Apollo's Angels is a major new history of classical ballet. It begins in the courts of Europe, where ballet was an aspect of aristocratic etiquette and a political event as much as it was an art. The story takes the reader from the sixteenth century through to our own time, from Italy and France to Britain, Denmark, Russia and contemporary America. The reader learns how ballet reflected political and cultural upheavals, how dance and dancers were influenced by the Renaissance and French Classicism, by Revolution and Romanticism, by Expressionism and Bolshevism, Modernism and the Cold War. Homans shows how and why 'the steps' were never just the steps: they were a set of beliefs and a way of life. She takes the reader into the lives of dancers and traces the formal evolution of technique, choreography and performance. Her book ends by looking at the contemporary crisis in ballet now that 'the masters are dead and gone' and offers a passionate plea for the centrality of classical dance in our civilization. Apollo's Angels is a book with broad popular appeal: beautifully written and illustrated, it is essential reading for anyone interested in history, culture and art.
Apollo's Angels is a major new history of classical ballet. It begins in the courts of Europe, where ballet was an aspect of aristocratic etiquette and a political event as much as it was an art. The story takes the reader from the sixteenth century through to our own time, from Italy and France to Britain, Denmark, Russia and contemporary America. The reader learns how ballet reflected political and cultural upheavals, how dance and dancers were influenced by the Renaissance and French Classicism, by Revolution and Romanticism, by Expressionism and Bolshevism, Modernism and the Cold War. Homans shows how and why 'the steps' were never just the steps: they were a set of beliefs and a way of life. She takes the reader into the lives of dancers and traces the formal evolution of technique, choreography and performance. Her book ends by looking at the contemporary crisis in ballet now that 'the masters are dead and gone' and offers a passionate plea for the centrality of classical dance in our civilization. Apollo's Angels is a book with broad popular appeal: beautifully written and illustrated, it is essential reading for anyone interested in history, culture and art.
Jennifer Homans was a professional dancer who trained at the School of American Ballet. When she retired from dancing, she studied European and American cultural history at Columbia and New York Universities and then turned to dance criticism. She is married to the historian Tony Judt, and lives in New York City.
The definitive history of ballet and one of Granta's 2010 bestsellers, Apollo's Angels was ecstatically reviewed on publication.
Jennifer Homans was a professional dancer who trained at the School of American Ballet. When she retired from dancing, she studied European and American cultural history at Columbia and New York Universities and then turned to dance criticism. She lives in New York City with her family.
Superb history of ballet from a dancer turned academic
*Sunday Times*
Homans, a former dancer, is exceptionally good at placing dance in
the context of its times and explaining why events such as the
French Revolution or the abolition of serfdom in Tsarist Russia
affected the course and development of this art form
*Daily Telegraph*
Homans writes with translucent beauty and authority of [Ballet's]
lost past ... The case that Homans makes wholly convincingly, in
the case of Taglioni and others, is that the great dancers and
choreographers of the 18th to the 20th centuries succeeded at least
in part because of their ability to reproduce the "emotional tone"
of the eras in which they lived
*Observer*
Sweeping across three centuries and half a dozen countries, Homan's
elegiac study resembles a well-crafted three-act ballet ...she
writes with equal verve about, say, French romantic literature and
US-Soviet cold war rivalry in this exceptional chronicle
*Guardian*
A tremendous book, crucially written by a former dancer ... Always
extending its thinking outwards, it even follows the gestures of
dance into film
*Sunday Times*
A diverting history of ballet, from its roots in the 17th-century
French court through Nijinsky to Balanchine's reinvention of
classicism ... an invaluable primer on how ballet gained such a
foothold among the cultural elite. It's as much an eloquent social
history as it is specialist dance study
*Metro*
A beautiful book which takes an in-depth look into the history of
ballet ... it manages to deliver the rich 400-year history of
ballet alongside an emotional narrative. Homans account of the
rigours of training and pressures put upon ballerinas is familiar
yet gripping, and is delivered in the same breath as the
cross-cultural traditions of ballet ... An edifying read and a
refreshing alternative to the fiction-heavy bestseller lists coming
up to Christmas
*Stylist*
Apollo's Angels is a book that every dance lover should read, for
it explains not only the art we love, and why we love it, but it
explains why it matters
*Arts Desk*
A brilliant book of enormous scope, a detailed cultural history of
ballet, from its earliest origins in Italy and France to the
glamour of the New York scene ... in a lucid and absorbing style
that makes this hefty tome easy reading, Homans illuminates the
characters, ideals and politics that make ballet at various times
an act to honour God, a complex system of courtly etiquette, a
career for serfs, acrobats and part-time courtesans, a symbol of
the French Revolution and a tool of Soviet propaganda ... can
Homans put ballet back at the centre of intellectual debate? This
book is definitely at step in the right direction
*Time Out*
An authoritative and beautifully researched book
*BBC Radio Scotland*
It will doubtless come to rank as the standard and authoritative
work in the field, its scope, scholarship and intellectual ambition
far exceeding that of modestly scaled textbooks ... Homans writes a
clean, lucid and disciplined prose which happily reminds one of the
rigour and precision of the classical barre ... this is by any
reckoning a magnificent achievement
*Literary Review*
I was rapt for almost the entire book. Jennifer Homan's Apollo's
Angels is the closest thing I have read to a non-fiction page
turner in quite a while. And beyond that, it was an extremely
ambitious project ... What makes Apollo's Angels so delightfully
interesting is how deeply the story's roots burrow into the culture
from which it grew. She follows the trail of ballet across Europe,
the Caucasus, eventually the Atlantic, and through the epiphanies
and upheavals which have shaped Western thought and perspective
*Dance Europe*
Homans takes us through the rises and falls, the individuals who
helped turn the ballerina into the iconic image we have today, as
well as the links between society at large and ballets in countries
as diverse as the United States, Russia, France and Sweden. A
fascinating history, as sensual as one might expect
*Herald*
This book drills deep: on the hand into the evolution of ballet
technique and training, and on the other into the cultural contexts
that shaped these practices ... Homan's synthesizes a huge body of
primary and secondary sources ... The strength of Homan's book is
that ballet and its historical contexts are discussed in
inextricable proximity
*Times Literary Supplement*
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