Ballet books and ballet films and documentaries

[David]

Indeed! How could they omit West Side Story but include Black Swan? 

Or Powell and Pressberger's other brilliant dance/opera film - "The Tales of Hoffman" with Moira Shearer and Ludmilla Tcherina?

[Jan McNulty]

I've just picked up a review for the film Polina, danser sa vie:

 

http://montrealgazette.com/entertainment/movies/movie-review-polina-follows-young-dancer-on-her-own-path

[sybarite2015@]

I recently finished a very good novel based on the life of Nureyev called Dancer by Colum McCann which I highly recommend. An excellent and engaging novel about the great Russian dancer, Rudolf Nureyev, which has some truly beautiful passages of writing including an astonishing 30-page long sentence! From his early childhood in Ufa to his death of AIDS in Paris this novel covers it all but omits a lot as well and tends to focus on his inner life more than the bare facts. It also brings life in Soviet Russia wonderfully to life and makes Nureyev come more to life than the mammoth biography by Kavanagh. It makes a wonderful companion piece to that book. Highly recommended.

[sybarite2015@]

I've also read the latest memoir /erotica by ex NYC ballet dancer Toni Bentley entitled The Surrender. It is a beautiful and deeply philosophical book. 

I'm also reading her Winter Season, A Dancer's Journal 

& White Swan, Black Swan by Adrienne Sharp (short stories set in the world of ballet) and still ploughing through the mammoth Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet by Jennifer Homans!

 

--

 

Someone also mentioned to me a new documentary about Sergei Polunin called, I think, Dancer which I can't wait to see.

[Ellie]

"Dancing on Water" is absolutely one of the best ballet memoirs ever written. Tchernichova saw so much -- the Communist era of the USSR, the ABT under the Baryshnikov era, and her memories of some of the most famous names in ballet are priceless. Natalia Dudinskaya, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Alla Shelest, Natalia Makarova, etc. are all very vivid figures in her book. It's not just a ballet book, the memoir is also an unsentimental look at Cold War Russia. Really a great read.

 

Also this book benefited from some tight editing. It's one of those books where you wonder which stories got edited out because it's such a compelling read.

I thoroughly enjoyed 'Dancing on Water', both the historical/political perspective as well as the artistic. I've only read it once so far, but it is definitely one of those memoirs, in my opinion, that is a 'keeper' - and deserves to be read more than once . In the meantime I've also ordered Sir Peter Wright's book 'Wrights and Wrongs'  2nd hand from Amazon. (under 10 pounds - there was a 'new' copy going for over 60 !!!) I know that the opinions have been mixed about this autobiography and am aware that a revised edition is being planned.....but I couldn't resist

[cavycapers]

Recent guilty pleasure! War and Peace they ain't, and they have every ballet cliche going, but still strangely addictive.

Shiny Broken Pieces and Tiny Pretty Things

by Sona Charaipotra (Author), Dhonielle Clayton (Author)

[ninamargaret]

Of course, one of the classic books for children is Ballet Shoes, by Noel Streatfield. Read this many times when I was a child. And am I the only member of the forum to remember a series about a girl who joins the Vic Wells?

[pianolady]

Of course, one of the classic books for children is Ballet Shoes, by Noel Streatfield. Read this many times when I was a child. And am I the only member of the forum to remember a series about a girl who joins the Vic Wells?

Are you thinking of Lorna Hill's Sadlers Wells series? I have read most of these, the first two, A Dream of Sadler's Wells, and Veronica at the Wells are I think the strongest- they create a very vivid character in Veronica Weston, an orphaned daughter of a clergyman (interesting that Streatfeild, too, was a clergyman's daughter-it does seem an opportune profession in fiction to provide a background for a culturally refined but impoverished heroine). The account of training is based on Hill's daughter Vicki who was a student at Sadler's Wells. It's a lovely evocation too of life as a young woman who follows her dreams, and doesn't shine at first. The later books are I think less successful, although still very interesting-they occasionally verge on the melodramatic with overly bad baddies and a few unlikely plots, -but overall a really underrated writer who deserves to be reprinted more widely.

[_emeralds]

I stumbled upon this lovely documentary on Doubrovska the other day. It has some great interview footage with Allegra Kent and Maria Tallchief. Doubrovska herself talks about working with Nijinska in the Ballet Russes days

 

 

[Jan McNulty]

I've just come across an article in the Guardian.  Two new collections of stories by Noel Stretfeild are to be published (not sure if they will be ballet-based stories):

 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/24/virago-to-publish-two-new-collections-by-ballet-shoes-author-noel-streatfeild