Dr. Katrina Sark
  • About me
    • Bio
    • CV
    • My Current Research
    • Activism and Community Work
    • Presentations
  • Publications
  • Teaching
    • My Courses >
      • Cultural History of Nostalgia >
        • Cultural History of Ballet
        • Cultural History of Cities and Theatres
      • Fashion Media >
        • Fashion Theory
        • Urban Chic
        • Fashion Photography
        • German Fashion
      • Gender, Pop Culture and Social Media >
        • History Through Autobiographies
        • Transnational Media Analysis
        • Slavic Cultural Studies
      • Berlin: City and Culture >
        • German Culture, Media, Gender
        • German Film History
        • German Cinema (German Language Course)
      • Digital Humanities
    • Evaluations
  • Other Professional Experience
    • Consulting
    • Event Organization
    • Photography >
      • Recent Work
    • Journalism
    • Translation
    • Web Design

Cultural History of Ballet

Designed for the Department of History, University of Victoria
Course by Dr. Kat Sark

Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture

Course Description:

This course explores key historical events and cultural eras from the Renaissance to the twentieth century in Europe and North America through the history of ballet. It is designed as a survey course of cultural history, which also incorporates critical thinking skills, cultural analysis, gender and queer theory, and dance history. In addition to analyzing historical sources, students will also learn to examine textual and visual representations, autobiographies, and other media.

This course can also be cross-listed with Theatre, Performance, Art History, and Gender Studies.

Learning Objectives:

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to cultural history, cultural analysis, and performance studies. Students will learn to analyze various historical sources, and perform media analysis, while acquiring a solid foundation in European cultural history. Students are expected to keep up with the readings, actively participate in the class discussions, present on various research and discussion topics, and use web and blogging tools for their assignments and projects. The specific objectives of the course are:
  • to become familiar with academic approaches to cultural history, performance and gender studies
  • to develop skills in critical thinking,  close reading, comparative analysis
  • to establish a working familiarity with terminology and an openness towards learning critical thinking, analysis, and creative work
  • develop media analysis skills

Course Readings: 

  1.  Jennifer Homans, Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet. New York: Random House, 2010.
  2. George Balanchine and Francis Mason, 101 Stories of the Great Ballets. New York: Anchor Books, 1989. 
  3. James Neufeld, Passion to Dance: The National Ballet of Canada. Toronto: Dundurn, 2011.

Course Evaluation:

  • Presentation (15%) 10min. in-class presentation on a topic not covered in discussion readings, introducing new ideas, perspectives, angles, under-represented minorities
  • Blog (30%) create a blog with at least 10 posts on the history of ballet 
  • Research essay (30%) 10-15 page essay
  • Final exam (25%) 
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture

Course Outline: 

(Subject to changes / in progress)

DATE

1.

TOPICS

Intro: Why ballet matters as a cultural lens?  Methodologies

CASE STUDIES: Methodologies of cultural analysis, cultural history, and media analysis

READINGS: Homans, Introduction, pp.xv-xxv
​
EXTRA
Picture

2. 

Origins of ballet – From Renaissance to courtly dance

CASE STUDIES: Catherine de Medici, Cardinal Richelieu, Louis XIII
​
READINGS: Homans, Chapter 1, pp.3-48
Picture

3.

Ballet as courtly dance – Louis XIV to the French Revolution

CASE STUDIES: Louis XIV, Pierre Beauchamps, la belle danse, ballet de coer, Paris Opera, Jean-Georges Noverre, ballet d’action, pantomime, Auguste Vestris, Marie Antoinette, Napoleon

READINGS: Homans, Chapter 2 and 3, pp.50-134

Film Clips: A Little Chaos (dir. Alan Rickman, 2014)

Picture

4.

Romanticism and the rise of the ballerina

CASE STUDIES: Marie Taglioni, Bourbon restoration, Giselle, 
​corps de ballet, 1848 Revolutions

READINGS: Homans, Chapter 4, pp.135-175

Film Clips: La Sylphide,
Giselle
​

Picture

5. 

