From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Butoh (舞踏 Butō?) is the collective name for a diverse range of activities, techniques and motivations for dance, performance, or movement inspired by the Ankoku-Butoh (暗黒舞踏 ankoku butō?) movement. It typically involves playful and grotesque imagery, taboo topics, extreme or absurd environments, and is traditionally performed in white body makeup with slow hyper-controlled motion, with or without an audience. There is no set style, and it may be purely conceptual with no movement at all. Its origins have been attributed to Japanese dance legends Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno.

History

Butoh appeared first in Japan following World War II and specifically after student riots. The roles of authority were now subject to challenge and subversion. It also appeared as a reaction against the contemporary dance scene in Japan, which Hijikata felt was based on the one hand on imitating the West and on the other on imitating the Noh. He critiqued the current state of dance as overly superficial.

The first butoh piece, Kinjiki (Forbidden Colours) by Tatsumi Hijikata, premiered at a dance festival in 1959. It was based on the novel of the same name by Yukio Mishima. It explored the taboos of homosexuality and paedophilia and ended with a live chicken being held between the legs of Kazuo Ohno's son Yoshito Ohno, after which Hijikata chased Yoshito off the stage in darkness. Mainly as a result of the misconception that the chicken had died due to strangulation, this piece outraged the audience and resulted in the banning of Hijikata from the festival, establishing him as an iconoclast.

The earliest butoh performances were called (in English) "Dance Experience." In the early 1960s, Hijikata used the term "Ankoku-Buyou" (暗黒舞踊 – dance of darkness) to describe his dance. He later changed the word "buyo," filled with associations of Japanese classical dance, to "butoh," a long-discarded word for dance that originally meant European ballroom dancing.[1]

In later work, Hijikata continued to subvert conventional notions of dance. Inspired by writers such as Yukio Mishima (as noted above), Lautréamont, Artaud, Genet and de Sade, he delved into grotesquerie, darkness, and decay. At the same time, Hijikata explored the transmutation of the human body into other forms, such as those of animals. He also developed a poetic and surreal choreographic language, butoh-fu （舞踏譜） (fu means "notation" in Japanese), to help the dancer transform into other states of being.

The work developed beginning in 1960 by Kazuo Ohno with Tatsumi Hijikata was the beginning of what now is regarded as "butoh." In Jean Viala's and Nourit Masson-Sekinea's book Shades of Darkness, Ohno is regarded as "the soul of butoh," while Hijikata is seen as "the architect of butoh." Hijikata and Ohno later developed their own styles of teaching. Students of each style went on to create different groups such as Sankai Juku, a Japanese dance troupe well-known to fans in North America.

Students of these two great artists have been known to highlight the differing orientations of their masters. While Hijikata was a fearsome technician of the nervous system influencing input strategies and artists working in groups, Ohno is thought of as a more natural, individual, and nurturing figure who influenced solo artists.

Debate

There is much discussion about who should receive the credit for creating butoh. As artists worked to create new art in all disciplines after World War II, Japanese artists and thinkers emerged out of economic and social challenges that produced an energy and renewal of artists, dancers, painters, musicians, writers, and all other artists.

A number of people with few formal connections to Hijikata began to call their own idiosyncratic dance "butoh." Among these are Iwana Masaki (岩名雅紀), Tanaka Min (田中民), and Teru Goi.[2] Although all manner of systematic thinking about butoh dance can be found, perhaps Iwana Masaki most accurately sums up the variety of butoh styles:

While 'Ankoku Butoh' can be said to have possessed a very precise method and philosophy (perhaps it could be called 'inherited butoh'), I regard present day butoh as a 'tendency' that depends not only on Hijikata's philosophical legacy but also on the development of new and diverse modes of expression. The 'tendency' that I speak of involved extricating the pure life which is dormant in our bodies.[3]

Hijikata is often quoted saying what opposition he had to a codified dance: "Since I believe neither in a dance teaching method nor in controlling movement, I do not teach in this manner." [4] However, in the pursuit and development of his own work, it is only natural that a "Hijikata" style of working and, therefore, a "method" emerged. Both Mikami Kayo and Maro Akaji have stated that Hijikata exhorted his disciples to not imitate his own dance when they left to create their own butoh dance groups. If this is the case, then his words make sense: There are as many types of butoh as there are butoh choreographers.

