The Encyclopedia Of World Ballet
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Encyclopedia of World Ballet. Ed. Mary Ellen Snodgrass. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. Includes articles on choreographers, ballet companies, dancers, composers, set and costume designers, productions, techniques, and terms.
Dancer, choreographer, actor, and author. Kirov Ballet, Leningrad, USSR, soloist, 1969-74; American Ballet Theatre, New York, NY, principal dancer, 1974-78, 1979-90, director designee, 1979-80, artistic director, 1980-89; New York City Ballet, principal dancer, 1978-79; White Oak Dance Project, director and dancer, 1990-2003; Baryshnikov Center for Dance, New York, NY, founder, 2004. Guest artist with numerous groups, including National Ballet of Canada, Royal Ballet, Hamburg Ballet, Ballet Victoria, Stuttgart Ballet, Vienna Opera Ballet, Alvin Ailey Company, Eliot Feld Ballet, Martha Graham Dance Company, and Mark Morris Dance Company. Performer in numerous television programs or specials, including The Nutcracker, In Performance at Wolf Trap, Live from Lincoln Center, Baryshnikov at the White House, Baryshnikov on Broadway, Baryshnikov in Hollywood, and Baryshnikov by Tharp. Actor in motion pictures, including The Turning Point, 1977, White Nights, 1987, and Dancers. Choreographer of full-length ballets, including The Nutcracker, 1976, Don Quixote (Kitri's Wedding), 1978, Cinderella, 1984, and Swan Lake, 1989. Performer on stage, including in Forbidden Christmas; or, The Doctor and the Patient, 2004. Co-owner, Russian Samovar (restaurant), New York, NY.
Mikhail Baryshnikov (born 1948) was a ballet dancer who defected from the former Soviet Union to the United States. He explored both classical and modern ballet forms and was artistic director of the American Ballet Theater before resigning and establishing the White Oak Dance Project.
Mikhail Baryshnikov was born in Riga, Latvia, on January 27, 1948. His dance studies began in 1960. He trained for three years at the Riga State Choreographic School until his fifteenth birthday, when he traveled to Leningrad with an advanced student group. The son of Russian parents, Baryshnikov found a congenial home in Leningrad. Motivated to audition for ballet school there, Baryshnikov passed his entrance examination and was accepted into one of Russia's finest ballet training institutions (the Vagarova School). Here he studied with one of the great teachers of this century, Alexander Pushkin. He joined the Kirov Ballet in 1967, entirely bypassing the usual years in the corps de ballet. He quickly became one of that legendary company's most brilliant soloists.
The successes of his early career had been marked by formal competitions and roles in modern and classical repertory. He won a gold medal at the Varna, Bulgaria, ballet competition in 1966, and in 1968 he won the gold medal at the First International Ballet Competition in Moscow. His professional debut, in the \"peasant Pas de Deux\" of \"Giselle, \" would much later be echoed in the West in his New York City debut with American Ballet Theater in August 1974. His partner was Natalia Makarova, who had defected from the Kirov in 1970.
His Western admirers, critics and fans alike, immediately compared Baryshnikov with another of Pushkin's students, Rudolf Nureyev, who had fled the former Soviet Union and the haven of the Kirov Ballet in 1961. They found the 26-year-old Baryshnikov a restrained, less ostentatious proponent of the Russian ballet style than Nureyev. His technique was praised for its ease and purity, and his elevationand ballon (the ability to appear to pause, suspended in the air during leaps) were universally acclaimed. As Baryshnikov explored the various styles of American modern dance and contemporary ballet for which he had left the comparatively constrained environment of the Kirov, his abilities seemed limitless.
During his initial three years in the West, particularly as a principal dancer with American Ballet Theater from 1974 to 1978, Baryshnikov showed a voracious appetite for all the challenges that a welcoming dance world would present to him. He learned some 22 new roles, dancing the choreography of Antony Tudor, George Balanchine, John Neumeier, Roland Petit, John Butler, and Twyla Tharp, among others.
Having successfully explored ballet in its classical form and in its contemporary styles, as well as the work of modern dance-makers, and finding himself at the head of one of the great American ballet companies, Baryshnikov continued his search for new avenues of expression in television and motion pictures. \"The Turning Point, \" made in 1977, introduced him to audiences unfamiliar with his ballet work and earned him an Academy Award nomination; \"White Nights\" (1986) was his next screen effort.
