The Cursed Ballet

The Cursed Ballet PDF Author: Megan Atwood
Publisher: Darby Creek ™
ISBN: 1467733229
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 67

Book Description
Every time the Dario Quincy Academy has performed Giselle, the ballet's lead dancer has died. That's what the rumors say, anyway. But Ophelia doesn't believe in all that. She's determined to win the lead and beat the so-called curse. As Ophelia begins sneaking out at night to practice Giselle's moves, she meets a mysterious boy hiding in the shadows. He's got great moves, and his looks aren't bad either. After a series of secret meetings, Ophelia starts to feel drained of her strength. She even blacks out during dance class. Is she just pushing herself too hard? Or are the boy and the curse connected?

Where Snowflakes Dance and Swear

Where Snowflakes Dance and Swear PDF Author: Stephen Manes
Publisher: Cadwallader and Stern
ISBN: 9780983562832
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 912

Book Description
The internationally acclaimed new book that takes you behind the scenes to reveal how ballet really happens: In a scuffed-up studio, a veteran dancer transmits the magic of an eighty-year-old ballet to a performer barely past drinking age. In a converted barn, an indomitable teacher creates ballerinas as she has for more than half a century. In a monastic mirrored room, dancers from as near as New Jersey and as far as Mongolia learn works as old as the nineteenth century and as new as this morning. Snowflakes "zooms in on an intimate view of one full season in the life of one of America's top ballet companies and schools: Seattle's Pacific Northwest Ballet. But it also tracks the Land of Ballet to venues as celebrated as New York and Monte Carlo and as seemingly ordinary as Bellingham, Washington and small-town Pennsylvania. Never before has a book taken readers backstage for such a wide-ranging view of the ballet world from the wildly diverse perspectives of dancers, choreographers, stagers, teachers, conductors, musicians, rehearsal pianists, lighting directors, costumers, stage managers, scenic artists, marketers, fundraisers, students, and even pointe shoe fitters--often in their own remarkably candid words. The book follows characters as colorful as they are talented. Versatile dancers from around the globe team up with novice choreographers and those as renowned as Susan Stroman, Christopher Wheeldon, and Twyla Tharp to create art on deadline. At the book's center is Peter Boal, a former New York City Ballet star in his third year as PNB's artistic director, as he manages conflicting constituencies with charm, tact, rationality and diplomacy. Readers look over Boal's shoulder as he makes tough decisions about programming, casting, scheduling and budgeting that eventually lead the calm, low-key leader to declare that in his job, "You have to be willing to be hated." "Snowflakes" shows how ballet is made, funded, and sold. It escorts you front and center to the kick zone of studio rehearsals. It takes you to the costume shop where elegant tutus and gowns are created from scratch. It brings you backstage to see sets and lighting come alive while stagehands get lovingly snarky and obscene on their headsets. It sits you down in meetings where budgets get slashed and dreams get funded--and axed. It shows you the inner workings of "Nutcracker, " from kids' charming auditions to no-nonsense marketing meetings, from snow bags in the flies to dancing snowflakes who curse salty flurries that land on their tongues. It follows the tempestuous assembly of a version of "Romeo and Juliet" that runs afoul of so much pressure, disease, injury, and blood that the dancers begin to call it cursed. "Snowflakes" uncovers the astounding way ballets, with no common form of written preservation, are handed down from generation to generation through the prodigious memories of brilliant athletes who also happen to be artists. It visits cattle-call auditions and rigorous classes, tells the stories of dancers whose parents sacrificed for them and dancers whose parents refused to. It meets the resolute woman who created a dance school more than fifty years ago in a Carlisle, Pennsylvania barn and grew it into one of America's most reliable ballerina factories. It shows ballet's appeal to kids from low-income neighborhoods and board members who live in mansions. Shattering longstanding die-for-your-art cliches, this book uncovers the real drama in the daily lives of fiercely dedicated artists in slippers and pointe shoes-and the musicians, stagehands, costumers, donors and administrators who support them. "Where Snowflakes Dance and Swear: Inside the Land of Ballet" brings readers the exciting truth of how ballet actually happens.

