This book is a perceptive and critical account of the first 75 years of The Royal Ballet, tracing the company's growth, and its great cultural importance - an indispensable book for all lovers of ballet.

In 1931, Ninette de Valois started a ballet company with just six dancers. Within twenty years, The Royal Ballet - as it became - was established as one of the world's great companies. It has produced celebrated dancers, from Margot Fonteyn to Darcey Bussell, and one of the richest repertoires in ballet.

The company danced through the Blitz, won an international reputation in a single New York performance and added to the glamour of London's Swinging Sixties. It has established a distinctive English school of ballet, a pure classical style that could do justice to the 19th-century repertory and to new British classics.

Leading dance critic, Zoe Anderson, vividly portrays the extraordinary personalities who created the company and the dancers who made such an impact on their audiences. She looks at the bad times as well as the good, examining the controversial directorships of Norman Morrice and Ross Stretton and the criticism fired at the company as the Royal Opera House closed for redevelopment.

Zoe Anderson's The Royal Ballet: 75 Years is a critical and historical look at one of the world's greatest dance companies.

About the Author
Zoe Anderson is the dance critic of the Independent. As a freelance critic, she has written for The Dancing Times, Independent on Sunday and Daily Telegraph. She has a doctorate in renaissance literature from the University of York.

Reviews
"'Remarkable - a lively and varied tale of endeavour, triumph, relapse and retrenchment every inch as engrossing as Richard Morrison's story of the LSO. Anderson has a simple, lucid style many of us would kill for.' BBC Music Magazine"



Book Information
ISBN 9780571227969
Author Zoe Anderson
Format Paperback
Page Count 384
Imprint Faber & Faber
Publisher Faber & Faber
Weight(grams) 330g
Dimensions(mm) 197mm * 127mm * 28mm