Well-researched...Recommendeddddd
CHOICE
...a scholarly, well-researched, but very readable work on the development of ballet in the 1700s....Even non-history buffs will want to invest in [this] book.
Dancer
An enormously valuable work of scholarship.
American Society For Eighteenth-Century Studies Book Reviews
This forthright book addresses many misconceptions surrounding eighteenth-century dance. Its author, schooled in music, ... Read morefashion design, languages, classical ballet and Baroque dance, is well placed to address these myths....Fairfax's careful selection and shaping of copious quotations from primary sources should convince all but the most blinkered reader that this period's dances and dancers were anything by primitive....a wealth of new material and interpretations...This book is planned as the first in a series of three studies: volume two will consider technique, while the final volume will cover pantomime ballet. Fairfax has challenged many of our perceptions with a clear-sighted approach to constructing history, working from the declared philosophy that a historical document read in isolation is not actual 'history'. Given Fairfax's striking conclusions and the breadth of his reading, we can anticipate that the other volumes will also break new ground in dance history.
Eighteenth-Century Music
...explores an important subject that has received little attention in the past, has been treated piecemeal when it did, and is finally tackled here with confidence, over a broad base of data....The project is colossal, the material is rich, and the book is dense with quotations, packed with fascinating information that the reader must absorb at the frenzied pace set by an author who capers his way up and down the eighteenth century and back and forth across European borders....Fairfax's give to dance history is substantial...
Dance Chronicle
Well-researched...Recommended
CHOICE
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