Books: The Classic Ballet

[Guest Old Fashioned]

Out of curiousity, does any have The Classic Ballet by Muriel Stuart and Lincoln Kirstein, and what do you think of it? I'm thinking about adding it to my ballet book collection and want to know in what ways it's useful or informative.

[Victoria Leigh]

It's good, if perhaps a bit outdated. However, it has a lot of very good information and some helpful diagrams.

[Mel Johnson]

There's really nothing wrong with it. It was just never really complete in the first place. When I was studying with her, I asked Miss Stuart about how she came to select the exercises and steps that were discussed in the book and she said that she hadn't selected them, that they came from Kirstein and Carlus Dyer already illustrated, and she had a terrible time getting Dyer to redo his pictures, as they: "just wouldn't do, you see."

[Victoria Leigh]

Classical Ballet Technique, by Gretchen Ward Warren is far better, IMO. It is much more thorough and uses photographs to show things very clearly.

[Guest Old Fashioned]

Thanks for the input!

[vrsfanatic]

Classical Ballet Technique, by Gretchen Ward Warren is indeed a very well written book, however some of the Russian pedagogy is not the most current. Ms Ward Warren's impressive research is a product of the Tblisisi school rather than the Vaganova Academy. I know it sounds odd, but the two schools realy are different.

[choreo]

Good point Vrs! (re: Tblisisi)