Danish and Italian ballet 

CASE STUDIES: August Bournonville, Carlo Blasis, La Scala, Excelsior

READINGS: Homans, Chapter 5 and 6, pp.176-242

Picture

6. 

Imperial Russian ballet

CASE STUDIES: Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Marius Petipa, La Bayadère, The Sleeping Beauty, Tchaikovsky, Lev Ivanov, Bolshoi Theater, Maryinsky Theater, Enrico Cecchetti

READINGS: Homans, Chapter 7, pp.245-289
​
Film Clips: Swan Lake,
The Nutcracker
Picture

7. 

Russian modernism – Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes

CASE STUDIES: Sergei Diaghilev, Ballets Russes, Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina, Vaslav Nijinsky, Gesamtkunstwerk, Mikhail Fokine, The Firebird, Petrouchka, L’après-midi d’un faune, Le Sacre du Printemps, Stravinsky, Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo, Millicent Hodson

READINGS: Homans, Chapter 8, pp.290-340

Film Clips: Le Sacre du Printemps, Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky (dir. Jan Kounen, 2009), Ballets Russes (dir. Dan Geller, Dayna Goldfine, 2005)

Picture

8.

Cold War and the Soviet Ballet

CASE STUDIES: Sergei Kirov, dram-ballet, Stanislavsky, The Fountain of Bakhchisarai, Galina Ulanova, Agrippina Vaganova, Romeo and Juliet, Prokofiev, Cinderella, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Maya Plisetskaya, Spartacus

READINGS: Homans, Chapter 9, pp.341-395

Film Clips: Romeo and Juliet,
Cinderella
Picture




9. 


London’s Royal Ballet

CASE STUDIES: John Maynard Keynes, Ninette de Valois, Frederick Ashton, Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev

READINGS: Homans, Chapter 10, pp.396-447

Film Clips: The Red Shoes (dir. Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1948) 

Picture

10. 











American Ballet

CASE STUDIES: George Balanchine, Lincoln Kirstein, Jerome Robbins, Antony Tudor, Martha Graham, NYCB, American Ballet Theater, Joffrey Ballet, Dances at a Gathering, Don Quixote, Agon, Maria Tallchief, Tanaquil Le Clercq, Suzanne Farrell, Allegra Kent

READINGS: Homans, Chapter 11 and 12, pp.448-539, Homans, Epilogue, pp.540-550

Film Clips: The Turning Point (dir. Herbert Ross, 1977), Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq (dir. by Nancy Buirski, 2014)
Picture

11. 







Canadian Ballet

CASE STUDIES: Royal Winnipeg Ballet, National Ballet of Canada

READINGS: James Neufeld, Passion to Dance: The National Ballet of Canada, Toronto: Dundurn, 2011.
​
Film Clips: Forty years of one night stands: the story of Canada's Royal Winnipeg Ballet (dir. Jeffrey McKay, 2008)

​
Picture

12. 

Contemporary trends and diversity

CASE STUDIES: Michaela DePrince, Misty Copeland

READINGS: Selections from: Michaela DePrince, Elaine DePrince, Taking Flight: From War Orphan to Star Ballerina. New York: Knopf, 2014. Misty Copeland, Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina. New York: Touchstone, 2014. Peter Stoneley, A Queer History of the Ballet. Abingdon: Routledge, 2006. 

Film Clips: First Position (dir. Bess Kargman, 2014)

Picture

Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture

Bibliography: 

