Dance Theatre of Harlem (Hardcover)
Price: $50.00 / $42.50 Members: $38.25
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Item: 9781496733603
Description
Dance Theatre of Harlem: A History, A Movement, A Celebration (Hardcover)
By Judy Tyrus & Paul Novosel
2021 NAACP Image Award Nominee
This definitive history is a celebration of the first African American ballet company, from its 1960s origins in a Harlem basement, to the performances, community engagement, and education message of empowerment through the arts for all, which the Company continues to carry forward today.
Illustrated with hundreds of never-before-seen photos from the founding during the Civil Rights Movement through to today, this visual history tells the story that fueled Dance Theatre of Harlem’s growth into one of the most influential and revolutionary American ballet companies of the last five decades.
With exclusive backstage stories from its legendary dancers and staff, and unprecedented access to its archives, Dance Theatre of Harlem is a striking chronicle of the Company’s amazing history, its fascinating daily workings, and the visionaries who made its legacy. Here you’ll discover how the company’s founders created timeless works that challenged Eurocentric mainstream ballet head-on and used new techniques to examine ongoing issues of power, beauty, myth, and the ever-changing definition of art itself.
Gaining prominence in the 1970s and 80s with a succession of triumphs – including its spectacular season at the Metropolitan Opera House – the company also gained fans and supporters that included Nelson Mandela, Stevie Wonder, Cicely Tyson, Misty Copeland, Jessye Norman, and six American presidents. Dance Theatre of Harlem details this momentous era as well as the company's difficult years, its impressive recovery as it partnered with new media’s most brilliant creators – and, amid a global pandemic in the wake of its 50th anniversary, its evolution into a worldwide virtual performance space.
Alive with stunning photographs, including many from the legendary Marbeth, this incomparable book is a must-have for any lover of dance, art, culture, or history.
- Hardcover: 304 pages
- Publisher: Dafina (October 26, 2021)
- Dimensions: 9.26” W x 11.79” H
History
Ballet
In classic or contemporary ballet, dancing may tell a story, express a mood, or simply reflect the music in movement. Ballet as part of staged performances originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th and 16th centuries and from there spread to France. The creation of classical ballet as we know it today occurred during the reign of the art-loving French king Louis XIV in the mid-17th century. During the Romantic era, ballet technique evolved to express new ideas, most notably with women dancing en point, or on their toes, allowing them to appear weightless and otherworldly.
Among the choreographers who helped bring ballet into the modern age by exploring new visual and dramatic styles are George Balanchine, Antony Tudor and—bridging the worlds of classical dance and Broadway—Agnes de Mille and Jerome Robbins.
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