Le Ballet contemporain ouvrage édité avec la collaboration de L. Bakst Traduction française de M.-D. Calvocoressi - SIGNED BY PAVLOVA

[St. Pétersbourg]: [Société R. Golicke et A. Willborg]. 1912. First French Edition. Small folio. Full green buckram with titling to spine. 1f., 1f. (title), 1f. (decorative title printed in colour), [viii], 135, [i] pp. + 73 full-page plates, 24 of which are in colour. Cloth binding very slightly faded, but otherwise in exceptionally fine condition throughout. Anna Pavlova has signed her name in cyrillic in fountain pen ink across the gravure image of her in Giselle, dating it 23/2 1921.

First French Edition, limited to 520 copies, this being no. 154. Beaumont pp. 168-169. Niles & Leslie II, p. 503. The Russian edition was published in the same year.

"This is a well written and most valuable work... The book is divided into five main sections."..."The first gives a biographical account of the celebrated maître de ballet Marius Petipa, and of his remarkable contribution to the building up of the old Imperial Russian Ballet, while his theories of the art are examined and criticised in relation to the work of his successors. It concludes with a description of the great and invaluable reforms instituted by Michel Fokine. The second section traces briefly the development of ballet in Europe... The third describes the advent of Isadora Duncan... It concludes with a critical account of the work of other well-known exponents of natural dancing such as the sisters Wiesenthal, Maud Allan, Stephanie Dombrovska, Ruth St. Denis, etc. The final section recounts the story of M. Diaghilev's first descent on Paris, and describes famous members of his company such as Fokine, Nijinsky, Bolm, Pavlova, Karsavina, etc., the ballets in his repertory, his scenic artists and composers, and the extraordinary success of what was then a revelation of the art of ballet to the theatre-going public of Western Europe... ""... The book is decorated by Bakst and beautifully illustrated with reproductions of designs for costumes and scenery by Anisfeld, Bakst, Benois, Golovin, Korovin and Roehrich; of portrait drawings and photographs of famous dancers of the past and present such as Bolm, Duncan, Elssler, Feodorova, Fokine, Fokina, Karsavina, Lopokova, Nijinska, Nijinsky, Pavlova, Ruth St. Denis, Sallé, Taglioni, etc." Beaumont: A Bibliography of Dancing, pp. 168-169 (5063)

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