Cursed

Cursed PDF Author: Karol Ruth Silverstein
Publisher: Charlesbridge Publishing
ISBN: 1632897997
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 339

Book Description
Winner of the Schneider Family Book Award! A debut novel for fans of The Fault in Our Stars that thoughtfully and humorously depicts teen Ricky Bloom's struggles with a recent chronic illness diagnosis. "Silverstein sheds a powerful light on disease and how managing it can bring out one’s inner warrior. A blistering coming-of-age tale that will propel readers into Ricky’s corner." -Booklist As if her parents' divorce and sister's departure for college weren't bad enough, fourteen-year-old Ricky Bloom has just been diagnosed with a life-changing chronic illness. Her days consist of cursing everyone out, skipping school--which has become a nightmare--daydreaming about her crush, Julio, and trying to keep her parents from realizing just how bad things are. But she can't keep her ruse up forever. Ricky's afraid, angry, alone, and one suspension away from repeating ninth grade when she realizes: she can't be held back. She'll do whatever it takes to move forward--even if it means changing the person she's become. Lured out of her funk by a quirky classmate, Oliver, who's been there too, Ricky's porcupine exterior begins to shed some spines. Maybe asking for help isn't the worst thing in the world. Maybe accepting circumstances doesn't mean giving up.

The Complete Ballet

The Complete Ballet PDF Author: John Haskell
Publisher:
ISBN: 1555977871
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 215

Book Description
"The unnamed narrator finds himself inexorably drawn back to the pre-cell phone world of Technicolor Los Angeles, to a time when the tragedies of his life were about to collide. Working as a part-time masseur in Hollywood, he attends an underground poker game with his friend Cosmo, a strip-club entrepreneur. What happens there hurtles the narrator down the road and into the room where the novel's violent and surreal showdown leaves him a different person."--Amazon.com.

Princess of the Midnight Ball

Princess of the Midnight Ball PDF Author: Jessica Day George
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1599907720
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Book Description
New York Times bestselling author Jessica Day George re-imagines the classic fairy-tale, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, in this start to an enchanting YA fantasy series. Rose is one of twelve princesses--sisters condemned to dance every night in the palace of the King Under Stone. Galen is a young soldier returning from war. Together they will search for a way to break the curse that forces the princesses to attend the endless midnight balls. All they need is an invisibility cloak, a black wool chain knit with silver needles, and that most critical fairy tale ingredient--true love. Don't miss these other stories from New York Times bestselling author Jessica Day George: The Twelve Dancing Princesses series Princess of the Midnight Ball Princess of Glass Princess of the Silver Woods Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow Silver in the Blood The Rose Legacy series The Rose Legacy Tuesdays at the Castle series Tuesdays at the Castle Wednesdays in the Tower Thursdays with the Crown Fridays with the Wizards Saturdays at Sea Dragon Slippers series Dragon Slippers Dragon Flight Dragon Spear

When Langston Dances

When Langston Dances PDF Author: Kaija Langley
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1534485198
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 40

Book Description
Inspired by watching a performance of the Alvin Ailey Dance Company, a young black boy longs to dance and enrolls in ballet school.

