Footnotes: Dancing the World's Best-Loved Ballets Book

Footnotes: Dancing the World`s Best-Loved Ballets is a behind-the-scenes look at seven classic ballets and the men and women who have danced them. Based on interviews with some of the best-known performers, former principal dancer Frank Augustyn and writer Shelley Tanaka reveal the reality behind one of the world`s most admired art forms. Illustrated with 100 contemporary and archival photographs of dancers both on the stage and behind the scenes, Footnotes is a wondrous journey through the world of ballet. Behind the dazzling stage lights and away from the audience`s thunderous applause, a world of instructors, choreographers, costume designers and makeup artists labour to bring each production to life. There are anecdotes about some of the world`s greatest dancers, including Rudolf Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Margot Fonteyn and Paloma Herrera. Read about Karen Kain`s on-stage nap during a performance of The Sleeping Beauty, and the ballerina who pirouetted herself off the stage and into the laps of the musicians in the orchestra pit below. From ballet`s auspicious beginnings in the royal courts of seventeenth-century France to the reinvention of the male dancer, Footnotes takes a unique look at a world where strength, determination, talent and beauty reign supreme. (2001)Read More