Apollo's Angels: A History Of Ballet (2010) - Plot & Excerpts
slow in pace but well-written. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who loves ballet - and by that, I mean folks who've trained in it or studied it. Other readers might be lost as the book details the ornate history of all the major players. The author could have been more descriptive on the style of certain choreographers, but it's difficult to describe dance in general, so perhaps the author did her best. For instance, I don't know what "corinthian" hands are versus "ionic". Would have been nice to see more photographs of specific styles to better illustrate the descriptive writing.I only wish the author had foreseen or included information on new choreographers, like Matthew Bourne. Perhaps he hasn't entered the lexicon. The history of ballet is presented as beautifully as you could hope. I expected to be bored by descriptions of 16th century court life or the Cecchetti method versus the Vaganova, but this is primarily an account of what ballet has meant to different people at different points in history, and it's fascinating. Some of it was unsurprising; for instance, ballet functioned as a code of mannerisms, to teach nobles how to be really good-looking while walking down the street. What I never knew is that ballet is also rooted in neoplatonic ideals: the precise mathematics of music and movement were supposed to reveal nothing less than divine celestial harmony (clearly this is why I'm interested in ballet).Learning about the evolution of ballet music was also really interesting. Apparently ballet music was cheesy, commercial and easy to dance to until Tchaikovsky arrived on the scene. Which explains (at least to me) why I can never remember a note of boring Giselle, but the scores of even the lesser-known Tchaikovsky ballets (Serenade, Mozartiana) are painfully beautiful to listen to.Of course the Balanchine chapters are the best, and it's easy to get caught up in the golden era of New York in the fifties and sixties, which Homans calls "one of the most exciting artistic revolutions of the century." Homans is a former professional dancer from Balanchine's School of American Ballet and has particular insight into his ballets and the reasons for which Balanchine's artistic zeitgeist couldn't survive his death (his relationship with his dancers was always present in the choreography, binding his dances to these individuals at this moment; his love for his ballerinas was part of their allure). The New York Times describes Homans's Balanchine narrative as never better told; it's a story I've read now in countless forms, and I think I agree.Homans also mourns the end of an era of artistic achievement. It feels true that ballet nowadays is more fearfully accomplished than ever, but decidedly not transcendent. Homans takes us through ballet's progression from the divine to the aristocratic to the democratic, through Balanchine's giving imperial Russian tradition to street kids from the outer boroughs and working-class kids from the Midwest, and creating an American art. But those raw materials have been processed and gentrified in a uniquely American fashion. In her introduction Homans tells us she wrote Apollo's Angels to answer her own questions about dancing; the question left unanswered is, what now? I have some ideas of my own, but that's for the next book.
What do You think about Apollo's Angels: A History Of Ballet (2010)?
It took about two hundred pages to get into it, but after that, it was gold.
—babs
I love dance, but this is just so dull...I must set it aside for now.
—Thinley
Beautiful, dense history with insights behind the curtain
—Cathy