Anawalt, Sasha. The Joffrey Ballet: Robert Joffrey and the making of an American Dance Company. New York: Scribner, 1996.
Anderson, Jack. The Nutcracker Ballet. New York: Gallery, 1979.
Arruga, Lorenzo. La Scala. New York: Praeger, 1975.
Baet, Nancy Van Norman. Bronislava Nijinska: A Dancer’s Legacy. San Francisco: Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, 1986. 
Baet, Nancy Van Norman, and Joan Ross Acocella. The Art of Enchantment: Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 1909-1929. San Francisco: Fine Arts      
          Museums of San Francisco, 1988.
Baker, Keith Michael (ed.), Inventing the French Revolution: Essays on French Political Culture in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge                   University Press, 1990.
Banes, Sally (ed). Terpsichore in Sneakers: Post-Modern Dance. Boston: Houghton Miffin, 1979.
Barnes, Clive. Nureyev. New York: Helene Obolensky Enterprises, 1982.
Barnes, Clive. Ballet in Britain since the War. London: C.A. Watts, 1953.
Beaumont, Cyril William. A History of Ballet in Russia (1613-1881). London: C.W. Beaumont, 1930.
Beaumont, Cyril William. Michel Fokine and His Ballets. New York: Dance Books, 1981.
Beaumont, Cyril William, and Stanislas Idzikowski. The Cecchetti Method of Classical Ballet Theory and Technique. Mineola: Dover, 2003.
Benois, Alexandre. Reminiscences of Russian Ballet. New York: Da Capo, 1977.
Blair, Fredrika. Isadora: Portrait of the Artist as a Woman. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986.
Bland, Alexander. The Royal Ballet: The First Fifty Years. Garden City: Doubleday, 1981.
Blanning, T.C.W. The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture: Old Regime Europe, 1660-1789.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Brainard, Ingrid. The Art of Courtly Dancing in the Early Renaissance. West Newton: Self-published, 1981.
Brewer, John. The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997.
Broadbent, R.J. A History of Pantomime. New York: Arno Press, 1977.
Brooks, Lynn Matluck. Women’s Work: Making Dance in Europe Before 1800. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2007. 
Brown, David. Tchaikovsky: The Final Years 1885-1893. London: W. W. Norton, 1991.
Bruce, Evangeline. Napoleon and Josephine. New York: Scribner, 1995.
Buckle, Richard. Diaghilev. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1993.
Buckle, Richard. Nijinsky. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971.
Chartier, Roger. The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991.
Chazin-Bennahum, Judith. The Lure of Perfection: Fashion and Ballet, 1780-1830. New York: Routledge, 2005. 
Chazin-Bennahum, Judith. The Ballets of Antony Tudor. Studies in Psyche and Satire. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Clark, Katerina. Petersburg: Crucible of Cultural Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.
Clark, Mary and Clement Crisp. Ballet Art from the Renaissance to the Present. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1978.
Clark, Mary and Clement Crisp. The History of Dance. New York: Crown, 1981.
Copeland, Misty. Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina. New York: Touchstone, 2014.
De Valois, Ninette. Come Dance with Me: A Memoir 1898-1956. Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1992.
Daneman, Meredith. Margot Fonteyn. New York: Viking, 2004.
DePrince, Michaela, and Elaine DePrince, Taking Flight: From War Orphan to Star Ballerina. New York: Knopf, 2014.
Dorris, George (ed.), The Founding of the Royal Swedish Ballet: Development and Decline, 1773-1833. London: Dance Books, 1999. 
Doyle, William. Origins of the French Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Duberman, Martin B. The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein. New York: Knopf, 2007.
Eksteins, Modris. Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age. Boston: Houghton Miffin, 1989.
Figes, Orlando. Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2002.
Fokine, Michel. Fokine: Memoirs of a Ballet Master. Transl. Vitale Fokine. Boston: Little Brown, 1961. 
Fonteyn, Margot. Margot Fonteyn: Autobiography. New York: Knopf, 1976.
Foster, Susan Leigh. Choreography and Narrative: Ballet’s Staging of Story and Desire. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996.
