Bolshoi Confidential Secrets Of The Russian Ballet From The Rule Of The Tsars To Today

Author : Simon Morrison
Publisher : Liveright Publishing
Page : 512 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2016-10-11
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780871408303

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Bolshoi Confidential: Secrets of the Russian Ballet from the Rule of the Tsars to Today by Simon Morrison Pdf

In this “incredibly rich” (New York Times) definitive history of the Bolshoi Ballet, visionary performances onstage compete with political machinations backstage. A critical triumph, Simon Morrison’s “sweeping and authoritative” (Guardian) work, Bolshoi Confidential, details the Bolshoi Ballet’s magnificent history from its earliest tumults to recent scandals. On January 17, 2013, a hooded assailant hurled acid into the face of the artistic director, making international headlines. A lead soloist, enraged by institutional power struggles, later confessed to masterminding the crime. Morrison gives the shocking violence context, describing the ballet as a crucible of art and politics beginning with the disreputable inception of the theater in 1776, through the era of imperial rule, the chaos of revolution, the oppressive Soviet years, and the Bolshoi’s recent $680 million renovation. With vibrant detail including “sex scandals, double-suicide pacts, bribery, arson, executions, prostitution rings, embezzlement, starving orphans, [and] dead cats in lieu of flowers” (New Republic), Morrison makes clear that the history of the Bolshoi Ballet mirrors that of Russia itself.

Author : Simon Morrison
Publisher : Knopf Canada
Page : 400 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2016-10-11
Category : History
ISBN : 9780345814258

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Bolshoi Confidential by Simon Morrison Pdf

In this enthralling, definitive new history of the Bolshoi Ballet, sensational performances onstage compete with political machinations backstage. On January 17, 2013, a hooded assailant hurled acid into the face of the artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet, making international headlines. A lead soloist, enraged by institutional power struggles, later confessed to masterminding the crime. The scandal, though shocking, is not an anomaly in the turbulent and tormented yet magnificent history of the Bolshoi. Renowned music historian Simon Morrison reveals the ballet as a crucible of art and politics, beginning with the disreputable inception of the theatre in 1776 and proceeding through the era of imperial rule, the chaos of revolution, the oppressive Soviet years, and the recent $680 million renovation project. Drawing on exclusive archival research, Morrison creates a richly detailed tableau of the centuries-long war between world-class art and life-threatening politics that has defined this storied institution. As Morrison makes clear, as Russia goes, so goes the Bolshoi Ballet.

Author : Nadine Meisner
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 553 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2019-06-03
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780190659295

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Marius Petipa by Nadine Meisner Pdf

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.

Author : Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel,Jill Nunes Jensen
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 1013 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2021
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780190871499

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The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet by Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel,Jill Nunes Jensen Pdf

"Nearly four hundred and fifty years in, ballet still resonates-though the stages have become international, and the dancers, athletes far removed from noble amateurs. While vibrations from the form's beginnings clearly resound, much has transformed. Nowadays ballet dancers aspire to work across disciplines with choreographers who value a myriad of abilities. Dance theorists and historians make known possibilities and polemics in lieu of notating dances verbatim, and critics do the daily work of recording performance histories and interviewing artists. Ideas circulate, questions arise, and discussions about how to resist ballet's outmoded traditions take precedence. In the dance community, calls for innovation have defined palpable shifts in ballet's direction and resultantly we have arrived at a new moment in its history that is unquestionably recognized as a genre onto its own: Contemporary Ballet. An aspect of this recent discipline is that its dancemakers, more often than not, seek to reorient the viewer by celebrating what could be deemed vulnerabilities, re-construing ideals of perfection, problematizing the marginalized/mainstream dichotomy, bringing audiences closer in to observe, and letting the art become an experience rather than a distant object preciously guarded out of reach. Hence, the practice of ballet is moving to become a less-mediated and more active process in many circumstances. Performers and audiences alike are challenged, and while convention is still omnipresent, choices are being made. For some, this approach has been drawn on for decades, and for others it signifies a changing of the guard, yet however we arrive there, the conclusion is the same: Contemporary Ballet is not a style. That is to say, it is not a trend, phase, or fashionable term that will fade, rather it is a clear period in ballet's time deserved of investigation. And it is into this moment that we enter"--

Author : Marina Harss
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Page : 327 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2023-10-03
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780374717490

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The Boy from Kyiv by Marina Harss Pdf

