Ballet and Modern Dance

This book is great. It is in good condition and it shipped in the allotted time given. The cost was cheaper than if I had bought it at my school's bookstore, shipping costs inlcuded.

Susan Au's history of ballet & modern dance is intelligent and authoritative. Where other narrative treatments often choose details seemingly randomly, Susan Au builds the narrative from the details she proffers. Nor does she lapse into odd anecdotes often found in other narrative treatments. This book corrects some errors that have been perpetuated in earlier encyclopedic volumes. I wish she had included a short section on antiquity, as I believe that some of the inspiration for and concepts in "classical" ballet and in early modern dance derive from the rediscovery of antiquity -- but this is just quibbling. If you are going to teach 19th and 20th century Western dance history, this is a reliable way to go.

I use this book in my ballet history course and it's a very good book for that purpose, that is, for a basic overview on the history of dance. You won't find many details on special subjects, such as specific ballets, but it's great if you want to understand the developement of ballet through the ages and know something about the people who put their marks on the ballet. Lot's of colour photgraphs. Au's use of words is sometimes a bit complicated, at least for someone who doesn't have English for a first language. But a great book.