Starting in the early 1980s, butoh experienced a renaissance as butoh groups began performing outside Japan for the first time. The most famous of these groups is Sankai Juku. During one performance by Sankai Juku, in which the performers hung upside down from ropes from a tall building in Seattle, Washington, one of the ropes broke, resulting in the death of a performer. The footage was played on national news, and butoh became more widely known in America through the tragedy.[5] A PBS documentary of a butoh performance in a cave with no audience further broadened knowledge in America.

In the early 1990s, Koichi Tamano performed atop the giant drum of San Francisco Taiko Dojo inside Grace Cathedral, in an international religious celebration.^[citation needed^]

Butoh's status at present is ambiguous. Accepted as a performance art overseas, it remains fairly unknown in Japan.^[citation needed^]

Butoh in popular culture

A Butoh performance choreographed by Yoshito Ohno appears at the beginning of the Tokyo section of Hal Hartley's 1995 film Flirt.

Ron Fricke's experimental documentary film Baraka (1992) features scenes of butoh performance.

In the late 1960s, exploitation film director Teruo Ishii hired Hijikata to play the role of a Doctor Moreau-like reclusive mad scientist in his film horror movie Horrors of Malformed Men.[6] The role was mostly performed as dance. The film has remained largely unseen in Japan for forty years because it was viewed as insensitive to the handicapped.[7]

In the Bust A Groove 2 video game released in 2000, the final boss' style of dance battle is butoh, set to a very fast and experimental Japanese techno track.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa used butoh movement for actors in his 2001 film Kairo, remade in Hollywood in 2006 as Pulse. The re-make did not feature butoh.

Butoh performance features heavily in Doris Dörrie's 2008 film Cherry Blossoms, in which a Bavarian widower embarks on a journey to Japan to grieve for his late wife and develop an understanding of this performance style for which she had held a life-long fascination.

A portrait of Kazuo Ohno appears on the cover of the 2009 Antony & the Johnsons album The Crying Light.

Butoh has greatly influenced the Sopor Aeternus and the Ensemble of Shadows, the musical project of Anna-Varney Cantodea. Its visual motifs are used in for the project's publicity photos and videos.

Initial butoh dancers

Hijikata's female principal dancer was Yoko Ashikawa. Ashikawa lives in Japan. She no longer makes public performances.

Yukio Waguri was a young student in the last company of Tatsumi Hijikata. Waguri still lives in Japan, teaches, and performs all over the world.

Another principal dancer for Hijikata was Koichi Tamano. Tamano made his United States debut in 1976 at the “Japan Now” exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Hijikata called Tamano "the bow-legged Nijinsky," a quote later rendered in English by Allen Ginsberg.

Ko Murobushi was responsible for bringing butoh to Europe in the 1970s. He and Akaji Maro started the company Dairakudakan in Tokyo.

Butoh exercises

Most butoh exercises use image work to varying degrees: from the razorblades and insects of Ankoku Butoh, to Dairakudakan's threads and water jets, to Seiryukai's rod in the body. There is a general trend toward the body as "being moved," from an internal or external source, rather than consciously moving a body part. A certain element of "control vs. uncontrol" is present through many of the exercises.[8]

Looked at from completely scientific standpoint, this is rarely possible unless under great duress or pain but, as Kurihara points out, pain, starvation, and sleep deprivation were all part of life under Hijikata's method,[1] which may have helped the dancers access a movement space where the movement cues had terrific power. It is also worth noting that Hijikata's movement cues are, in general, much more visceral and complicated than anything else since.

Most exercises from Japan (with the exception of much of Ohno Kazuo's work) have specific body shapes or general postures assigned to them, while almost none of the exercises from Western butoh dancers have specific shapes. This seems to point to a general trend in the West that butoh is not seen as specific movement cues with shapes assigned to them such as Ankoku Butoh or Dairakudakan's technique work, but rather that butoh is a certain state of mind or feeling that influences the body directly or indirectly.

Hijikata did in fact stress feeling through form in his dance, saying, "Life catches up with form,"[9] which in no way suggests that his dance was mere form. Ohno, though, comes from the other direction: "Form comes of itself, only insofar as there is a spiritual content to begin with."[9]

The trend toward form is apparent in several Japanese dance groups, who merely recycle Hijikata's shapes and present butoh that is mere body-shapes and choreography[10] which would lead butoh closer to contemporary dance or performance art than anything else. A good example of this is Torifune Butoh-sha's recent works.[8]

A paragraph from butoh dancer Iwana Masaki, whose work shies away from all elements of choreography.

