La Nijinska : choreographer of the modern / Lynn Garafola.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Garafola, Lynn, author.

Contributor:

Rosengarten Family Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Nijinska, Bronislava, 1891-1972.

Nijinska, Bronislava.

Ballets russes.

Ballerinas--Russia (Federation)--Biography.

Ballerinas.

Choreographers--Russia (Federation)--Biography.

Choreographers.

Russia (Federation).

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xxv, 661 pages, 40 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), portraits ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2022]

Summary:

"La Nijinska is the first biography of twentieth-century ballet's premier female choreographer. Overshadowed in life and legend by her brother Vaslav Nijinsky, Bronislava Nijinska had a far longer and more productive career. An architect of twentieth-century neoclassicism, she experienced the transformative power of the Russian Revolution and created her greatest work--Les noces--under the influence of its avant-garde. Many of her ballets rested on the probing of gender boundaries, a mistrust of conventional gender roles, and the heightening of the ballerina's technical and artistic prowess. A prominent member of Russia Abroad, she worked with leading figures of twentieth-century art, music, and ballet, including Stravinsky, Diaghilev, Poulenc, Alexandra Exeter, Natalia Goncharova, Frederick Ashton, Alicia Markova, and Maria Tallchief. She was also a remarkable dancer in her own right with a bravura technique and powerful stage presence that enabled her to perform an unusually broad repertory. Finally, she was the author of an acclaimed volume of memoirs in addition to a major treatise on movement. Nijinska's career sheds new light on the modern history of ballet and of modernism more generally, recuperating the memory of lost works and forgotten artists, many of them women. But is also reveals the sexism pervasive in the upper echelons of the early and mid-twentieth century ballet world and the barriers that women choreographers still confront"--Dust jacket flap

Contents:

Nijinska's apprenticeship

Amazon of the avant-garde

Back from the future

Where is home?

Les noces

Les biches

Le train bleu and its aftermath

A freelance choreographer

Globalizing modernism

Les ballets de Madame Ida Rubinstein

A choreographer for Russia abroad

Les Ballets Russes de Bronislava Nijinska

On the road

In wartime America

The final act

Resurrection.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 617-627) and index

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Rosengarten Family Fund.

ISBN:

0197603904

9780197603901

OCLC:

1260291757