DANC 022/MUSI 026: Ballet & Modern Dance in Europe & North America: 1789-1960 (SC)

2015, edited by Mary Ellen Snodgrass. "Throughout the centuries, ballet has had a rich and ever-evolving role in the humanities. Renowned choreographers, composers, and performers have contributed to this unique art form, staging enduring works of beauty. Significant productions by major companies embrace innovations and adaptations, enabling ballet to thrive and delight audiences all over the globe. In The Encyclopedia of World Ballet, Mary Ellen Snodgrass surveys the emergence of ballet from ancient Asian models to the present, providing overviews of rhythmic movement as a subject of art, photography, and cinema. Entries in this volume reveal the nature and purpose of ballet, detailing specifics about leaders in classic design and style, influential costumers and companies, and trends in technique, partnering, variation, and liturgical execution."

2012, Susan Au and James Rutter. "This cornerstone of the World of Art series is a succinct, vivid and authoritative guide to the rich history of western dance in all its incarnations from 16th-century court ballet to the genre-shattering contortions of 21st-century theatrical dance. Updated for the new millennium to feature the latest styles, performers and technology, this third edition reaffirms its status as the essential introduction to the subject."

2010, by Jennifer Homans. "One of The New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of the Year 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. A ballerina dancing The Sleeping Beauty today is a link in a long chain of dancers stretching back to sixteenth-century Italy and France: Her graceful movements recall a lost world of courts, kings, and aristocracy, but her steps and gestures are also marked by the dramatic changes in dance and culture that followed. Ballet has been shaped by the Renaissance and Classicism, the Enlightenment and Romanticism, Bolshevism, Modernism, and the Cold War. Apollo's Angels is a groundbreaking work--the first cultural history of ballet ever written, lavishly illustrated and beautifully told. Ballet is unique: It has no written texts or standardized notation. It is a storytelling art passed on from teacher to student. The steps are never just the steps--they are a living, breathing document of a culture and a tradition. And while ballet's language is shared by dancers everywhere, its artists have developed distinct national styles. French, Italian, Danish, Russian, English, and American traditions each have their own expression, often formed in response to political and societal upheavals. 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. It was in Russia that dance developed into the form most familiar to American audiences: The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, and The Nutcracker originated at the Imperial court. 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 is a historian and critic who was also a professional dancer: She brings to Apollo's Angels a knowledge of dance born of dedicated practice. She traces the evolution of technique, choreography, and performance in clean, clear prose, drawing readers into the intricacies of the art with vivid descriptions of dances and the artists who made them. Her admiration and love for the ballet shines through on every page. Apollo's Angels is an authoritative work, written with a grace and elegance befitting its subject."

2007. Marion Kant (Editor). "Ballet is a paradox: much loved but little studied. It is a beautiful fairy tale; detached from its origins and unrelated to the men and women who created it. Yet ballet has a history, little known and rarely presented. These great works have dark sides and moral ambiguities, not always nor immediately visible. The daring and challenging quality of ballet as well as its perceived 'safe' nature is not only one of its fascinations but one of the intriguing questions to be explored in this Companion. The essays reveal the conception, intent and underlying meaning of ballets and recreate the historical reality in which they emerged. The reader will find new and unexpected aspects of ballet, its history and its aesthetics, the evolution of plot and narrative, new insights into the reality of training, the choice of costume and the transformation of an old art in a modern world.

2003, edited by Selma Jeanne Cohen and the Dance Perspectives Foundation. "The International Encyclopedia of Dance has been the definitive source on this expressive art form, documenting all types of dance around the world and throughout history. Extensive historical and cultural overviews of many nations appear along with articles on specific dance forms, music and costumes, performances, biographies of dancers and choreographers, and much more." Most articles include a bibliography for further research.

2003 by Nancy Reynolds and Malcolm McCormick. "This book chronicles 100 years of dramatic developments in ballet, modern and experimental dance for stage and screen in Europe and North America. The volume encompasses the history of theatrical dance from 1900 through to 2000. Beginning with turn-of-the-century dancer-choreographers like Loie Fuller, Isadora Duncan, Michel Fokine and a bit later Vaslav Nijinsky, and proceeding through the profusion of dance styles performed at the beginning of the 21st century, the book provides a view of dance in performance as it changed and grew in the 20th century. historical contexts, examine specific dance works and explore the contributions of outstanding choreographers, performers, visual artists, impresarios, composers, critics and other figures. They discuss the breakaway barefoot dance of the early 1900s and demonstrate its links with later forms and styles. With detail, illustrations and wide-ranging insights, this volume is a guide to the transformations in the dance scene of the 20th century."

