Celestial Bodies: How to Look at Ballet
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Celestial Bodies: How to Look at Ballet
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Narrated by:
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Tiffany Morgan
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By:
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Laura Jacobs
About this listen
A distinguished dance critic offers an enchanting introduction to the art of ballet As much as we may enjoy Swan Lake or The Nutcracker, for many of us ballet is a foreign language. It communicates through movement, not words, and its history lies almost entirely abroad - in Russia, Italy, and France.
In Celestial Bodies, dance critic Laura Jacobs makes the foreign familiar, providing a lively, poetic, and uniquely accessible introduction to the world of classical dance. Combining history, interviews with dancers, technical definitions, descriptions of performances, and personal stories, Jacobs offers an intimate and passionate guide to watching ballet and understanding the central elements of choreography.
Beautifully written and elegantly illustrated with original drawings, Celestial Bodies is essential listening for all lovers of this magnificent art form.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2018 Laura Jacobs (P)2018 Basic BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Laura Jacobs' book about the art of ballet, which takes the form of a higher kind of how-to book, is itself a work of art. I would call it perfect, but Jacobs spells out the limits of the ideal of perfection. Better to call it alive, expressive, moving, wise." (Paul Elie, author of Reinventing Bach)
"Laura Jacobs' Celestial Bodies is original, rich in discovery, and conceived in prose that is as agile and graceful as her subject matter." (Sascha Radetsky, American Ballet Theatre)
"What makes ballet magical? With a brief recap of its origins and a poetic analysis of its positions, Laura Jacobs gives us the benefit of her perceptions over the course of a distinguished career in the audience. For those coming to ballet for the first time-and those of us who have been watching ballet for years-she offers a lesson in appreciation. The best way to watch, she tells us, is "with an open heart." This graceful book is the product of her own heart and her sprightly mind." (Holly Brubach)
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-
Smug
- By Claudette on 02-07-20
By: Lauren Kessler
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Where the Heart Beats
- John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists
- By: Kay Larson
- Narrated by: Jason Wineinger
- Length: 15 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 61
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 52
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 51
Composer John Cage sought the silence of a mind at peace with itself - and found it in Zen Buddhism, a spiritual path that changed both his music and his view of the universe. "Remarkably researched, exquisitely written", Where the Heart Beats weaves together "a great many threads of cultural history" (Maria Popova, Brain Pickings) to illuminate Cage’s struggle to accept himself and his relationship with choreographer Merce Cunningham. Freed to be his own man, Cage originated exciting experiments that set him at the epicenter of a new avant-garde forming in the 1950s.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Mind Expansion
- By Robert Keith on 04-04-15
By: Kay Larson
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The Creative Habit
- Learn It and Use It for Life
- By: Twyla Tharp
- Narrated by: Lauren Fortgang
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 777
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 676
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Story4 out of 5 stars 673
All it takes to make creativity a part of your life is the willingness to make it a habit. It is the product of preparation and effort, and is within reach of everyone. Whether you are a painter, musician, businessperson, or simply an individual yearning to put your creativity to use, The Creative Habit provides you with 32 practical exercises based on the lessons Twyla Tharp has learned in her remarkable 35-year career.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A much-needed shout-out to good habits
- By cvstuart on 03-27-13
By: Twyla Tharp
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The Rest Is Noise
- Listening to the 20th Century
- By: Alex Ross
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 23 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 487
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 305
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Story4 out of 5 stars 301
The Rest Is Noise takes the listener inside the labyrinth of modern music, from turn-of-the-century Vienna to downtown New York in the '60s and '70s. We meet the maverick personalities and follow the rise of mass culture on this sweeping tour of 20th-century history through its music.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Learned so much!
- By Paula on 02-18-08
By: Alex Ross
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What Are You Looking At?
