The Royal Ballet: 75 Years

by Zoë Anderson (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2007

  $14.51

  This book is a perceptive and critical account of the first 75 years of The Royal Ballet, tracing the company's growth, and its great cultural importance - an indispensable book for all lovers of ballet. In 1931, Ninette de Valois started a ballet company with just six dancers. Within twenty years, The Royal Ballet - as it became - was established as one of the world's great companies. It has produced celebrated dancers, from Margot Fonteyn to Darcey Bussell, and one of the richest repertoires in ballet. The company danced through the Blitz, won an international reputation in a single New York performance and added to the glamour of London's Swinging Sixties. It has established a distinctive English school of ballet, a pure classical style that could do justice to the 19th-century repertory and to new British classics. Leading dance critic, Zoe Anderson, vividly portrays the extraordinary personalities who created the company and the dancers who made such an impact on their audiences. She looks at the bad times as well as the good, examining the controversial directorships of Norman Morrice and Ross Stretton and the criticism fired at the company as the Royal Opera House closed for redevelopment.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2006

  $7.12

  This is a perceptive and critical account of the Royal Ballet's first 75 years, tracing the company's growth and extraordinary cultural importance. Dancing through the Blitz, winning an international reputation in a single New York performance, and adding to the glamour of London's Swinging Sixties, Zoe Anderson vividly portrays the extraordinary personalities who created the Royal Ballet, from Ninette de Valois to founding music director Constant Lambert through to chief choreographers Frederick Ashton and Kenneth MacMillan. She records the dancers: Fonteyn, Robert Helpmann and Moira Shearer, mould-breaking artists like Lynn Seymour, golden partnerships like that of Antoinette Sibley and Anthony Dowell, through to stars of today like Bussell, Cope, Cojocaru, Kobborg and Rojo, and guest artists who became part of the company, from Nureyev to Guillem. Giving full attention to dance style and performance standards, Zoe Anderson will put Royal Ballet repertoire in context, showing its place in ballet history and in the history of British arts. She looks at the bad times, as well as the good, examining the controversial directorships of Norman Morrice and Ross Stretton, and the criticism fired at the company as the Royal Opera House closed for redevelopment.