Ballet is a dying art, according to Jennifer Homans’s bestselling history of ballet, Apollo’s Angels.
Ballet is a dying art, according to Jennifer Homans’s bestselling history of ballet, Apollo’s Angels. Sensationalist as it may sound, this claim is cogently argued at the end of the book, which turns dreary ballet history into an engaging narrative. Inevitably, the statement has ruffled many feathers, particularly among those ‘hyperspecialists’, ‘balletomanes’ and ‘insiders’ who, she says, speak an ‘impenetrable theory-laden prose’ and have reduced dance to a ‘recondite world’.
Indeed, the worrying demise of classical theatre-dance depends greatly on the mental onanism of some scholars, as well as on the art-less vision of teachers and artistic directors who seem to ignore the fact that ballet is not a revolting display of hyper-extended muscles. But I do not share fully Homans’s view about the ready-for-burial state of the art, as I prefer to be one of those who like to believe that, in her words, ‘ballet is not dying but falling instead into a deep sleep, to be reawakened — like the Sleeping Beauty — by a new generation’.
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