Summary: "Unique among the arts, ballet has no written texts or standardized notation. It is a storytelling art passed on from teacher to student. A ballerina dancing 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 are also marked by the dramatic changes in dance and culture that followed. 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. Jennifer Homans, a historian and critic who was also a professional dancer, traces the evolution of technique, choreography, and performance in clear prose, drawing readers into the intricacies of the art with vivid descriptions of dances and the artists who made them"--From publisher description.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Homans brings her intimate experience as a dancer and her discerning dance critic's eye to her fascinating and exquisitely detailed history of ballet, an art that combines rigor and idealism. Homans begins with how the Renaissance belief in the transforming power of art engendered the first ballets, which were performed in the sixteenth-century French court of King Henri II and Catherine de Medici, thus launching ballet's long association with state governments. Louis XIV then established ballet's core rules and conventions, including the five "true" or noble positions. Homans thoroughly and conversantly tracks ballet's flourishing in France, robust flowering in Russia, and exuberance in the U.S., emphasizing the progression from elaborate artifice to profound expressiveness. Homans also warmly profiles pivotal ballet masters, choreographers, and dancers, including the pioneering ballerina Marie Taglioni in La Sylphide (1832), "the first modern ballet," and the essential Balanchine. Most arrestingly, Homans assesses ballet's grace under terror during the French and Russian revolutions, the world wars, and the cold war. Homans brings her glorious landmark study of ballet's ideals and enchantment to a somber close as she asks why this strong and supple "art of belief," which triumphed over catastrophe and adversity, is now in danger of extinction. Copyright 2010 Booklist Reviews.
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