I have never heard of a butoh dancer entering a competition. Every butoh performance itself is an ultimate expression; there are not and cannot be second or third places. If butoh dancers were content with less than the ultimate, they would not be actually dancing butoh, for real butoh, like real life itself, cannot be given rankings.[3]

Defining butoh

Critic Mark Holborn has written that butoh is defined by its very evasion of definition.[11] The Kyoto Journal variably categorizes butoh as dance, theater, “kitchen,” or “seditious act.”[12] The San Francisco Examiner describes butoh as "unclassifiable".[13] The SF Weekly article "The Bizarre World of Butoh" was about former sushi restaurant Country Station, in which Koichi Tamano was “chef” and Hiroko Tamano "manager". The article begins, “There’s a dirty corner of Mission Street, where a sushi restaurant called Country Station shares space with hoodlums and homeless drunks, a restaurant so camouflaged by dark and filth it easily escapes notice. But when the restaurant is full and bustling, there is a kind of theater that happens inside…”[14] Butoh frequently occurs in areas of extremes of the human condition, such as skid rows, or extreme physical environments, such as a cave with no audience, remote Japanese cemetery, or hanging by ropes from a skyscraper in front of the Washington Monument.[15]

Hiroko Tamano considers modeling for artists to be butoh, in which she poses in "impossible" positions held for hours, which she calls "really slow Butoh".^[citation needed^] The Tamano’s home seconds as a “dance” studio, with any room or portion of yard potentially used. When a completely new student arrived for a workshop in 1989 and found a chaotic simultaneous photo shoot, dress rehearsal for a performance at Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall, workshop, costume making session, lunch, chat, and newspaper interview, all "choreographed" into one event by Tamano, she ordered the student, in broken English, “Do interview.” The new student was interviewed, without informing the reporter that the student had no knowledge what butoh was. The improvised information was published, “defining” butoh for the area public. Tamano then informed the student that the interview itself was butoh, and that was the lesson.^[citation needed^] Such "seditious acts," or pranks in the context of chaos, are butoh.[11]

While many approaches to defining butoh—as with any performative tradition—will focus on formalism or semantic layers, another approach is to focus on physical technique. While butoh does not have a codified classical technique rigidly adhered to within an authoritative controlled lineage, Hijikata Tatsumi did have a substantive methodical body of movement techniques called Butoh Fu. Butoh Fu can be described as a series of cues largely based on incorporating visualizations that directly effect the nervous system, producing qualities of movement that are then used to construct the form and expression of the dance. This mode of engaging he nervous system directly has much in common with other mimetic techniques to be found in the history of dance. For example Lecoq's range of nervous system qualities, Decroux's rhythm and density within movement, Zeami Motokiyo's qualitative descriptions for character types, etc. Such methods heavily leverage mechanisms of suggestion typical of hypnosis. In this author's experience, when studying with various students of Hijikata, a tradition of Butoh Fu seems to be a common trait, more pronounced than in students of Ohno. The continuity of Butoh Fu as a methodical approach to training and building performance does provide a line of analysis for traditional continuity and dissemination, just as do parallel techniques do for other performance traditions.

Influence

Teachers influenced by more Hijikata style approaches tend to use highly elaborate visualizations that can be highly mimetic, theatrical and expressive. A good example of this teaching would be Koichi and Hiroko Tamano, founders of Harupin-Ha Butoh Dance Company[16] (who own and operate the Tamasei Sushi restaurant in San Francisco).

Teachers who have spent time with Ohno seem to be much more eclectic and individual in approach, bearing the mark of their master, perhaps, in tendencies to indulge in wistful states of spiritualized semi-embodiment.

There have been many unique groups and performance companies influenced by the movements created by Hijikata and Ohno, ranging from the highly minimalist of Sankai Juku to very theatrically explosive and carnivalesque performance of groups like Dairakudakan.

International

Many Nikkei (or members of the Japanese diaspora), such as Japanese Canadians Jay Hirabayashi of Kokoro Dance, Denise Fujiwara, incorporate butoh in their dance or have launched butoh dance troupes.