- The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art
- By: Will Gompertz
- Narrated by: Matthew Waterson
- Length: 13 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 143
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 118
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 117
What is modern art? Who started it? Why do we either love it or loathe it? And why is it such big money? Join BBC Arts Editor Will Gompertz on a dazzling tour that will change the way you look at modern art forever. From Monet's water lilies to Van Gogh's sunflowers, from Warhol's soup cans to Hirst's pickled shark, hear the stories behind the masterpieces, meet the artists as they really were, and discover the real point of modern art.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A simply wonderful book with a serious flaw
- By 11104 on 05-02-21
By: Will Gompertz
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Six Memos for the Next Millennium
- By: Italo Calvino, Geoffrey Brock - translator
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 3 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 45
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
At the time of his death, Italo Calvino was at work on six lectures setting forth the qualities in writing he most valued and which he believed would define literature in the century to come. Here, in Six Memos for the Next Millennium, are the five lectures he completed, forming not only a stirring defense of literature but also an indispensable guide to the writings of Calvino himself. He devotes one "memo" each to the concepts of lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, and multiplicity.
By: Italo Calvino, and others
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The Secret Life of the American Musical
- How Broadway Shows Are Built
- By: Jack Viertel
- Narrated by: David Pittu
- Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 256
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 230
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 230
For almost a century, Americans have been losing their hearts and losing their minds in an insatiable love affair with the American musical. It often begins in actors and reaches its passionate zenith when it comes time for love, marriage, and children, who will start the cycle all over again. Americans love musicals. Americans invented musicals. Americans perfected musicals. But what, exactly, is a musical?
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great review lacked music
- By joseph f mcgovern on 10-14-18
By: Jack Viertel
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Artful
- By: Ali Smith
- Narrated by: Ali Smith
- Length: 4 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
In 2012, Ali Smith delivered the Weidenfeld lectures on European comparative literature at St. Anne’s College, Oxford. Those lectures, presented here, took the shape of discursive stories that refused to be tied down to either fiction or the essay form. Thus, Artful is narrated by a character who is haunted - literally - by a former lover, the writer of a series of lectures about art and literature. A hypnotic dialogue unfolds between storytelling and a meditation on art that encompasses love, grief, memory, and revitalization.
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3 out of 5 stars
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#Reality/Loss/Mythology
- By Ellen K. on 11-14-18
By: Ali Smith
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Red Moon
- Goddess Teachings & Meditations for Female Confidence, Sexuality, Stress & Spirituality
- By: Miranda Gray, Samantha Redgrave, Nicola Haslett
- Narrated by: Miranda Gray, Samantha Redgrave, Nicola Haslett
- Length: 3 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 36
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 29
Unearth your truly authentic self. Welcome to an exclusive version of Red Moon, a very special and unique collection of 15 teachings and meditations designed to help women everywhere awaken the Goddess within and develop a deeper, more spiritual understanding of the female cycle. Nicola Haslett and Samantha Redgrave, from Aluna Moon Publishing, have had the pleasure of working with international women’s author Miranda Gray, who gifts us her knowledge and wisdom around the spiritual aspects of the menstrual cycle and the four Goddess archetypes that all women embody: the Maiden Goddess, Mother Goddess, Enchantress Goddess and Crone Goddess.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Love this Audio Book
- By gr8ful_d00d on 06-15-18
By: Miranda Gray, and others
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Swoon
- Great Seducers and Why Women Love Them
- By: Betsy Prioleau
- Narrated by: Holly Fielding
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 75
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 62
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 61
Swoon is a glittering pageant of charismatic ladies' men from Casanova to Lord Byron to Camus to Ashton Kutcher. It challenges every preconceived idea about great lovers and answers one of history's most vexing questions: what do women want? Contrary to popular myth and dogma, the men who consistently beguile women belie the familiar stereotypes: satanic rake, alpha stud, slick player, Mr. Nice, or big-money mogul.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent treatise on seductive etiquette for men
- By Prometheus Worley on 11-18-16
By: Betsy Prioleau
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Spring and All: Facsimile Edition
- New Directions Pearls
- By: William Carlos Williams
- Narrated by: Sean Slater
- Length: 1 hr and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 31
A beautiful facsimile of the 1923 original edition which is considered "one of the greatest poems of the twentieth century" by The New York Times. Spring and All is a manifesto of the imagination - a hybrid of alternating sections of prose and free verse that coalesce in dramatic, energetic, and beautifully cryptic statements of how language re-creates the world. Spring and All contains some of Williams' best-known poetry.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Classic!
