Celestial Bodies

March 1, 2018
Ballet is a pleasure to watch, but some of its subtleties may be lost on the average viewer. Here, a dance critic tries to explain them."The greatest ballets reward endless looking," writes longtime New Criterion dance critic Jacobs (Landscape with Moving Figures: A Decade on Dance, 2006, etc.) in this attempt to clarify ballet's techniques. She covers all the basic movements and accoutrements, from the five basic positions to the "mysterious magnetism" of pointe shoes to the various types of arabesque, the position she calls the "logo for classical dance." The author also introduces seminal works of ballet, among them Giselle, with its themes of "privilege [and] the blas' abuses committed by those of class and landed wealth"; Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, and The Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky, "ballet's greatest composer"; and the game-changing, Nijinsky-choreographed The Rite of Spring, which sparked an infamous riot at its premiere, features Stravinsky's "mesmerizingly brutal" music and was "an epic rejection of everything its audience held dear." In her enthusiasm, Jacobs occasionally lets descriptions get away from her--e.g., "allegro is spring warblers singing in the canopy, or bats pinging and winging at dusk. There is something of the souffl' about allegro--it should always be rising"--and some sections feel as if they were written for someone with no knowledge of the arts. One wonders how many readers will need a definition of a synopsis or that Leo Tolstoy was a "literary giant." Still, the author ably explains the technical aspects of ballet, as when she explains that turnout's "symmetrical torque in the hips engages energy and concentrates it" and in her beautiful description of pas de deux: "a form of close-up, the theatrical equivalent of the camera's lavish gaze.""They're doing choreography," Danny Kaye sang in White Christmas. As Jacobs demonstrates, however, ballet is so much more.

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May 1, 2018
Anyone seeking understanding of ballet won't do better than reading Jacobs' elegant guide to the world of pointe shoes, pas de deux, and pirouettes. Drawing on her considerable expertise as the dance critic for The New Criterion, and judiciously quoting from some of the fundamental books on classical dance, she choreographs 12 chapters into a flowing narrative that is both an enticing introduction to the art and a reminder of why ballet matters. Ballet history, explanations of technique, interviews with dancers, first-person accounts of performances, and personal reflections on a variety of other related topics are presented in engaging prose, enhanced by Jessica Roux's delicate illustrations. The chapter on Tchaikovsky, the Godfather of Ballet, is particularly perceptive: If you can't bend the knee to Tchaikovsky, I'm not sure you can love ballet. A concise bibliography includes the books Jacobs considers essential and more. According to the artist and critic Alexandre Benois, Ballet is perhaps the most eloquent of all spectacles. This book is one of the most eloquent ever written about it.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)