Ballet Modern Dance

The development of ballet and modern dance since the Renaissance, including biographical profiles.

Ballet and modern dance.

This book is concerned mostly with the ballet of both the Russian and English schools. Where other dance styles are mentioned they are considered with reference to ballet. Several famous ballerinas are mentioned, such as Anna Pavlova. There are also illustrations.

Lois Greenfield's unique approach to photographing the human form in motion has redefined the genre of dance photography and transcended its limitations. Rather than shooting literal moments from a dance, Greenfield captures split-second movements created specifically for her camera. Her astonishing images of dancers in mid-flight appear to defy all laws of physics, with her performers seeming to levitate and assume incredible sculptural forms. Moving Still charts Greenfield's shift to colour photography and from shooting with a film camera to a digital camera. It also illustrates the evolution of her individual style pioneered in her previous books, Breaking Bounds and Airborne. These radical changes over the last fifteen years or so have influenced the way she conceives her pictures and have seen Greenfield move from capturing high-energy moments to exploring more ambiguous and enigmatic scenarios - without any digital manipulation. The book showcases more than 150 of these breathtaking new images featuring leading contemporary dancers and well-known dance companies. Divided into four picture sections, the free-flowing, rhythmic design of the book reflects the dynamism and grace of Greenfield's photographs. William A. Ewing, the eminent photography writer and curator, contributes an interview with the photographer about her work, as well as an introduction. Greenfield herself, through commentaries on the photographs, offers fascinating insights into her creative process behind the camera and the challenges she faces in shooting these images. The result is an absorbing journey through Greenfield's work that celebrates not only contemporary dance, but also the transformative power of photography.

"Nearly four hundred and fifty years in, ballet still resonates-though the stages have become international, and the dancers, athletes far removed from noble amateurs. While vibrations from the form's beginnings clearly resound, much has transformed. Nowadays ballet dancers aspire to work across disciplines with choreographers who value a myriad of abilities. Dance theorists and historians make known possibilities and polemics in lieu of notating dances verbatim, and critics do the daily work of recording performance histories and interviewing artists. Ideas circulate, questions arise, and discussions about how to resist ballet's outmoded traditions take precedence. In the dance community, calls for innovation have defined palpable shifts in ballet's direction and resultantly we have arrived at a new moment in its history that is unquestionably recognized as a genre onto its own: Contemporary Ballet. An aspect of this recent discipline is that its dancemakers, more often than not, seek to reorient the viewer by celebrating what could be deemed vulnerabilities, re-construing ideals of perfection, problematizing the marginalized/mainstream dichotomy, bringing audiences closer in to observe, and letting the art become an experience rather than a distant object preciously guarded out of reach. Hence, the practice of ballet is moving to become a less-mediated and more active process in many circumstances. Performers and audiences alike are challenged, and while convention is still omnipresent, choices are being made. For some, this approach has been drawn on for decades, and for others it signifies a changing of the guard, yet however we arrive there, the conclusion is the same: Contemporary Ballet is not a style. That is to say, it is not a trend, phase, or fashionable term that will fade, rather it is a clear period in ballet's time deserved of investigation. And it is into this moment that we enter"--