Ballet 101: A Complete Guide to Learning and Loving the Ballet

by Robert Greskovic, Mikhail Baryshnikov (Foreword)

(Limelight). Veteran dance writer Robert Greskovic's comprehensive handbook on how to watch and appreciate the ballet is now available in this new edition. It includes a complete analysis of sixteen important and popular ballets, from Swan Lake to Twyla Tharp's Push Comes To Shove . As Mikhail Baryshnikov states in the book's "All the things that ballet fans talk about at intermission, while newcomers stand there wondering what they those things are here...(Robert Greskovic) has been thinking about ballet --- watching it, reading, writing, and talking about it --- day after day for more than thirty years. He knows it through and through. Now he shares his knowledge."

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Reference, Art

634 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1998

Reviews

[Mesoscope · Rating 2 out of 5]

I note that the laudatory blurbs on this atrocious book's jacket are drawn from professional dance critics, who may perhaps be excused for overlooking the fact that this book is putatively pitched toward newcomers to the art of Ballet. They are themselves experts, after all. The author, however, cannot be thus excused; he has produced a rarefied book that will be unreadable to most genuine newcomers, and that is singularly unedifying to this newcomer.

Consider this sentence plucked nearly at random from the beginning of chapter 5: "Charles-Louis Diderlot (1767-1837), half French, half Swedish, studied and worked under a variety of the eighteenth century's ballet innovators, including Noverre, Dauberval, and both Gaëtan and Auguste Vestris." Two questions immediately arise. 1) Are the names Noverre, Dauberval, or Gaëtan and Auguste Vestris supposed to mean anything to a likely reader of a book of this title? 2) Assuming that they do not, what is the reader supposed to learn and retain about the unfamiliar name of Diderlot through its immediate juxtaposition with four additional unfamiliar names?

Huh. I guess a bunch of people who were really famous a few centuries ago worked together ... too bad I can't remember any of their names.

This sentence is highly typical, and the entire book is written with this degree of thoughtlessness. The author breathlessly drops countless names without context or clarification, and technical terms are introduced throughout without explanation. Indeed, the book lacks a basic overview of the technical terminology -- something that one might find useful in a book advertising itself as a complete introduction.

The author may be a fine critic (I do not know), but this book warrants a wide berth.

[Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

The few chapters of this that I read (before realizing with horror that for the first time in my life my books had gone overdue at the public library and I--gasp!--owe a fine!) were very interesting and informative. Such a lot of history runs through what makes ballet the way it is today. Some of it I knew already because I sing opera (and that's really the genesis of the formal ballet we know and love today), but there are other gems of knowledge that twinkle throughout. Once I've outlived my disgrace over my late books, I'll have to try checking it out again sometime and finishing it! :)

[Aaron · Rating 2 out of 5]

Started. Made it a ways by sheer force. Gave up. Authoritative, credible, and dry like overbaked granola. The author clearly knows what he is talking about, but he is writing for a small audience of people who probably are experts like him. This book is a lot of things, but "101" it is not. "101" is generally the term we use for courses that are not only introductory but directed at the outsider - "music appreciation for the non-musician," if you will. This is not even remotely approachable, as implied by other reviewers (who presumably and admirably don't recognize their own extant expertise in the subject.). Lots of name dropping, lineages... it could very well be the bible of ballet, but then most believers don't really have their eyes opened by the bible first, do they? Tempted to check the "spoilers" box out of a sense of irony; I can't imagine by putting the book down I'll miss any plot twists that might have sprung up later on.

[She Reads What? · Rating 5 out of 5]

well done. enjoyed it so much that I'm going to get my own copy esp for the film list and vocabulary. like going to the ballet for years with a fellow student and fan.

[N.L. Riviezzo · Rating 2 out of 5]

A lot of content that it just too cluttered and written in a very dry detached format that makes the book rather unreadable. The title completely contradicts the content. I think the content would qualify as intermediate information rather than for beginners.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exactly what I wanted to enhance my understanding of ballet. I thought I would skim it for the interesting parts but ended up reading it almost cover to cover. The glossary is especially useful. I do think less of the book should have been devoted to scene-by-scene descriptions of famous ballets.

[Tammy]

792.8 Gre

[Mindy]

recommended by roslyn as a good history of dance for me as mom

[D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great, informative read and intro to ballet. Read it all for a class in college and loved it.