Footnotes

Footnotes: Dancing the World's Best-Loved Ballets is a behind-the-scenes look at seven classic ballets and the men and women who have danced them. Based on interviews with some of the best-known performers, former principal dancer Frank Augustyn and writer Shelley Tanaka reveal the reality behind one of the world's most admired art forms. Illustrated with 100 contemporary and archival photographs of dancers both on the stage and behind the scenes, Footnotes is a wondrous journey...
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Footnotes: Dancing the World's Best-Loved Ballets is a behind-the-scenes look at seven classic ballets and the men and women who have danced them. Based on interviews with some of the best-known performers, former principal dancer Frank Augustyn and writer Shelley Tanaka reveal the reality behind one of the world's most admired art forms. Illustrated with 100 contemporary and archival photographs of dancers both on the stage and behind the scenes, Footnotes is a wondrous journey through the world of ballet. Behind the dazzling stage lights and away from the audience's thunderous applause, a world of instructors, choreographers, costume designers and makeup artists labour to bring each production to life. There are anecdotes about some of the world's greatest dancers, including Rudolf Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Margot Fonteyn and Paloma Herrera. Read about Karen Kain's on-stage nap during a performance of The Sleeping Beauty, and the ballerina who pirouetted herself off the stage and into the laps of the musicians in the orchestra pit below. From ballet's auspicious beginnings in the royal courts of seventeenth-century France to the reinvention of the male dancer, Footnotes takes a unique look at a world where strength, determination, talent and beauty reign supreme. (2001)