Butoh is also created and performed by non-Japanese Canadians – Thomas Anfield and Kevin Bergsma formed BUTOH-a-GO-GO in 1999 billing it a "Second Generation Butoh/Performance Company." Anfield and Bergsma met in 1995 working with Kokoro Dance.

The multimedia, physical theater-oriented group called Ink Boat in San Francisco incorporates humor into their work. Another San Francisco performance troupe, COLLAPSINGsilence was formed in 1992 by Terrance Graven, Indra Lowenstein, and Monique Motil. The group was active for 13 years and participated in The International Performance Art Festival in 1996. They often collaborated with live musicians such as Sharkbait, Hollow Earth, Haunted by Waters, and Mandible Chatter. The Swedish SU-EN Butoh Company tours Europe extensively. Another prominent butoh-influenced performers is the American dancer Maureen Fleming.

More notable European practitioners, who have worked with butoh and avoided the stereotyped 'butoh' languages which some European practitioners tend to adopt, take their work out of the sometimes closed world of 'touring butoh' and into the international dance and theatre scenes include Marie-Gabrielle Rotie,[17] Kitt Johnson (Denmark) and Katharina Vogel (Switzerland). Such practitioners in Europe aim to go back to the original aims of Hijikata and Ohno and go beyond the tendency to imitate a ' master' and instead search within their own bodies and histories for 'the body that has not been robbed' (Hijikata).

Eseohe Arhebamen is the first African butoh performer and practices a style she calls "Butoh-vocal theatre".

References

1. ^ a b Kurihara, Nanako. The Most Remote Thing in the Universe: Critical Analysis of Hijikata Tatsumi's Butoh Dance. Diss. New York U, 1996. Ann Arbor: UMI, 1996. 9706275
2. ^ Kuniyoshi, Kazuko. An Overview of the Contemporary Japanese Dance Scene. Tokyo: The Japan Foundation, 1985; Viala, Jean. Butoh: Shades of Darkness. Tokyo: Shufunotomo, 1988.
3. ^ a b Iwana, Masaki. The Dance and Thoughts of Masaki Iwana. Tokyo: Butoh Kenkyuu-jo Hakutou-kan, 2002.
4. ^ quoted in Viala 186
5. ^ "The Dance: Sankai Juku Opens", Anna Kisselgoff, New York Times
6. ^ http://www.midnighteye.com/reviews/horrmalf.shtml
7. ^ http://twitchfilm.net/reviews/2007/11/horrors-of-malformed-men-dvd-review.php
8. ^ a b Coelho, Abel. "A Compilation of Butoh Exercises" Honolulu: U H Dept. of Theatre and Dance 2008
9. ^ a b Ohno, Kazuo and Yoshito Ohno. Kazuo Ohno's World from Without and Within. Trans. John Barrett. Middletown: Wesleyan U P, 2004.
10. ^ Viala 100
11. ^ a b Dance Kitchen, Dustin Leavitt, Kyoto Journal #70
12. ^ "Dance Kitchen", Dustin Leavitt, Kyoto Journal #70
13. ^ "Bizarre and Beautiful Butoh at Lab", Allan Ulrich, San Francisco Examiner, Dec 1, 1989.
14. ^ "The Bizarre World of Butoh", Bernice Yeung, San Francisco Weekly, July 17-23, 2002, cover and p15-22
15. ^ Butoh, Mark Holburn and Ethan Hoffman, Sadev Books, 1987
16. ^ [1]
17. ^ http://www.rotieproductions.com, http://www.butohuk.com

Tatsumi Hijikata

External links

• Official site of Tomoe Shizune & Hakutobo
• de: photography, text and information about butoh in English and German
• net: Directory of international butoh artists in English
• [2] North American organisation offering opportunities for continuous butoh training and study.
• Ikuyo Kuroda: Dance Past the Limit— Butoh Performance Review - Japan America Society of Greater Philadelphia
• [3] butoh uk organisation
• [4] 50 Years Of Butoh - Butoh Berlin
• Wreck Beach Butoh Art Film
• [5] Koichi and Hiroko Tamano's Harupin-Ha
• Official site of Danse Compagnie NUBA (Juju Alishina)
• Official Site of New York Butoh charitable organization offering Butoh workshops, classes and performances

Original source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butoh

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. See Terms of use for details.

Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ballet is a type of performance dance, that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century, and which was further developed in France and Russia as a concert dance form. The early portions preceded the invention of the proscenium stage and were presented in large chambers with most of the audience seated on tiers or galleries on three sides of the dance floor. It has since become a highly technical form of dance with its own vocabulary. It is primarily performed with the accompaniment of classical music and has been influential as a form of dance globally. Ballet has been taught in ballet schools around the world, which use their own cultures and societies to inform the art. Ballet dance works (ballets) are choreographed and performed by trained artists, include mime and acting, and are set to music (usually orchestral but occasionally vocal). It is a poised style of dance that incorporates the foundational techniques for many other dance forms. This genre of dance is very hard to master and requires much practice. It is best known in the form of late Romantic ballet or Ballet Blanc, which preoccupies itself with the female dancer to the exclusion of almost all else, focusing on pointe work, flowing, precise acrobatic movements, and often presenting the dancers in the conventional short white French tutu. Later developments include expressionist ballet, neoclassical ballet, and elements of modern dance.

Etymology

The word ballet comes from the French and was borrowed into English around 1630. The French word in turn has its origin in Italian balletto, a diminutive of ballo (dance) which comes from Latin ballo, ballare, meaning "to dance",[1][2] which in turn comes from the Greek "βαλλίζω" (ballizo), "to dance, to jump about".[3][4]

History

The history of ballet began in the Italian Renaissance courts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as a dance interpretation of fencing. It quickly spread to the French court of Catherine de' Medici where it was developed even further. The creation of classical ballet as we know it today occurred under Louis XIV, who in his youth was himself an avid dancer and performed in ballets by Pierre Beauchamp and Jean-Baptiste Lully. In 1661 Louis founded the Académie Royale de Danse (Royal Dance Academy) which was charged with establishing standards for the art of dance and the certification of dance instructors. In 1672, following his retirement from the stage, Louis XIV made Lully the director of the Académie Royale de Musique (Paris Opera) in which the first professional ballet company, the Paris Opera Ballet, arose.[5] This origin is reflected in the predominance of French in the vocabulary of ballet. Despite the great reforms of Jean-Georges Noverre in the eighteenth century, ballet went into decline in France after 1830, though it was continued in Denmark, Italy, and Russia. It was reintroduced to western Europe on the eve of the First World War by a Russian company: the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev, who came to be influential around the world. Diaghilev's company came to be a destination for many of the Russian trained dancers fleeing the famine and unrest that followed the Bolshevik revolution. These dancers brought many of the choreographic and stylistic innovations that had been flourishing under the czars back to their place of origin.

In the 20th century, ballet had a strong influence on broader concert dance. For example, in the United States, choreographer George Balanchine developed what is now known as neoclassical ballet. Subsequent developments now include contemporary ballet and post-structural ballet, seen in the work of William Forsythe in Germany.

Classical ballet

Classical ballet is the most methodical of the ballet styles; it adheres to traditional ballet technique. There are variations relating to area of origin, such as French ballet, Danish Bournonville ballet, Italian ballet and Russian ballet, although most ballet of the last two centuries is ultimately founded on the teachings of Carlo Blasis. The most well-known styles of ballet are the Paris Opera Ballet School Method, the Russian Method, the Italian Method, the Danish Method, the Balanchine Method or New York City Ballet Method, and the Royal Academy of Dance and Royal Ballet School Methods, derived from the Cecchetti method, created in England. The first pointe shoes were actually regular ballet slippers that were heavily darned at the tip. It would allow the girl to briefly stand on her toes to appear weightless. It was later converted to the hard box that is used today.

Classical ballet adheres to these rules:

• A step called 'plié' is often used and is where both legs are bent at the same time.
• Everything is turned out except when completely flexed if playing more unusual characters e.g. The Beatrix Potter Ballet's frog.
• When the feet are not on the floor, they're pointed or flexed (as above).
• When the leg is not bent, it's stretched completely or put behind in a semi-classical position where the leg is slightly bent, but not completely.
• Posture, alignment, feeling and flexibility are vital for becoming a classical ballet dancer.

Neoclassical ballet

Neoclassical ballet is a ballet style that uses traditional ballet vocabulary but is less rigid than the classical ballet. For example, dancers often dance at more extreme tempos and perform more technical feats. Spacing in neoclassical ballet is usually more modern or complex than in classical ballet. Although organization in neoclassical ballet is more varied, the focus on structure is a defining characteristic of neoclassical ballet.

