In this ground-breaking study of style in six ballets by Sir Frederick Ashton, Geraldine Morris examines the contribution they have made to twentieth century dance and art. Central to the discussion are questions about performance and its connection with style. What do we mean by style in dance? How do we identify it? How can it be retained? Can choreographed movement be distinguished from the danse d'ecole? Does any of this matter? Having considered the nature of style and its relationship to early twentieth century training in Britain, Morris goes on to discuss the six works: A Wedding Bouquet, Illuminations, Birthday Offering, Jazz Calendar, Daphnis and Chloe and A Month in the Country. Delivered with verve and enthusiasm, her analysis and examination of Ashton's role, together with that of the dancers, designers, writers and musicians, is both innovative and thought-provoking. The book is intended for dancers, students and dance enthusiasts who have enjoyed these great works and wish to understand them more fully. Having danced with the Royal Ballet during the years when Ashton was the company's Director, the author brings inside knowledge, informed and enlivened by years of studying the dances. The result is exhilarating and enlightening but also controversial. Geraldine Morris is a Senior Lecturer in Dance Studies at the University of Roehampton.

This revised edition of Vaughan's seminal work includes a new final chapter and an updated chronology of work. It should be useful for both historians of 20th-century ballet and for lovers of Ashton's work.

A biography of the choreographer Frederick Ashton which traces his progress from Peruvian childhood and unhappy schooldays, through initiation into a homosexual artistic coterie, to a varied career in dance, culminating in public and royal acclaim.

The second edition of Frederick Ashton's Ballets: Style, Performance, Choreography adds two further ballets to this ground-breaking study of Frederick Ashton's choreography. It not only examines the contribution these ballets made to twentieth century dance art, but also presents a detailed account of Ashton's work and dances, demonstrating his remarkable choreographic and artistic talent. Having danced with the Royal Ballet Company during the years Ashton was Director, author, Geraldine Morris also draws on her years as an academic in the field. As well as highlighting the dances, the book explores the contribution made by Ashton's collaborators, both designers and musicians. Central is the issue of identity and how style can be retained in dance, despite alterations in training. It considers the problem of how the values of ballet training change, thereby affecting contemporary performances of his works. Through eight works Morris examines the various sources that Ashton used, whether they were dances with words, or those influenced by dancers' movement style, jazz dance, abstraction, mysticism, or narrative. With this new material, the second edition makes a significant contribution to dance scholarship.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, LOS ANGELES TIMES, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY For more than four hundred years, the art of ballet has stood at the center of Western civilization. Its traditions serve as a record of our past. Lavishly illustrated and beautifully told, Apollo’s Angels—the first cultural history of ballet ever written—is a groundbreaking work. 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. In the twentieth century, émigré dancers taught their art to a generation in the United States and in Western Europe, setting off a new and radical transformation of dance. Jennifer Homans, a historian, critic, and former professional ballerina, wields a knowledge of dance born of dedicated practice. Her admiration and love for the ballet, as Entertainment Weekly notes, brings “a dancer’s grace and sure-footed agility to the page.”

Peter Wright has been a dancer, choreographer, teacher, producer and director in the theatre as well as in television for over 70 years. In Wrights & Wrongs, Peter offers his often surprising views of today's dance world, lessons learned – and yet to learn – from a lifetime's experience of ballet, commercial theatre and television. Peter started his career in wartime, with the Kurt Jooss company. He has worked with such greats as Pina Bausch, Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev, Marcia Haydée, Richard Cragun, Monica mason, Karen Kain, Miyako Yoshida and Carlos Acosta - as well as today's generation of starts including Alina Cajocaru, Marianela Nunez, Natalia Osipova and Lauren Cuthbertson. While now regarded as part of the British ballet establishment, for many years Peter developed his career outside London, particularly in Germany with John Cranko's Stuttgart Ballet. That distance gives him a unique and unrivalled view on ballet companies. His close association with choreographers Frederick Ashton, Ninette de Valois, founder of the Royal Ballet, Kenneth MacMillan and David Bintley gives Peter an authoritative perspective on British ballet. Wrights and Wrongs includes black-and-white photographs from Wright's career, and as Exeunt magazine comments: 'Anyone with an interest in British ballet will find plenty to occupy them in Wright's book... the many dramas and delights of his life in dance spring forth from the page with brio.'