Frame, Murray. The St. Petersburg Imperial Theaters: Stage and State in Revolutionary Russia 1900-1920. Jefferson: McFarland, 2000.
Franko Mark. Dance as Text: Ideologies of the Baroque Body. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1993.
Garafola, Lynn. Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Garafola, Lynn, and Nancy Van Norman Baer (eds). The Ballets Russes and Its World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. 
George, M. Dorothy. London Life in the Eighteenth Century. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966.
Geva, Tamara. Split Seconds: A Remembrance. New York: Harper and Row, 1972.
Gold, Arthur, and Robert Fizdale. Misia: The Life of Misia Sert. New York: Vintage, 1992.
Goldner, Nancy. Balanchine Variations. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2008.
Goodman, Dena. The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994.
Gottlieb, Robert. George Balanchine: The Ballet Maker. New York: Harper Collins, 2004.
Graff, Ellen. Stepping Left: Dance and Politics in New York City, 1928-1942. Durham: Duke University Press, 1997.
Grigoriev, S. L. The Diaghilev Ballet, 1909-1929. New York: Dance Horizons, 1974.
Gruen, John. The Private World of Ballet. New York: Viking, 1975.
Guest, Ivor Forbes. The Ballet of the Enlightenment: The Establishment of the Ballet d’Action in France, 1770-1793. London: Dance Books, 1996.
Hilton, Wendy. Dance of Court and Theater: The French Noble Style 1690-1725. London: Dance Books, 1981.
Hodson, Millicent. Nijinsky’s Crime Against Grace: Reconstruction Score of the Original Choreography for Le Sacre du Printemps. New York:                              Pendragon, 1996.
Hughes, Lindsey. Russia in the Age of Peter the Great: 1682-1725. New Haven: Yale University Press,1998.
Jones, W. Glyn. Denmark: A Modern History. London: Croom Helm, 1986.
Joseph, Charles M. Stravinsky and Balanchine: A Journey of Invention. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.
Jürgensen, Knud Arne. The Verdi Ballets. Parma: IstitutoNazionale di Studi Verdiani, 1995.
Kant, Marion. The Cambridge Companion to Ballet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Karsavina, Tamara. Theatre Street: The Reminiscences of Tamara Karsavina. London: Dance Books, 1981.
Kavanagh, Julie. Nureyev: The Life. New York: Pantheon Books, 2007.
Kendall, Richard. Degas Dancers. New York: Universe, 1996. 
Keynes, John Maynard. The Economic Consequences of Peace. New York: Penguin, 1971.
Kirstein, Lincoln. Nijinsky Dancing. New York: Knopf, 1975.
Krasovskaya, Vera. Vaganova: A Dance Journey from Petersburg to Leningrad. Trans. Vera M. Siegel.Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005.
Kschessinska, Matilda. Dancing in Petersburg: The Memoirs of Schessinska. London: Gollancz, 1960.
Kurth, Peter. Isadora: A Sentimental Life. Boston: Little, Brown, 2001.
Leshkov, D.I. Marius Petipa. London: C.W. Beaumont, 1971.
Lopukhov, Fedor. Writings on Ballet and Music. Trans. Dorinda Offord, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002.
Mack Smith, Denis. Italy: A Modern History. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1969.
Madariaga, Isabel de. Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981.  
Magriel, Paul David. Pavlova: An Illustrated Monograph. New York: Henry Holt, 1947.
Massine, Leonide. My Life in Ballet. London: Macmillan, 1968.
Migel, Parmenia. The Ballerinas: From the Court of Louis XIV to Pavlova. New York: Da Capo 1980.
Monahan, James. The Nature of Ballet: A Critic’s Reflections. London: Pitman, 1976.
Money, Keith. Anna Pavlova: Her Life and Art. New York: Knopf, 1982.
Morrison, Simon. The People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Nice, David. Prokofiev: From Russia to the West, 1891-1935. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.
Nijinska, Bronislava. Bronislava Nijinska: Early Memoirs. Trans. Irina Nijinska and Jean Rawlinson. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981.
Nijinsky, Vaslav. The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky: Unexpurgated Edition. Trans. Kyril Fitzlyon. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999.
Norton, Leslie. Léonide Massine and the 20th Century Ballet. Jefferson: McFarland, 2004.
