Ballet is regularly declared dead – a supposed relic from the past, populated with swans and melancholy princes. Yet ballet artists all over the world strive, season after season, to explore new paths and rejuvenate the art form. Sociologist and New York Times arts critic Laura Cappelle takes us behind the scenes of four major ballet companies – Paris Opera Ballet, Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet, New York City Ballet and English National Ballet – as they attempt to do just that.
As we navigate through the highs and lows of the creative process with world-renowned choreographers including Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, Jean-Christophe Maillot and Justin Peck, the book explores essential questions for ballet: How can artists breathe new life into a vast repertoire? Who are the choreographers shaping the art form today, and how do they find their voice in a world that often favors contemporary art-makers? Why are female choreographers so scarce in ballet, with women still cast as muses rather than creators?
With a keen eye for the nuances of movement, Creating Ballets in the 21st Century lifts the curtain on the intricate interactions that drive the creation of new ballets, examining both their aesthetics and construction. Drawing on years of field work and exclusive interviews in some of the most secretive ballet ensembles in the world, from France to Russia, the book explores how we can keep alive an art form grappling with issues of gender and racial diversity – and bring its “classical” identity into the present.