Balanchine brought modern dancers in to dance with his company, the New York City Ballet. One such dancer was Paul Taylor, who, in 1959, performed in Balanchine's Episodes. Balanchine worked with modern dance choreographer Martha Graham, expanding his exposure to modern techniques and ideas. During this period, Tetley began to consciously combine ballet and modern techniques in experimentation.

Tim Scholl, author of From Petipa to Balanchine, considers George Balanchine's Apollo in 1928 to be the first neoclassical ballet. Apollo represented a return to form in response to Serge Diaghilev's abstract ballets.

Contemporary ballet

ontemporary ballet is a form of dance influenced by both classical ballet and modern dance. It takes its technique and body control using abdominal strength from classical ballet, although it permits a greater range of movement that may not adhere to the strict body lines or turnout set forth by schools of ballet technique. Many of its concepts come from the ideas and innovations of 20th century modern dance, including floor work and turn-in of the legs. This style is generally danced barefoot.

George Balanchine is often considered to have been the first pioneer of contemporary ballet through the development of neoclassical ballet. One dancer who danced briefly for Balanchine was Mikhail Baryshnikov, an exemplar of Kirov Ballet training. Following Baryshnikov's appointment as artistic director of American Ballet Theatre in 1980, he worked with various modern choreographers, most notably Twyla Tharp. Tharp choreographed Push Comes To Shove for ABT and Baryshnikov in 1976; in 1986 she created In The Upper Room for her own company. Both these pieces were considered innovative for their use of distinctly modern movements melded with the use of pointe shoes and classically trained dancers—for their use of "contemporary ballet".

Twyla Tharp also worked with the Joffrey Ballet company, founded in 1957 by Robert Joffrey. She choreographed Deuce Coupe for them in 1973, using pop music and a blend of modern and ballet techniques. The Joffrey Ballet continued to perform numerous contemporary pieces, many choreographed by co-founder Gerald Arpino.

Today there are many contemporary ballet companies and choreographers. These include Alonzo King and his company, Alonzo King's Lines Ballet; Complexions Contemporary Ballet, under the direction of Dwight Rhoden; Nacho Duato's Compañia Nacional de Danza; William Forsythe, who has worked extensively with the Frankfurt Ballet and today runs The Forsythe Company; and Jiří Kylián, currently the artistic director of the Nederlands Dans Theatre. Traditionally "classical" companies, such as the Kirov Ballet and the Paris Opera Ballet, also regularly perform contemporary works.

References

Notes

1. ^ Chantrell (2002), p. 42.
2. ^ ballo, Charlton T. Lewis, Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary, on Perseus
3. ^ βαλλίζω, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus
4. ^ ball (2), Online Etymology Dictionary
5. ^ Craine & MacKrell 2000, p. 2: "It is from this institution that French ballet has evolved rather than the Académie Royale de Danse."

Sources

• Anderson, Jack (1992). Ballet & Modern Dance: A Concise History (2nd ed. ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton Book Company, Publishers. ISBN0-87127-172-9.
• Au, Susan (2002). Ballet & Modern Dance (2nd ed. ed.). London: Thames & Hudson world of art. ISBN0-500-20352-0.
• Bland, Alexander (1976). A History of Ballet and Dance in the Western World. New York: Praeger Publishers. ISBN0-275-53740-4.
• Chantrell, Glynnis, ed. (2002). The Oxford Essential Dictionary of Word Histories. New York: Berkley Books. ISBN0-425-19098-6.
• Craine, Deborah; MacKrell, Judith (2000). The Oxford Dictionary of Dance. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198601067.
• Darius, Adam (2007). Arabesques Through Time. Harlequinade Books, Helsinki. ISBN 9519823247
• Gordon, Suzanne (1984). Off Balance: The Real World of Ballet. McGraw-Hill. ISBN0-07-023770-0.
• Kirstein, Lincoln; Stuart, Muriel (1952). The Classic Ballet. New York: Alfred A Knopf.
• Lee, Carol (2002). Ballet In Western Culture: A History of its Origins and Evolution. New York: Routledge. ISBN0-415-94256X.

External links

• American Ballet Theatre: Ballet Terms Dictionary
• Russian ballet today: Who's who in Russian ballet - a professional community website with discussions, videos and photo etc
• Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Ballet". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

Original source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballet

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. See Terms of use for details.

Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.