Ballet
Göttingen: Little Steidl, 2024.
ISBN: 9783944630076
Condition: Fine, complete with text booklet in portfolio box
Hardcover in clamshell box 144 pp ,104 plates + 16 pp booklet
Reissue of Alexey Brodovitch’s legendary photobook, Ballet, first published in 1945 in an edition of 500 by J. J. Augustin in New York. The new edition is available through a handful of selected bookstores worldwide. One of the most influential and coveted works in the history of the photobook, but so rare that many connoisseurs have never seen a copy of the original edition, much less held it in their own hands. It has been conjured in the imagination and hinted at through documentation, but it remains more of a mystery than a reality for many. Brodovitch’s aim was to capture dance in the spontaneous, living present. Free of all artistic preconceptions and working with a sense of existential imperative, he immersed himself over a span of five years in the final performances of the Ballets Russes on tour in America. These included productions of Bronislava Nijinska’s “Les Cents Baisers” and “Les Noces;” George Balanchine’s “La Concurrence” and “Cotillon;” and Leonide Massine’s “Symphonie Fantastique,” “Le Tricorne,” “La Boutique Fantasque,” “Septième Symphonie,” and “Choreartium;” as well as “Le Lac des Cygnes” (after Petipa) and “Les Sylphides” (after Fokine). By the time the book was published in 1945, the arc of the revolutionary dance tradition ignited by Sergei Diaghilev and carried on by his artistic heirs had reached its end. Item #29819
Out of stock
