the New York City Ballet with Lincoln Kirstein, George Balanchine ha achieved international recognition as a dance innovator. Creating dances for his own company, Balanchine’s insights reinvigorated ballet by combining new forms with the traditional while dancing to contemporary musical scores. The works that emerged from this synthesis of styles brought new audiences to dance, as well as new meaning and relevance to the art of dance.
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Secret Muses : The Life of Frederick Ashton by Julie Kavanagh
The eponymous muses were young men, many of them dancers, who inspired choreographer Frederick Ashton (1904-88) to create Symphonic Variations, La fille mal gardee, and the other works that brought English ballet to a new level of artistry. His biographer Julie Kavanagh, a British ballet critic, appreciates but does not overemphasize their importance, respecting the mysteries of the creative process in her perceptive evaluations of Ashton's work. She is equally good on his famed wit and giddy social life, providing enough party scenes and famous names to keep even non-balletomanes reading.
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The Bournonville Tradition: The First Fifty Years, 1829-1879 by Knud Arne Jurgensen
The Bournonville Ballets: A Photographic Record 1844-1933 by Knud Arne Jurgensen