Fb2 Ballet's Magic Kingdom: Selected Writings on Dance in Russia, 1911-1925 ePub

by Akim Volynsky,Stanley J. Rabinowitz

Akim Volynsky Stanley J. Rabinowitz Performing Arts English

Fb2 Ballet's Magic Kingdom: Selected Writings on Dance in Russia, 1911-1925 ePub

Category:	Performing Arts
Subcategory:	Photo and Art
Author:	Akim Volynsky,Stanley J. Rabinowitz
ISBN:	0300164491
ISBN13:	978-0300164497
Language:	English
Publisher:	Yale University Press (May 25, 2010)
Pages:	352
Fb2 eBook:	1568 kb
ePub eBook:	1328 kb
Digital formats:	mbr lrf lit docx

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Ballet dancers-Russia (Federation)-History. I. Rabinowitz, Stanley J. II. Title. Q Illustrations follow page 86 Acknowledgments xi A Note on the Text xv Introduction: Akim Volynsky and His Writings on Dance xvii.

Ballet dancers-Russia (Federation)-History.

This book is indeed, as Rabinowitz writes in his excellent introduction, Volynsky’s hymn to the sublime art of dance.

Nijinsky and the Ballets Russes. Although attributed to Italian dancer, choreographer, and writer Carlo Blasis, this manual contains an abridgement of Blasis's writing on the subject of social dance as published in The Code of Terpsichore (1830). The manual's discussion of specific dances is augmented by M. Lemaitre and includes quadrilles, the waltz, polka, schottisch, polka-mazurka, redowa and cotillon.

Stanley J. Rabinowitz selects and translates forty of Volynsky's articles-vivid . By the time he made his debut in 1911 as a dance journalist for the widely.

Ballet's Magic Kingdom book . Akim Volynsky was a Russian literary critic, journalist, and. Akim Volynsky was a Russian literary critic, journalist, and art historian who became Saint Petersburg’s liveliest and most prolific ballet critic in the early part of the twentieth century.

Yale University Press, New Haven and London 2008.

Mobile version (beta). Ballet's Magic Kingdom: Selected Writings on Dance in Russia, 1911-1925. Download (pdf, . 4 Mb) Donate Read. Epub FB2 mobi txt RTF. Converted file can differ from the original. If possible, download the file in its original format.

Ballet’s Magic Kingdom marks the first translation into English of Volynsky’s dance criticism, and there’s .

Akim Volynsky was a Russian literary critic, journalist, and art historian who became Saint Petersburg’s liveliest and most prolific ballet critic in the early part of the twentieth century. This book, the first English edition of his provocative and influential writings, provides a striking look at life inside the world of Russian ballet at a crucial era in its history.

Stanley J. Rabinowitz selects and translates forty of Volynsky’s articles—vivid, eyewitness accounts that sparkle with details about the careers and personalities of such dance luminaries as Anna Pavlova, Mikhail Fokine, Tamara Karsavina, and George Balanchine, at that time a young dancer in the Maryinsky company whose keen musical sense and creative interpretive power Volynsky was one of the first to recognize. Rabinowitz also translates Volynsky’s magnum opus, The Book of Exaltations, an elaborate meditation on classical dance technique that is at once a primer and an ideological treatise. Throughout his writings, Rabinowitz argues in his critical introduction, which sets Volynsky’s life and work against the backdrop of the principal intellectual currents of his time, Volynsky emphasizes the spiritual and ethereal qualities of ballet.

Kadar

Ballet's Magic Kingdom is definitely one of the few dance critic volumes that is a must-read for balletomanes (the others are Arlene Croce's great series of books and Edwin Denby's collected writings). Volynsky was a Jewish writer in St. Petersburg during the last years of the Imperial Ballet era. He saw Mathilde Kschessinskaya, Anna Pavlova, Olga Spessivtseva, Tamara Karsavina and other legendary names dance. His descriptions of them are vivid and illuminating. For instance he says that Mathilde Kschessinskaya's feet had "almost no arch" but that she wowed the crowds with effortless "double and triple turns" and "the most difficult cabrioles." A female dancer dancing cabrioles? Even today that implies a dancer of remarkable strength and virtuosity. His favorite dancer was Anna Pavlova. His description: "Anna Pavlova has a phenomenal arch, which she almost dares not bend entirely when she lifts herself on pointe. If she were to extend it, she'd break her foot."

Volynsky is like many balletomanes fiercely opinionated. For instance he loathed the "revolutionary" ballets of Mikhail Fokine. He also loathed the modern dance movement of Isadora Duncan but praised Duncan's "lovely artistry." He follows up with this paean to Duncan's charisma: "Duncan is beautiful in the purity of her emotions, which inspire the viewer more rapidly than any other more perfect form of art." He was a fierce protector of Petipa and the purity of academic classical ballet.

The second half of the book is devoted to Volynsky's "The Book of Exaltations: The ABC's of Classical Dance." Think it sounds boring? It's not. Volynsky applies his voluminous knowledge of Greek classical culture to create the most vivid description about the basic structure of classical ballet. His essays on turnout, posture, croise vs. efface, are models not only of dance writing but of descriptive writing. Volynsky is knowledgable, passionate, opinionated, and a great writer. His book is a must-have.

Amhirishes

I am so thrilled with this book that I want to kiss the translator's hands. The deep thinker, dance critic, art historian, AND ballet pedagogue Volynsky? Writings during a crucial period in Russian and ballet history? In English? Too good to be true... If only ballet would be taken so seriously today. It should be. It can withstand the intellectual rigor.

Levion

Needed more interpretation by compiler

elegant stranger

I purchased this book as a gift for my daughter and son-in-law who were ballet dancers in an earlier time. Now they are interested in other forms of dance. I thought that it would be a good reminder of days gone by and they seemed delighted with the gift.

Vizil

I had read the NY Times Book Review of this book and purchased it. It arrived in a timely manner, in excellent condition. It provides a unique perspective on a very significant period in ballet history.

Pettalo

Excellent read.

Good details and overall professionalism.

Tocuh of Art in the composition.