2003. Brenda Dixon Gottschild. "What is the essence of black dance in America? To answer that question, Brenda Dixon Gottschild maps an unorthodox geography, the geography of the black dancing body, to show the central place black dance has in American culture. From feet to the butt to hair to skin/face and beyond to soul/spirit, Brenda Dixon Gottschild talks to some of the greatest choreographers of the day including Garth Fagan, Francesca Harper, Meredith Monk, Brenda Buffalino, Doug Elkins, Ralph Lemon, Fernando Bujones, Bill T. Jones, Trisha Brown, Jawole Zollar, Bebe Miller, Sean Curran and Shelly Washington to look at the evolution of black dance and its importance to American culture."

2002, by Julia Foulkes. "In 1930, dancer and choreographer Martha Graham proclaimed the arrival of "dance as an art of and from America." Dancers such as Doris Humphrey, Ted Shawn, Katherine Dunham, and Helen Tamiris joined Graham in creating a new form of dance, and, like other modernists, they experimented with and argued over their aesthetic innovations, to which they assigned great meaning. Their innovations, however, went beyond aesthetics. While modern dancers devised new ways of moving bodies in accordance with many modernist principles, their artistry was indelibly shaped by their place in society. Modern dance was distinct from other artistic genres in terms of the people it attracted: white women (many of whom were Jewish), gay men, and African American men and women. Women held leading roles in the development of modern dance on stage and off; gay men recast the effeminacy often associated with dance into a hardened, heroic, American athleticism; and African Americans contributed elements of social, African, and Caribbean dance, even as their undervalued role defined the limits of modern dancers' communal visions. Through their art, modern dancers challenged conventional roles and images of gender, sexuality, race, class, and regionalism with a view of American democracy that was confrontational and participatory, authorial and populist. Modern Bodies exposes the social dynamics that shaped American modernism and moved modern dance to the edges of society, a place both provocative and perilous."

1998, edited by Charles H. Woodford, Naomi Mindlin, and Jean M. Brown. " This is the story of the development of modern dance as told by the artists who created it. The words of Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Ruth St. Denis, and over thirty other modern dance artists come to life in these essays. This revised edition includes new selections by Paul Taylor, Alvin Ailey, Twyla Tharp, and Mark Morris. Rebels against society and classical ballet, the early pioneers sought and achieved freedom from unnatural, restrictive, and inexpressive performing. Each succeeding generation added its own distinctive approaches, voices, and styles to the alternating pattern of revolution and institutionalization, in the never-ending spiral of change. The Vision of Modern Dance sheds light on the viability and vitality of modern dance from its beginnings in the late nineteenth century until today."

1998. "Author Carol Lee enlivens the historical presentation of the history of dance with humorous vignettes and anecdotes. Drawing upon her fifteen years experience as a dance history teacher, Lee looks at the ever-shifting currents of historical events in Western Civilization and relates them to the origins and evolution of ballet. From ancient Greek folk expression to 17th Century court dance, through the Renaissance, through England, Denmark, Russia, and into the 20th Century in the United States, Lee guides the reader through the intricate steps of the history of dance. For the dance enthusiast or anyone who enjoys history, theatre, and Western civilization studies."

1997. Lynn Garafola (Editor). "Rethinking the Sylph gathers essays by a premier group of international scholars to illustrate the importance of the romantic ballet within the broad context of western theatrical dancing. The wide variety of perspectives -- from social history to feminism, from psychoanalysis to musicology -- serves to illuminate the modernity of the Romantic ballet in terms of vocabulary, representation of gender, and iconography. The collection highlights previously unexplored aspects of the Romantic ballet, including its internationalism; its reflection of modern ideas of nationalism through the use and creation of national dance forms; its construction of an exotic-erotic hierarchy, and proto-orientalist "other"; its transformation of social relations from clan to class; and the repercussions of its feminization as an art form. This generously illustrated book offers a wealth of rare archival material, including prints, costume designs, music, and period reviews, some translated into English for the first time."

1996. "Susan Foster traces the development of the story ballet from the pantomimes of early 18th-century theaters through the Revolutionary fetes to the well-known romantic ballets La Sylpbide and Giselle. She examines changing conceptions of the dancing body as ballet separated from opera and emerged as an autonomous art form during this turbulent period in French history. Approaching choreography as theory, she shows how choreographic choices are integral to the construction of bodily, individual, gendered, and social identities."

1994, edited by Janet Abshead-Lansdale. "This revised core text addresses the rationale, process, techniques and methodologies specific to the study of dance history. A team of dance historians covers the study of dance in its traditional and performance contexts, offering a range of starting points for study."

1992, edited by Jeanne Cohne Selma, "A compelling and detailed "living history," this book chronicles dance through the writings of its greatest innovators."

1983. Roger Copeland (Editor); Marshall Cohen (Editor). "A wide variety of writing is included in this anthology, from the practical criticism of Arlene Croce and David Denby to the more scholarly work of Rudoloph Arnheim, Suzanne Langer, and Havelock Ellis. The collection is divided into seven sections: What is Dance?; the Dance Medium; Dance andthe Other Arts; Genre and Style; Language, Notation, and Identity; Dance Criticism; and Dance and Society."

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