Rethinking the Sylph

New Perspectives on the Romantic Ballet

Lynn Garafola

• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780819563255
• eBook ISBN: 9780819572011
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Dance

Rethinking the Sylph gathers essays by a premier group of international scholars to illustrate the importance of the romantic ballet within the broad context of western theatrical dancing. The wide variety of perspectives — from social history to feminism, from psychoanalysis to musicology — serves to illuminate the modernity of the Romantic ballet in terms of vocabulary, representation of gender, and iconography. The collection highlights previously unexplored aspects of the Romantic ballet, including its internationalism; its reflection of modern ideas of nationalism through the use and creation of national dance forms; its construction of an exotic-erotic hierarchy, and proto-orientalist "other"; its transformation of social relations from clan to class; and the repercussions of its feminization as an art form. This generously illustrated book offers a wealth of rare archival material, including prints, costume designs, music, and period reviews, some translated into English for the first time.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• National Dance in the Romantic Ballet
• Feminism or Fetishism: La Révolte Des Femmes and Women’s Liberation in France in the 1830s
• Marriage and the Inhuman: La Sylphide’s Narratives of Domesticity and Community
• Redeeming Giselle: Making a Case for the Ballet We Love to Hate
• Women of Faint Heart and Steel Toes
• Blasis, the Italian Ballo, and the Male Sylph
• Ballet Dancers at Warsaw’s Wielki Theater
• The Arrival of the Great Wonder of Ballet, or Ballet in Rome from 1845 to 1855
• Salvatore Taglioni, King of Naples
• Jules Janin: Romantic Critic
• Appendixes
• Bibliography
• Contributors
• Index