The Faber Pocket Guide to Ballet (Faber Pocket Guide)

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 Tchaikovskly 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. With entries for more than eighty works from ballet companies around the world, from Giselle and Swan Lake to Cinderella and Steptext, this book features plot summaries - an analysis of each ballet's principal themes - background and historical information - a unique, behind-the-scenes, and performer's-eye view Dip in at random.