- By Amazon Customer on 01-25-18
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The Awakening
- By: Kate Chopin
- Narrated by: Susie Berneis
- Length: 5 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 342
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 290
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Story4 out of 5 stars 288
Unsatisfied with the expectations of Creole society and unhappy with her family life, Edna Pontellier begins to fall in love with the dapper Robert Lebrun. Lebrun's flirtations, along with the lifestyle of renowned musician Mademoiselle Reisz, rejuvenates Edna's sense of freedom and independence. However, an affair with the womanizer Alcee Arobin provides Edna with a taste of the danger that comes with living outside of social convention.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Good story, great reading.
- By Donald on 03-14-17
By: Kate Chopin
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Keats
- A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph
- By: Lucasta Miller
- Narrated by: Sally Scott
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 50
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 43
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Story5 out of 5 stars 42
Miller, through Keats’s poetry, brilliantly resurrects and brings vividly to life, the man, the poet in all his complexity and spirit, living dangerously, disdaining respectability and cultural norms, and embracing subversive politics. Keats was a lower-middle-class outsider from a tragic and fractured family, whose extraordinary energy and love of language allowed him to pummel his way into the heart of English literature; a freethinker and a liberal at a time of repression, who delighted in the sensation of the moment.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Romantic Life
- By David on 05-03-22
By: Lucasta Miller
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La Passione
- How Italy Seduced the World
- By: Dianne Hales
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 64
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 54
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 54
Can you imagine painting without Leonardo, opera without Verdi, fashion without Armani, food without the signature tastes of pasta, gelato, and pizza? The first universities, first banks, first public libraries? All Italian. New York Times best-selling author Dianne Hales attributes these landmark achievements to la passione italiana, a primal force that stems from an insatiable hunger to discover and create; to love and live with every fiber of one's being.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Your Italiophilia is showing
- By Jeff Griffiths on 02-28-23
By: Dianne Hales
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Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea
- Why the Greeks Matter
- By: Thomas Cahill
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 338
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 155
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Story4 out of 5 stars 155
Best selling history writer Thomas Cahill continues his series on the roots of Western civilization with this volume about the contributions of ancient Greece to the development of contemporary culture. Tracing the origin of Greek culture in the migrations of armed Indo-European horsemen into Attica and the Peloponnesian peninsula, he follows their progress into the creation of the Greek city-states, the refinement of their machinery of war, and the flowering of intellectual and artistic culture.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Super super
- By Richard on 12-28-03
By: Thomas Cahill
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The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis
- How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind
- By: Jason M Baxter
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 5 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 115
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 100
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Story5 out of 5 stars 100
C. S. Lewis had one of the great minds of the 20th century. Many know Lewis as an author of fiction and fantasy literature, including the Chronicles of Narnia and the Space Trilogy. Others know him for his books in apologetics, including Mere Christianity and The Problem of Pain. But few know him for his scholarly work as a professor of medieval and Renaissance literature. What shaped the mind of this great thinker?
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent
- By andrew wilson smith on 03-08-22
By: Jason M Baxter
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Red
- A History of the Redhead
- By: Jacky Colliss Harvey
- Narrated by: Jacky Colliss Harvey
- Length: 6 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 168
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 151
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 153
Red is a brilliantly told, captivating history of red hair throughout the ages. An audiobook that breaks new ground, dispels myths, and reinforces the special nature of being a redhead, with a look at multiple disciplines, including science, religion, politics, feminism and sexuality, literature, and art. With an obsessive fascination that is as contagious as it is compelling, author Jacky Colliss Harvey (herself a redhead) begins her exploration of red hair in prehistory and traces the redhead gene as it made its way out of Africa with the early human diaspora.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Pushing Past Stereotypes
- By Troy on 06-09-15
What listeners say about Celestial Bodies: How to Look at Ballet
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Nabou
- 03-13-22
Great primer for ballet newbies
The author writes with eloquence and passion about ballet, and gives a lot of interesting historical information for those wanting to learn more about the artform.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Sara Cobb
- 08-06-18
Ballet Love
Anyone involved with the world of ballet/dance will likely enjoy this book very much. The author discusses many aspects of the art of ballet, ranging from important steps to amazing performances. This book discusses ballet from the P.O.V. of the person who interacts with it, not merely as a historical or esoteric subject that is far beyond the ability of the average person to truly appreciate. Ballet is beautiful and complex. Ms. Jacobs makes the topic accessible to all.
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2 people found this helpful