Oakley, Steward. A Short History of Denmark. New York: Praeger, 1972.
Payne, Charles. American Ballet Theatre. New York: Knopf, 1978.
Perrot, Philippe. Fashioning the Bourgeoisie: A History of Clothing in the Nineteenth Century. Trans.
Richard Bienvenu. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.
Plisrtskaya, Maya. I, Maya Plisetskaya. Trans. Antonina W. Bouis. New Haven: Yale Univerity Press, 2001. 
Prevots, Naima. Dance for Export: Cultural Diplomacy and the Cold War. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1998.
Pritchard, Jane, and Caroline Hamilton, Anna Pavlova: Twentieth Century Ballerina, New York: Booth-Clibborn, 2013.
Racster, Olga. The Master of the Russian Ballet: The Memoirs of Cav. Enrico Cecchetti. New York: Da Capo, 1978.
Raeff, Marc. Russian Intellectual History: An Anthology. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1966.
Raeff, Marc. Russia Abroad: A Cultural History of the Russian Emigration, 1919-1939. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Richards, Kenneth, and Laura Richards. The Commedia Dell’arte: A Documentary History. Oxford: Shakespeare Head Press, 1990.
Roosevelt, P.R. Life on the Russian Country Estate: A Social and Cultural History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.
Roslavleva,Natalia. The Era of the Russian Ballet. New York: Da Capo, 1979.
Rubin, David Lee (ed.), Sun King: The Ascendancy of French Culture During the Reign of Louis XIV. London: Associated University Presses, 1992.
Rzhevsky, Nicholas. The Cambridge Companion to Modern Russian Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Scholl, Tim. From Petipa to Balanchine: Classical Revival and the Modernization of Ballet. London: Routledge, 1994.
Seton-Watson, Hugh. The Russian Empire 1801-1917. Oxford: Claredon Press, 1967.
Siegel, Jerrold E. Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics, and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life 1830-1930. New York: Viking, 1986.
Smith, Marian Elizabeth. Ballet and Opera in the Age of Giselle. Princeton: University Press, 2000.
Smith, Winifred. The Commedia Dell’arte. New York: B. Blom, 1964.
Sokolova, Lydia. Dancing for Diaghilev: The Memoirs of Lydia Sokolova. San Francisco: Mercury House, 1959.
Stanislavsky, Konstantin. My Life in Art. New York: Theatre Art Books, 1952. 
Stoneley, Peter. A Queer History of the Ballet. Abingdon: Routledge, 2006.
Tallchief, Maria and Larry Kaplan. Maria Tallchief: America’s Prima Ballerina. NY: Henry Holt, 1997.
Tracy, Robert. Balanchine’s Ballerinas: Conversations with the Muses. New York: Linden Press, 1983.
Ulanova, Galina. Autobiographical Notes and Commentary on Soviet Ballet. London: Soviet News, 1956.
Vaughan, David. Frederick Ashton and His Ballets. London: Dance Books, 1999.
Volkov, Solomon. St. Petersburg: A Cultural History. New York: Free Press, 1995.
Webb, Ruth. Demons and Dancers: Performance in Late Antiquity. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2008.
Whitfield, Stephen J. The Culture of the Cold War. Blatimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
Winter, Marian Hannah. The Pre-Romantic Ballet. London: Pitman, 1974. 

Films: 

A Little Chaos, dir. Alan Rickman, 2014
Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq, dir. by Nancy Buirski, 2014
Ballet Boys, dir. Kenneth Elvebakk, 2014
Ballet Russes, dir. Dan Geller, Dayna Goldfine, 2005
Big Ballet, dir. Kirsty Cunningham and Anna Llewellyn, 2014
Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky, dir. Jan Kounen, 2009
The Company, dir. Robert Altman, 2003
Dancing for Mr. B: Six Balanchine Ballerinas, dir. Anne Belle, Deborah Dickson, 1989
First Position, dir. Bess Kargman, 2014
Forty years of one night stands: the story of Canada's Royal Winnipeg Ballet, dir. Jeffrey McKay, 2008
Getting to the Nutcracker, dir. Serene Meshel-Dillman, 2014
Joffrey: Mavericks of American Dance, dir. Bob Hercules, 2012
Only When I Dance, dir. Beadie Finzi, 2009
The Red Shoes, dir. Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1948
The Turning Point, dir. Herbert Ross, 1977
Disclaimer: The contents of this site are copy-right protected and cannot be reproduced without the author's permission. © Katrina Sark, 2016. 
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.