Alexander McQueen

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Judith Chazin-Bennahum

One of the leading choreographers in ballet over the last half century, Antony Tudor is considered the most lyrical and emotionally powerful of modern ballet masters, acclaimed for his imaginative use of music and his commitment to dramatic plot. Comparable in achievement to George Balanchine and Frederick Ashton, Tudor created over sixty ballets, including his masterpieces Jardin aux Lilas, Dark Elegies, Romeo and Juliet, and the incomparable Pillar of Fire. He was instrumental in the establishment of the American Ballet Theater and its rise to prominence as one of the world's great ballet companies. Now Judith Chazin-Bennahum, an accomplished author and a former ballerina and student of Tudor's, steps forward to deliver the first comprehensive, ballet by ballet examination of Tudor's choreography. Meticulously researched, lively and insightful, The Ballets of Antony Tudor: Studies in Psyche and Satire opens the way for dance aficionados to better appreciate and preserve the artistic legacy of one of this century's major innovators. Long-ago performances come thrillingly to life, from Tudor's fledgling efforts with Marie Rambert's Ballet Club in London, to his tenure as a founding member and principal choreographer of ABT, to his subsequent career as a contributor to the New York City Ballet, the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, and as a celebrated teacher at Juilliard. Chazin-Bennahum draws extensively from her interviews with Tudor before his death in 1987, and her own experience in his famous classes and rehearsals. Her superbly documented research uncovers program notes, reviews, rare photographs and stills of original productions, and interviews with scores of men and women who played a part in Tudor's achievement. Choreographers and dancers from Agnes de Mille and Nora Kaye to Jerome Robbins and Gelsey Kirkland discuss their debt to Tudor, and his role in the evolution of dance. While not a biography in the traditional sense, the book does shed fascinating light on the private life of Antony Tudor. He was born William Cook, the son of a butcher in London's East End, in 1908, and Chazin-Bennahum's analysis reveals how deeply his life informed his art. "I never do a ballet that does not concern the bourgeoisie," Tudor once said. Of course, Tudor's experience was shaped by more than class: Like Picasso, writes the author, Tudor was a child of our century, reacting to its wars, its destruction and its persecution of women and children in the language he knew best. Original and engaging, The Ballets of Antony Tudor brilliantly explicates the hidden desire, brutality, violence towards women, isolation, and unrequited love that are common themes in Tudor's ballets, illuminating the rich psychological nuance and intimacy of gesture with which he transformed his art.

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Sam Wellman

Describes the life of John Bunyan, itinerant English Puritan preacher and author of many religious books and sermons, including "Pilgrim's Progress."

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John Darrah

The origins of Arthurian romance will always be a hotly disputed subject. The great moments of the legends belong partly to dimly-remembered history, partly to the poets' imagination down the ages, whether Welsh, Breton, French or German. Yet there is another element behind the stories which goes back deeper and further, and which is even more difficult to pinpoint, the traces of ancient pagan religion. We know so little for certain about Celtic religion that any attempt to document these recollections of prehistoric and mythological material is a hazardous undertaking. However, John Darrah makes a persuasive case for the existence of these underlying themes, both in terms of heroes who have inherited the attributes of gods, and of episodes which reflect ancient religious rituals. His careful study of the thematic relationships of many little-known episodes of the romances and his unravelling of the relative geography of Arthurian Britain as portrayed in the romances will be valuable even to readers who may beg to differ with his final conclusions. His most original contribution to an unravelling of a pagan Arthurian past lies in his appropriation of the fascinating evidence of standing stones and pagan cultic sites. The magical attributes of stones are exemplified in prehistoric standing stones, the real counterparts of the perrons of the French romances. This is dark and difficult territory, but certain events in the Arthurian cycle, which take place on and around Salisbury Plain, have correspondences with known prehistoric events. Building on these elusive clues, and tracing a range of sites around the river Severn and south Wales, John Darrah has added a significant new dimension to the search for the sources of England's great epic, the legends of Arthur and his court.

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Tony Rennell

Recreates the twenty-three days in January 1901 when Queen Victoria journeyed to Osborne House to meet her fate and succumb to the illness that had plagued her, bringing a dark pall upon Britain and signaling the end of an era.