Apollo’s Angels Pdf Summary Reviews By Jennifer Homans

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Apollo’s Angels Pdf Summary

For more than four hundred years, the art of ballet has stood at the center of Western civilization. Its traditions serve as a record of our past. A ballerina dancing The Sleeping Beauty today is a link in a long chain of dancers stretching back to sixteenth-century Italy and France: Her graceful movements recall a lost world of courts, kings, and aristocracy, but her steps and gestures are also marked by the dramatic changes in dance and culture that followed. Ballet has been shaped by the Renaissance and Classicism, the Enlightenment and Romanticism, Bolshevism, Modernism, and the Cold War. Apollo’s Angels is a groundbreaking work—the first cultural history of ballet ever written, lavishly illustrated and beautifully told.

Ballet is unique: It has no written texts or standardized notation. It is a storytelling art passed on from teacher to student. The steps are never just the steps—they are a living, breathing document of a culture and a tradition. And while ballet’s language is shared by dancers everywhere, its artists have developed distinct national styles. French, Italian, Danish, Russian, English, and American traditions each have their own expression, often formed in response to political and societal upheavals.

From ballet’s origins in the Renaissance and the codification of its basic steps and positions under France’s Louis XIV (himself an avid dancer), the art form wound its way through the courts of Europe, from Paris and Milan to Vienna and St. Petersburg. It was in Russia that dance developed into the form most familiar to American audiences: The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, and The Nutcracker originated at the Imperial court. In the twentieth century, émigré dancers taught their art to a generation in the United States and in Western Europe, setting off a new and radical transformation of dance.

Jennifer Homans is a historian and critic who was also a professional dancer: She brings to Apollo’s Angels a knowledge of dance born of dedicated practice. She traces the evolution of technique, choreography, and performance in clean, clear prose, drawing readers into the intricacies of the art with vivid descriptions of dances and the artists who made them. Her admiration and love for the ballet shines through on every page. Apollo’s Angels is an authoritative work, written with a grace and elegance befitting its subject.

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Apollo’s Angels Review

Lone Larsen

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic cultural history of classical ballet!!!
Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2014

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Apollo’s Angels by Jennifer Homans is a major one-volume cultural history of classical ballet. Homans takes the reader from ballet’s origin in the French Renaissance through to our own time, covering in detail the development of the art form and its evolution as it passed through 16th century France and Italy, to Denmark, Britain, Russia, and eventually to contemporary America. The book focuses specifically on how ballet came to embody ideas, or a people, or a time. Homans shows how and why ‘the steps’ were never just the steps but rather were a set of beliefs and a way of life. She explains the ideas, idealism, and politics behind the development of ballet, and she explains very well how the art form was shaped by the Renaissance and French Classicism, by revolutions and Romanticism, by Expressionism and Bolshevism, and by Modernism and the Cold War.
The chapter on France and the classical origins of ballet are the most interesting. Homans explains that ballet’s roots can be traced to Charles IX’s time, when he established the Academie de Poesie et de Musique all the way back in 1570. The purpose of the Academie was to bring spirituality to theatre and art. Homans writes, “…these poets believed that hidden beneath the shattered and chaotic surface of political life lay a divine harmony and order – a web of rational and mathematical relations that demonstrated the natural laws of the universe and the mystical power of God.” This is where we see the theoretical foundations of ballet, which just needed to be codified into a technique, which would then ‘elevate man…and bring him closer to the angels and God’ (Homans 2010). Very entertaining in particular is the author’s description of court etiquette and the vanity of kings. Also interesting is her explanation of state strategy, the difference between courtiers and trained dancers, and the eventual move from court to theater in the late 17th century.
The connection between dance and politics is emphasized throughout the book, and the reader will understand how ballet – although wordless – is an art form that carries both meanings and subtexts. The reader learns, for example, that the ballerina Marie Antoinette established a trend dressed as a shepherdess, whereafter women in white tunics “became powerful symbols of a nation cleansed of corruption and greed.” (Homans 2010). The women in white became what we know today as the corps de ballet, which took its cue from the Revolution. “They represented the claims of the community over those of the individual” (Homans 2010).
The chapters on ballet in the New World focus mostly on the influential Russian choreographer George Balanchine, who founded New York City Ballet in the 20th century to rival the European ballet companies. But, despite Balanchine’s innovative creations of neoclassical ballets that paved the way for a tradition of classical ballet in America, Homans sees no future for ballet. She ends her book with an Epilogue called “The Masters Are Dead and Gone” in which she laments what she perceives as a decline of the classical ballet during the past 20 plus years. Her feeling is that we no longer admire ballet, and that without new genius creators the art form will not survive. That is a perplexing view, given the fact that dance always has been a fluctuating art form.
Despite the book’s massive volume of 650 pages, it is rarely boring. Homans’ descriptions of important artists and the works they created or danced are vivid and expressive, – possibly due to the fact that Homans herself was a professional ballerina who danced many of the works she writes about. While her writing is packed with meaning it is never dense or convoluted. A fluid writing style makes it easy for any reader to follow and understand the scenarios surrounding the evolution of ballet for hundreds of years. Apollo’s Angels is scholarly and entertaining at the same time, and beautifully told. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in history, dance, and body politics.

