Ballet and dance reference material

[alison]

I'm looking to produce a list of some basic reference material which might be useful to people writing about dance who need some background information - nothing too intense - sort of thing which might be found online or in a library (ha ha).  So far, I've got:

 

ABT ballet dictionary

Something similar via Wikipedia

 

I need to root around in some boxes for exact titles, but:

?Robert Greskovic Ballet 101?

The Gaynor Minden book

 

Out of print, but possibly still accessible somewhere?

Balanchine ?101 ballets

Clarke/Crisp blue book on lots of ballets

Someone else wrote one of those ...

 

Would welcome any more suggestions - thanks!

[RMM1]

1 hour ago, alison said:

Clarke/Crisp blue book on lots of ballets

Someone else wrote one of those ...

 

Zoe Anderson wrote 'The Ballet Lover's Companion'

[Pas de Quatre]

- Classical Ballet Technique by Gretchen Ward Warren. It illustrates different versions of the same steps and positions according to the different schools of dance.

- Basic Principles of Classical Ballet by Agrippina Vaganova. 

These are my two favourite reference books.

Also 'Suki Schorer on Balanchine Technique'.

Edited July 25 by Pas de Quatre
Add last book

[Emeralds]

Showing my age and my penchant for nosing around old bookshops and new ones, but the late Horst Koegler's The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Ballet (Second edition, 1987) was one of the best books on the planet in the 1980s and 1990s. Such a pity Oxford University Press didn't commission him to do a third edition before he passed away nor to get another good writer to update it.

 

For historical things and facts that happened before 1988, it is fantastic and reliable. The entries on dancers and companies are concise yet informative- unlike Encyclopedia Britannica, which are so brief that they make me feel they are saying "your topic of interest is boring to us". (I found Macmillan A-Z Encyclopedias better for ballet....and many other topics.)

 

To this day, despite having a degree and A levels in subjects totally unrelated to ballet, Mr Koegler's dictionary remains the only dictionary I've ever read cover to cover!  A must read for anyone needing historical ballet facts. 

Edited July 25 by Emeralds

[Emeralds]

5 hours ago, alison said:

 

Out of print, but possibly still accessible somewhere?

Balanchine ?101 ballets

 

101 Stories of the Great Ballets  by George Balanchine and Francis Mason - published by Bantam Doubleday Dell (1975 reissue). Currently available on Amazon at half price! 

 

Also:

Margot Fonteyn's The Magic of Dance - published by BBC Books (1980) - Incredibly there are 2 copies (secondhand) available on Amazon at the moment at 70p! (from World of Books) A very well laid out and edited book still relevant today. (She had a co-writer but I can't find her name at the moment.) 

 

I keep looking in various shops - from the ROH Shop, Coliseum or Royal Albert Hall shops when ENB is performing there, to large bookshops or chains like Waterstones, WH Smith, Books Etc and so on-  to see if there are newer, modern general n ballet books for today's generation (ie not large academic volunes like those by Roland John Wiley) but sadly, most seem to be for very small children (of the "this is a shoe", "ballet is danced to music" variety), autobiographies / biographies or are just glossy fan books of companies or dancers. Not a lot of informative books for adults or anyone with a reading age over 8.....

Edited July 25 by Emeralds

[Angela]

Very VERY old, but a treasure for the classics, many forgotten ballets there: Cyril W. Beaumont, Complete Book of Ballets

Very expensive, but a great overview: Nancy Reynolds / Malcolm McCormick: No Fixed Points. Dance in the Twentieth Century.

 

20 hours ago, alison said:

?Robert Greskovic Ballet 101?

That's the title - very useful!

[MAB]

Beaumont also wrote Supplement to Complete Book of Ballets, my edition is 1945.  F. Reyna's A Concise History of Ballet (Thames & Hudson 1964) is excellent as a source of information on early ballet in Italy.

 

I recommend a trip to Hay on Wye for ballet books, almost impossible to get to on public transport though.