The Boy from Kyiv is the life story of Alexei Ratmansky, the most celebrated ballet choreographer of our time. Alexei Ratmansky is transforming ballet for the twenty-first century. An artist of daring imagination, the choreographer has created breathtakingly original works for the world’s most revered companies. He has fashioned a singular approach to balletic storytelling that bridges the space between narrative and abstraction and heightens ambiguity and surprise on the stage. He has boldly restored great centuries-old ballets to their former glory, combining archival research with his own choreographic genius to retrieve detail and color once lost to the ages. And above all, he is renowned for fusing the Western and Eastern ballet traditions, and for drawing on the visual arts, literature, music, film, and beyond with inspired vim, to forge a style that is vibrant, eclectic, and utterly new: one that promises to leave an indelible mark on this venerable art form. But before Ratmansky was the artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet, the resident choreographer at American Ballet Theatre, the artist in residence at New York City Ballet, and generally, as The New Yorker has it, “the most sought-after man in ballet,” he was just a boy from Kyiv, sneaking into the ballet at night, concocting his own juvenile adaptations of novels and stories, and dreaming up new possibilities for bodies in motion. In The Boy from Kyiv, the first biography of this groundbreaking artist, the celebrated dance writer Marina Harss takes us behind the curtain to reveal Ratmansky’s fascinating life, from his Soviet boyhood through his globe-spanning career. Over a decade in the making, this biography arrives at a pivotal moment in Ratmansky’s journey, one that has seen him painfully and publicly break ties with Russia, the country in which he made his name, in solidarity with his native Ukraine, and take on a new challenge at the storied New York City Ballet. Told with the lyricism, drama, and verve that befit its subject, The Boy from Kyiv is a riveting account of this major artist’s ascent to the peaks of his field, a mesmerizing study of creativity in action, and a triumphant testament to ballet’s enduring vitality.

Author : Samuel N. Dorf
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 241 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2019
Category : Music
ISBN : 9780190612092

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Performing Antiquity by Samuel N. Dorf Pdf

Performing Antiquity: Ancient Greek Music and Dance from Paris to Delphi, 1890-1930 investigates collaborations between French and American scholars of Greek antiquity (archaeologists, philologists, classicists, and musicologists), and the performing artists (dancers, composers, choreographers and musicians) who brought their research to life at the birth of Modernism. The book tells the story of performances taking place at academic conferences, the Paris Op ra, ancient amphitheaters in Delphi, and private homes. These musical and dance collaborations are built on reciprocity: the performers gain new insight into their craft while learning new techniques or repertoire and the scholars gain an opportunity to bring theory into experimental practice, that is, they have a chance see/hear/experience what they have studied and imagined. The performers receive the imprimatur of scholarship, the stamp of authenticity, and validation for their creative activities. Drawing from methods and theory from musicology, dance studies, performance studies, queer studies, archaeology, classics and art history the book shows how new scholarly methods and technologies altered the performance, and, ultimately, the reception of music and dance of the past. Acknowledging and critically examining the complex relationships performers and scholars had with the pasts they studied does not undermine their work. Rather, understanding our own limits, biases, dreams, obsessions, desires, loves, and fears enriches the ways we perform the past.

Author : Douglas Smith
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Page : 848 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2016-11-22
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780374711238

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Rasputin by Douglas Smith Pdf

On the centenary of the death of Rasputin comes a definitive biography that will dramatically change our understanding of this fascinating figure A hundred years after his murder, Rasputin continues to excite the popular imagination as the personification of evil. Numerous biographies, novels, and films recount his mysterious rise to power as Nicholas and Alexandra's confidant and the guardian of the sickly heir to the Russian throne. His debauchery and sinister political influence are the stuff of legend, and the downfall of the Romanov dynasty was laid at his feet. But as the prizewinning historian Douglas Smith shows, the true story of Rasputin's life and death has remained shrouded in myth. A major new work that combines probing scholarship and powerful storytelling, Rasputin separates fact from fiction to reveal the real life of one of history's most alluring figures. Drawing on a wealth of forgotten documents from archives in seven countries, Smith presents Rasputin in all his complexity--man of God, voice of peace, loyal subject, adulterer, drunkard. Rasputin is not just a definitive biography of an extraordinary and legendary man but a fascinating portrait of the twilight of imperial Russia as it lurched toward catastrophe.

Author : Elena Dubinets
Publisher : Indiana University Press
Page : 383 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2021-10-05
Category : Music
ISBN : 9780253057808

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Russian Composers Abroad by Elena Dubinets Pdf

As waves of composers migrated from Russia in the 20th century, they grappled with the complex struggle between their own traditions and those of their adopted homes. Russian Composers Abroad explores the self-identity of these émigrés, especially those who left from the 1970s on, and how aspects of their diasporic identities played out in their music. Elena Dubinets provides a journey through the complexities of identity formation and cultural production under globalization and migration, elucidating sociological perspectives of the post-Soviet world that have caused changes in composers' outlooks, strategies, and rankings. Russian Composers Abroad is an illuminating study of creative ideas that are often shaped by the exigencies of financing and advancement rather than just by the vision of the creators and the demands of the public.

