The Encyclopedia of World Ballet

摘要

The Preface of this encyclopedia sets the scene: It "surveys dance art from social occasions at the court of Louis ⅩⅣ to current venues in myriad countries, from Cyprus to Singapore. To enlighten the dancer, choreographer, student, teacher, and arts historian, 170 major entries reveal the nature and purpose of ballet". Literature on ballet, and particularly on world ballet, is uneven: Much of it takes the form of "world of ballet" or "ballet anecdotes" or "famous ballet plots", while a lot more specialist and local information and commentary appears in ballet periodicals like Dance Journal. There are biographies of dancers like Fonteyn and Nureyev, Nijinsky and Martha Graham and Twyla Tharp, studies of composers like Tchaikovsky and designers like Diaghilev and Fokine and ballets like The Firebird and Giselle and others on the way dance has been filmed. In addition, as ballet is dance, and dance is linked closely with music and cultural history, there is a substantial literature on topics like the Kirov Ballet and the Royal Opera and the Paris Opera, Broadway musicals, Mozart and Rimsky-Korsakov, cultural identity and forms of dance and theatre and the links dance has with theatre and folklore and politics.