Portrays the history of the ballet company, the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo, and examines the achievements of its choreographers and dancers

De Basil's Ballets Russes

Walker, Kathrine Sorley

Humor & Entertainment

Atheneum

The Royal Ballet: A picture history

Threshold Books

Ninette De Valois: Idealist Without Illusions

Dame Ninette deValois has devoted her life to the theatre. This collaboration with Kathrine Sorley Walker shows how deValois has always recognized the interlocking nature of the performing arts, and how her work comes together as dancer, choreographer, teacher, director and writer.

Dance Books Ltd.

Sir Robert Helpmann was a consummate man of the theatre, equally proficient as dancer or actor, in comedy or tragedy, and as choreographer or director. In this book, Kathrine Sorley Walker surveys a career which spanned more than five decades in multiple disciplines, surely a unique achievement in the annals of theatre. An international career that embraced every aspect of the performing arts established Helpmann as a key figure in 20th century theatre. Born in Australia in 1909 to a family of English and Scottish origins, he was an integral participant, as a principal dancer and choreographer, in the development of British ballet. He also became a leading stage actor and director of plays and operas and had an acknowledged influence, as artistic director and choreographer of the Australian Ballet, on the cultural life of his native country. He was knighted in 1968, and died in Sydney in 1986. A magnetic stage personality, Helpmann's versatility ranged from Shakespearean tragedy to inspired balletic comedy; a man of acute intelligence, energy and commitment, he is also fondly remembered by many for his incorrigible, and irresistible, sense of humour. Detailed appendices are included covering all Helpmann's stage, film, and television work.

Robert Helpmann: A Rare Sense of the Theatre

Drawn partly from the scattered remnants of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and partly from extraordinary new talent, Colonel W. de Basil's company of dancers kept alive the heritage of the Russian ballet for a period spanning virtually twenty years. De Basil's Ballets Russes, under various titles, and initially founded in association with René Blum, director of ballet at Monte Carlo, not only preserved the greatest of the Diaghilev ballets but mounted many new ones, among them major works by Balanchine, Fokine, Massine, Nijinska and Lichine -the company's one home-grown choreographer. It provided a brilliant showcase for great dancers such as Danilova, Woizikovsky and Massine, whose reputations were already made, and for many younger dancers including the remarkable 'baby ballerinas'. De Basil launched not only the original trio -Toumanova, Baronova and Riabouchinska - but a whole succession of teenage dancers of outstanding natural ability whose superb training had made of them finished artists of the highest quality well before their eighteenth birthdays. Among many other dancers whose careers were influenced by de Basil - a White Russian Cossack officer who emigrated to Paris in 1919 and whose gifts were entrepreneurial rather than artistic - were Tchernicheva, an ex-Diaghilev dancer whom he brought out of retirement to become a leading performer again in her maturity, and Kirsova, suddenly thrust into stardom by rapturous Australian audiences. The story of the de Basil ballet is one of glamour, mystery and the obsessive dedication without which no art form can achieve excellence. Its locations are many - Europe, the USA, Central and South America and Australasia were toured by the company, which appeared not only in the great capitals but in places where classical dance had rarely if ever been seen before. Travelling through the countryside, this multi-national troupe would climb out of their coach to hold class in a wayside field, using the wire fences as barres; and no matter what conditions they had to face backstage, on stage these dancers would create magic. Kathrine Sorley Walker's researches for this eminently readable book have taken her on a tour of duty hardly less exhausting than those of the de Basil company. The result is a riveting account of these little-documented years, by one of Britain's best dance historians and critics, that fills a conspicuous gap in the literature of the ballet.

de Basil's Ballets Russes

Arts & Photography

Performing Arts

David Leonard