Ballet books

Last Monday, I was in Paris to meet with Jacqueline Challet-Haas, the French specialist of dance notation, and more precisely of kinetography Laban (Labanotation).

We talked about numerous topics, including labanotation (I'll let you know more about that next week) and my interest in classic ballet. I didn't know she had written a reference on the subject (in French): Manuel pratique de danse classique. Jacqueline is such an expert in movement analysis that I'm looking forward to reading her manual: I thank her very much for offering me a copy.

The table of contents reads like this:

1. Éléments de base (page 15)
2. La barre (page 105)
3. Le milieu, les pas (page 155)
4. Fourth part (page 231) including table of common defaults and list of steps notated in kinetography Laban

There are several editions of the book. The latest, from 2009, is there: Manuel Pratique de Danse Classique and at the publisher's site: Ressouvenances.

Ballet books in English

I started reading about ballet in English. Here are four ballet books I really like (with links to amazon):

• A classic: The Classic Ballet: Basic Technique and Terminology, by Lincoln Kirstein & Muriel Stuart - with beautiful illustrations, nice typography, originally published in 1952.
• A modern reference: Gretchen Ward Warren's Classical Ballet Technique - with countless great sequences of photographs

• Let's not forget that health is the most important: The Healthy Dancer - American Ballet Theater Guidelines for Dancer Health
• Finally, the enjoyable The Art of Teaching Ballet: Ten Twentieth-Century Masters, also by Gretchen Ward Warren.

Of course, I could add Jennifer Homans' Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet, but I'm just at chapter 2.