In addition, Ailey staged dance productions, operas, ballets, and had works performed on television. He received honorary degrees in fine arts from colleges and universities and prizes for his choreography, including a Dance magazine award in 1975; the Springam Medal, given to him by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1979; and the Capezio Award that same year. In 1988 he was awarded the Kennedy Center Honors prize.
Born January 5, 1931, in Rogers, Tex.; died of dyscrasia (a blood disorder), December 1, 1989, in New York City; son of Alvin, Sr. (a laborer) and Lula Elizabeth (Cliff) Ailey, Education: Attended the University of California, Los Angeles, and San Francisco State College; studied modern dance with Lester Horton, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, and Hanya Holm; studied ballet with Karel Shook; attended acting classes in New York City with Stella Adler.
By the mid-1960s Ailey, who struggled with his weight, gradually phased out his dancing and replaced it with choreographing. He also oversaw administrative details as the director of his ambitious dance company. By 1968, the company had received funding from private and public organizations but still had financial problems, even as its reputation spread, and it brought modem dance to audiences around the world. Ailey also had the leading African-American soloist of modern dance, Judith Jamison, and having been using Asian and white dancers since the mid-1960s, Ailey had fully integrated the company. He had organized his dance school in 1969, and by 1974, he had a repertory ensemble too.
In the early 1960s the company performed in Southeast Asia and Australia as part of an international cultural program set up by U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Later they traveled to Brazil, Europe, and West Africa. Ailey was choreographing dances for other companies too. He created Feast of Ashes for the Joffrey Ballet, three pieces for the Harkness ballet, and Anthony and Cleopatra for the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center in New York City.
By the late 1970s Ailey's company was one of America's most popular dance troupes. Its members continued touring around the world, with U.S. State Department backing. They were the first modern dancers to visit the former Soviet Union since the 1920s. In 1971 Ailey's company was asked to return to the City Center Theater in New York City after a performance featured Ailey's celebrated solo, Cry. Danced by Judith Jamison, she made it one of the troupe's best known pieces.
Those were the years and that was the place in which Nijinska first became a powerhouse of inventiveness. The world was changing: she drew inspiration from the new and the old. She taught, she choreographed, she often collaborated with other women, creating intense bonds of loyalty. After 1921 she never returned to Russia or Ukraine; but in 1968, in her late seventies, she heard from several of the women with whom she had worked there with such enthusiasm. To one of them she wrote:
Those two ballets, apart from their very different worldviews, are treasuries of modernist movement. (The choreographer Frederick Ashton, who danced for Nijinska in 1928, always remembered how, when teaching the daily ballet class, she required dancers to bend from the waist even in the most basic steps.) In Noces, the dancers tip their torsos violently forward, backward, sideways. The torso is also intensely active in Biches, where the body language of the two lead roles for women is startlingly contrasted. The androgynous Garçonne, a page boy role danced on point, is the embodiment of cool: her most exceptional step is a double pirouette beginning and ending on point without any arm movement to help the propulsion. The other is a Hostess whose brilliantly chattering footwork (with no pointwork), ropes of pearls, flourished cigarette holder, and endlessly pliant torso proclaim her sophistication.
Both Ivanov and his work were integral in the development of classic romantic ballet in Russia. He married dance with music, influencing later choreographers, including Michel Fokine. Known for his ability to choreograph for emotional effect, Ivanov is considered the soul of Russian choreography and of Russian ballet of the late nineteenth century.
Studying under such names as Jean-Antoine Petipa (the father of Marius Petipa), Aleksandr Pimenov, Pierre-Frederic Malavergne and Emile Gredlu, Ivanov showed proficiency not only in dance, but also had a natural ear for music. After hearing a ballet, the talented Ivanov could recreate the entire score, by ear, on the piano. Unfortunately, his musical talent was not especially noted.
In 1850, at age 16, and still in the St. Petersburg Theatre School, Ivanov began to dance in the corps of the Imperial Theatres. He was first presented to the public on June 7, 1850, by Jean Petipa in Le ballet des meuniers, in which he danced the title pas de deux. He then appeared in such productions as Catarina, Esmerelda, Mariquita, and La Filleule des fees (The Fairy's Godchild), all staged by Jules Perrot for ballerina Fanny Elssler. Under Perrot, Ivanov worked for most of his career. 781b155fdc