This book is highly
informative and discusses the history and nature of ballet which progressed into the west in the late
seventeenth
century. The book explains in depth, the numberless and highly complex movements which ballet possesses and how the ballet also used speech, mime and song as a highly joyful entertainment, which was used - not only for entertaining royalty, but it was very popular with the common section of society. The Nutcracker, The swan Lake are shown as one of the prime examples of not only classical ballet, but also modern versions of the ballet. Petipa and Nijinsky are respectfully mentioned as being amongst some of the most highly prestigious and masters of this method of dance choreography, who were immensely talented and inventive. The book explicitly highlights the lives of some of the most famous ballet dancers ever to bless this fine art of dancing such as Tamara Karsavina and Anna Pavlova who are portrayed as the classic of the classics of prima ballerinas. The book emphasises the characteristical image of the romantic ballerina as how it was and still is typically displayed in many kinds of pictures, with their gentle but opulent and waxen faces, tinted with rosy cheek bones, the rich creamed lace which gracefully clothed their delicate legs and not forgetting the elegant, alluring ice-pink tutus and the long, slim piano fingers, afixed graciously over their slender body frames. The history of ballet beautifully encaptivates the very heart of the subject matter as truly being the one and only art form of an aesthetic and luxuriant dance, which harmoniously enlivens ones soul like a mature fine wine, creating inner peace not only for the infinite ballerina herself, but also mesmerizing the highly charmed observer, thus potraying the ballet like a 'hypnotic trance' - fervent and immensely sensual.