The Ballet of the Enlightenment: The Establishment of the Ballet D'Action in France, 1770-1793
Book
Date:
1996
ISBN:
9781852730499
Format:
Hardcover
Description:
456 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 16.5 x 24 cm
Summary:
"Over the past fifty years Ivor Guest's contribution to the history of ballet has covered a very broad spectrum. Many of his books are standard specialist works noted not only for the depth of his research and his understanding of the political, social and artistic background, but also for their readability.
...
The conception of the ballet d'action, in which dance and pantomime are combined to form an independent art of the theatre, was essentially a product of the European Enlightenment. Under the influence of a new breed of philosophers who emerged in the eighteenth century - notably Voltaire, Didelot and Rousseau - long-engrained attitudes and ways of thinking were radically reappraised. And it was in this extraordinary intellectual surge that the theatrical dance was reformed and transformed under the impulse of its own iconoclastic philosopher, Jean-Georges Noverre." -- from the book jacket description