yan ek

4.0 out of 5 stars misjudged
Reviewed in the United States on December 24, 2010

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From everything I heard and read prior to receiving and reading this book for myself I expected to be irritated by it. It is extremely well written and some obscure details the author brings out with great clarity. I enjoyed everything except the epilogue and even that is not as bad as what I’d feared. The author clearly thinks that the present moment in ballet is the final death knell. Print matter is supposed to be dead, the theatre is supposed to be dead, classical music is supposed to be dead… It is just too facile an assumption. Some of the points I agree with but cannot see them in such dire terms. Dancers have become universal in their technique and lots of “cookie cutter” dancers are manufactured. Some of this is very regrettable but it is the world we live in now. Globalization is not restricted in dance or anywhere else. Choreography certainly is not at the low ebb she suggests. There will not BE another Balanchine or Ashton. Get over it. So many interesting choreographers are working just now it is impossible to see enough to actually judge. Someone else will come up that grabs everyone’s attention and for awhile everyone will love them and then think after that nothing they do is any good any longer. That is our fault as critics in not allowing them to develop freely and being patient in their choreographic life. Everyone wants the next great ballet!!! Great choreographers makes bad ballet sometimes but if even one is good that is enough.

When Balanchine, Ashton,Tudor and the other great lions of dance were creating it was a rare opportunity that the major voices in dance were invited in to make ballets for other companies. Balanchine created only a handful of works outside NYCB and the same is true for Ashton and the Royal. Tudor left Rambert and London and devoted himself to life in New York. Times are different now as evidenced by Christopher Wheeldon and Morphoses or Ratmansky. ABT now does the same Balanchine ballets that they once looked at from a distance. Kylian works are everywhere, done mostly to profit the choreographer rather than enrich a dancers or an audience’s experience. Everyone complained in times past that ballet was not run by good business principals and now, more and more, it is and that seems to please few as well. It would be wisest to be patient and offer patronage and support when one can and let the art form take its own course. In any case who made Ms. Homans the voice of authority because she is published?

The actual danger of this book is that someone might not know enough to think for themselves and let the author tell them ballet is dead. More people will go to dance performances than will read this book. When this changes, then worry. Go out and see a ballet.

About Jennifer Homans Author Of Apollo’s Angels pdf Book

Jennifer Homans Author Of Apollo’s Angels pdf Book is a former professional dancer trained at the North Carolina School of the Arts, the American Ballet Theater School, and the School of American Ballet. She performed with the Chicago Lyric Opera Ballet, the San Francisco Ballet and the Pacific Northwest Ballet. Currently the dance critic for The New Republic, she has also published with The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The New York Review of Books and The Australian. She holds a B.A. from Columbia University and a PhD in Modern European History from New York University. She is presently a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at New York University. “