Impossible project : the story of Russian ballet and its survival /

"Writing in 1829, a Russian critic referred to the art of ballet as an impossible project--impossible because it strives "to give an expressive language to body movements," while completely avoiding spoken dialogue. This impossibility, of which both ballet professionals and aficionado...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Khitrova, Daria (Author)
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2025]
Subjects:
Online Access:Connect to the full text of this electronic book
Table of Contents:
  • Introduction: How Ballet Histories Are Made
  • Ballet History: Process or Progress?
  • History as a Project: The Case of Noverre's Reform
  • Re-enter Krasovskaia, the Dancer Turned Historian
  • Ballet: A Moribund Medium?
  • From Here to There, or How Ballet Histories Are Mapped
  • 1 The Shadow of Noverre: Ballet in a Narrative Perspective
  • Classical Ballet: A History of a Notion
  • Complementary Stories
  • The Case of the Toxic Toe
  • Head and Feet
  • Lost in Translation
  • Petipa, the Man and the Machine
  • Saving Ballet
  • The Old and the New
  • Stage to Floor, or the Pragmatics of Ballet
  • 2 Modern Specters, or Body Politic to Body Balletic
  • The Emancipation of the Serfs, or the Sprite of the Valley
  • The Politics of Ballet, or the Ballet of Politics
  • Defamiliarization, or the Dance of the Frying Fish
  • Dance, War, and Peace
  • The Artiste-Director
  • Vsevolozhsky the Reformer
  • A Sleeping Kingdom
  • Gory Stories, Infant Spectators, and Other Memes of Ballet Lore
  • Enter Aurora
  • The Third Perspective
  • Two Historical Mythoi: Apostolic Succession and Movable Dance
  • Surviving by Splitting
  • Complementary Bodies
  • 3 Ballet as a Verbal Art: Apostasy and Theodicy
  • The View from the Water
  • Employment versus Service
  • Mutiny of the Mute
  • Exit Strategy
  • The Languages of Dance and the Languages We Speak
  • Fokine the Apostate
  • Akim Volynsky, or Short Story Long
  • Exeunt Omnes, Enter Ballet
  • A Theodicy for the Classical
  • Enter Levinson
  • Classical Repertoire: Enter Svetlov and Teliakovsky
  • A Lofty Shore: Enter Duncan, Shklovsky, Balanchine
  • Epilogue
  • Notes
  • Introduction