Book description
This essential pocket guide to this enduringly popular art, is a
perfect introduction to over eighty of the most performed ballets
today. Spanning nearly two centuries of classical dancing, this
indispensable book begins in the Romantic era of the 1830s, moves
through the great Tchaikovsky ballets of Tsarist St Petersburg, to the
inspirational work of Diaghilev at the beginning of the twentieth
century and the luminous neo-classicism of Balanchine. Ashton and
Macmillan are covered in depth, and the most recent ground-breaking
work brings us up to the present day.
Deborah Bull was a Principal Dancer with The Royal Ballet, noted for
her performances in the works of Forsythe and MacMillan. She is now
Creative Director of the Royal Opera House as well as a writer and
broadcaster. She has written and presented several programmes for BBC TV
and radio, including the award-winning 'The Dancer's Body'. She is the
author of The Vitality Plan (1998), Dancing Away (1998) and (with Luke
Jennings) The Faber Pocket Guide to Ballet (2004). Luke Jennings is the
dance critic for The Observer and has written extensively about dance
and contemporary culture for the New Yorker and in the UK press. He is
also an award-winning documentary film-maker and the author of several
novels - Breach Candy (1993), Atlantic (1995) and Beauty Story (1998)
and Blood Knots (2010). Deborah Bull was a Principal Dancer with The
Royal Ballet, noted for her performances in the works of Forsythe and
MacMillan. She is now Creative Director of the Royal Opera House as well
as a writer and broadcaster. She has written and presented several
programmes for BBC TV and radio, including the award-winning 'The
Dancer's Body'. She is the author of The Vitality Plan (1998), Dancing
Away (1998) and (with Luke Jennings) The Faber Pocket Guide to Ballet
(2004).