Author : Victoria Phillips
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 497 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2020
Category : History
ISBN : 9780190610364

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Martha Graham's Cold War by Victoria Phillips Pdf

Revision of author's thesis (doctoral)--Columbia University, 2013, titled Strange commodity of cultural exchange: Martha Graham and the State Department on tour, 1955-1987.

Author : Elizabeth B. Schwall
Publisher : UNC Press Books
Page : 319 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2021-04-06
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781469662985

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Dancing with the Revolution by Elizabeth B. Schwall Pdf

Elizabeth B. Schwall aligns culture and politics by focusing on an art form that became a darling of the Cuban revolution: dance. In this history of staged performance in ballet, modern dance, and folkloric dance, Schwall analyzes how and why dance artists interacted with republican and, later, revolutionary politics. Drawing on written and visual archives, including intriguing exchanges between dancers and bureaucrats, Schwall argues that Cuban dancers used their bodies and ephemeral, nonverbal choreography to support and critique political regimes and cultural biases. As esteemed artists, Cuban dancers exercised considerable power and influence. They often used their art to posit more radical notions of social justice than political leaders were able or willing to implement. After 1959, while generally promoting revolutionary projects like mass education and internationalist solidarity, they also took risks by challenging racial prejudice, gender norms, and censorship, all of which could affect dancers personally. On a broader level, Schwall shows that dance, too often overlooked in histories of Latin America and the Caribbean, provides fresh perspectives on what it means for people, and nations, to move through the world.

Author : Mathilde Kschessinska
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 232 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2019-03-20
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 178987078X

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Dancing in Petersburg by Mathilde Kschessinska Pdf

Mathilde Kschessinska, Prima ballerina of the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatre in pre-Revolutionary Russia, tells her life story in these moving and dramatic memoirs.

Author : Gelsey Kirkland,Greg Lawrence
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 286 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 1988
Category : Anorexia nervosa
ISBN : 0140103856

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Dancing on My Grave by Gelsey Kirkland,Greg Lawrence Pdf

Author : Masha Salazkina
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 230 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2024
Category : History
ISBN : 9780520400757

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Romancing Yesenia by Masha Salazkina Pdf

"This book considers the unexpected and mostly unexamined popularity of the Mexican film Yesenia (Alfredo B. Crevenna, 1971) in the Soviet Union. Set during the Second Franco-Mexican war, this unassuming movie melodrama was based on a successful television series, itself an adaptation of a popular women's romance graphic novel, a genre that was extremely common in mid-century Mexico. Screened in the Soviet Union in 1975, Yesenia became the highest grossing film in the history of Soviet film exhibition, unsurpassed by any movie, foreign or domestic. Based on ticket sales alone, it was seen by an astounding 91.4 million viewes in only the first year of its release. Yesenia's popularity in the socialist bloc, largely unbeknown to its Mexican producers, continued for decades after its initial release as the film migrated from cinemas to television screens and video. Boosted by its success with Soviet audiences, the film enjoyed a similarly spectacular exhibition history in China in the late 1970s, when the country was opening itself up to more international media, paving the way for other Mexican and Latin American productions broadcasted on Chinese television in decades to follow. Approaching this period restrospectively, cognizant of more contemporary developments in the global media, I conceive of this episode in film history through a framework of television culture whose increasing impact, I argue, shaped both the film's Mexican production and its subsequent reception within the Socialist bloc. I also argue that Yesenia's popularity carved out a crucial node within the global circuit of cultural and industrial networks, further enabling Latin American media's transcontinental reach"--Provided by publisher.

Author : Sheila Fitzpatrick
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 312 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 1999-03-04
Category : History
ISBN : 9780195050004

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Everyday Stalinism by Sheila Fitzpatrick Pdf

Focusing on urban areas in the 1930s, this college professor illuminates the ways that Soviet city-dwellers coped with this world, examining such diverse activities as shopping, landing a job, and other acts.

Author : Elizabeth Klett
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 363 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2019-10-16
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781351238663

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Choreographing Shakespeare by Elizabeth Klett Pdf

Choreographing Shakespeare presents a hitherto unexplored history of the choreographers and performers who have created dance adaptations of Shakespeare. This book investigates forty dance works in genres such as ballet, modern dance, and hip-hop, produced between 1940 and 2016 by choreographers in Britain, America, and Europe, all of which use Shakespeare’s plays and Sonnets as their source material. By combining scholarly analysis of these productions with practice-based conversations from six contemporary choreographers, Klett offers both breadth of coverage and in-depth analysis of how Shakespeare’s poetic language is translated into the usually wordless medium of dance, and shows exactly how these dance adaptations move beyond the Shakespearean texts to engage with musical and choreographic influences. Ideal for students of Shakespeare and Dance Studies, Choreographing Shakespeare explores how dance adaptations strive to design legible and intelligible stories, while ultimately celebrating the beauty of pure movement.