Includes bibliographical references (pages 617-627) and index
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.
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
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.