The Turnout

The Turnout PDF Author: Megan Abbott
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593084926
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Book Description
Best Book of the Year NPR • Wall Street Journal • Boston Globe • Library Journal • CrimeReads • LitReactor • Air Mail Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize A TODAY Show #ReadWithJenna Book Club Pick An Instant New York Times Bestseller New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Megan Abbott's exquisite new novel, “dark and juicy and tinged with horror” (The New York Times Books Review), set against the hothouse of a family-run ballet studio. With their long necks, sheer tights, and taut buns, Dara and Marie Durant have only known the course of a well-bred dancer. Not much changes when their parents face death in a tragic accident. As Dara and Marie take over their mother's duty of running the Durant School of Dance, along with Charlie, Dara's husband and once their mother's prized student, the sisters perfect a fine dance, circling around one another, six days a week, keeping the studio thriving. But when another eerily suspicious accident occurs, just at the onset of the school's annual performance of The Nutcracker—a season of tense competition, provoked anxiety, and wild exhilaration—an interloper arrives and threatens the sisters' delicate balance. With its uncanny insight and writing that haunts, The Turnout is Megan Abbott at the height of her game—a sharp and strange dissection of family ties and sexuality, femininity, and power, and a sinister tale that is both alarming and irresistible.

Stolen Luck

Stolen Luck PDF Author: Megan Atwood
Publisher: Darby Creek ™
ISBN: 1467733202
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 73

Book Description
Kayley's had a run of bad luck. She'd been struggling at dance practice for a while, and then her instructor decided to give Kayley's next role to another girl. Even so, Kayley isn't ready to bow out. She has a plan. The old ballet shoes on display at Dario Quincy Academy have a legend behind them. They're supposed to give anyone who owns them good fortune. But when Kayley steals the vintage slippers, she doesn't just turn her dancing around. She starts to see her friends get hurt. Will she return the shoes before something truly tragic strikes the academy? Or is it already too late?

#2 Stolen Luck

#2 Stolen Luck PDF Author: Megan Atwood
Publisher: Darby Creek
ISBN: 1467714844
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 116

Book Description
Kayley's had a run of bad luck. She'd been struggling at dance practice for a while, and then her instructor decided to give Kayley's next role to another girl. Even so, Kayley isn't ready to bow out. She has a plan. The old ballet shoes on display at Dario Quincy Academy have a legend behind them. They're supposed to give anyone who owns them good fortune. But when Kayley steals the vintage slippers, she doesn't just turn her dancing around. She starts to see her friends get hurt. Will she return the shoes before something truly tragic strikes the academy? Or is it already too late?

The Encyclopedia of World Ballet

The Encyclopedia of World Ballet PDF Author: Mary Ellen Snodgrass
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442245263
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 421

Book Description
Throughout the centuries, ballet has had a rich and ever-evolving role in the humanities. Renowned choreographers, composers, and performers have contributed to this unique art form, staging enduring works of beauty. Significant productions by major companies embrace innovations and adaptations, enabling ballet to thrive and delight audiences all over the globe. In The Encyclopedia of World Ballet,Mary Ellen Snodgrass surveys the emergence of ballet from ancient Asian models to the present, providing overviews of rhythmic movement as a subject of art, photography, and cinema. Entries in this volume reveal the nature and purpose of ballet, detailing specifics about leaders in classic design and style, influential costumers and companies, and trends in technique, partnering, variation, and liturgical execution. This reference covers: Choreographers Composers Costumers Dance companies Dancers Productions Set designers Techniques Terminology Among the principal figures included here are Alvin Ailey, Afrasiyab Badalbeyli, George Balanchine, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Pierre Beauchamp, Sergei Diaghilev, Agnes DeMille, Nacho Duato, Isadora Duncan, Boris Eifman, Mats Ek, Erté, Martha Graham, Inigo Jones, Louis XIV, Amalia Hernández Navarro, Rudolf Nureyev, Marius Petipa, Jerome Robbins, Twyla Tharp, and Agrippina Vaganova. This work also features dance companies from the Americas, Australia, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Korea, New Zealand, Russia, South Africa, and Vietnam. Productions include such universal narrative favorites as Coppélia, The Nutcracker, The Sleeping Beauty, Scheherazade, Firebird, and Swan Lake. Featuring a chronology that identifies key events and figures, this volume highlights significant developments in stage presentations over the centuries. The Encyclopedia of World Ballet will serve general readers, dance instructors, and enthusiasts from middle school through college as well as professional coaches and performers, troupe directors, journalists, and historians of the arts.