New Book: Tim Scholl. "Sleeping Beauty: A legend in progress" Yale UP, 2004.

Tim Scholl
"SLEEPING BEAUTY," A LEGEND IN PROGRESS
New Haven: yale University Press. 2004 272 pp. 19 illus., 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Cloth ISBN 0-300-09956-8 $35.00


In 1999 the Maryinsky (formerly Kirov) Ballet and Theater in St. Petersburg
re-created its 1890 production of Sleeping Beauty. The revival showed the
classic work in its original sets and costumes and restored pantomime and
choreography that had been eliminated over the past century. Nevertheless,
the work proved unexpectedly controversial, with many Russian dance
professionals and historians denouncing it.

In order to understand how a historically informed performance could be
ridiculed by those  responsible for writing the history of Russian and
Soviet ballet, Tim Scholl discusses the tradition, ideology, and popular
legend that have shaped the development of Sleeping Beauty.  In the process
he provides a history of Russian and Soviet ballet during the twentieth
century.

A fascinating slice of cultural history, the book will appeal not only to
dance historians but also  to those interested in the arts and cultural
policies of the Soviet and post-Soviet periods.


Lynn Garafola,
co-editor of The Ballets Russes and Its  World:

"This admirable book is nothing less than a history of Russian and Soviet
ballet during the twentieth century. Scholl not only charts the changes that
took place in Sleeping Beauty over time but also registers the changing
attitudes toward  the ballet and its aesthetic and how these attitudes
reflected the ideological shifts of the past hundred years."--

Jennifer Fisher,
author of Nutcracker Nation: How an Old World Ballet Became a Christmas
Tradition in the New World, and assistant professor at the University of
California,Irvine:

"By drawing together the history and rhetoric surrounding various Russian
Sleeping Beauty productions and foregrounding inconsistencies and partisan
debates, Scholl proves yet again that the 'texts' of canonic story ballets
are particularly slippery entities. 'Will the real Sleeping Beauty please
stand up?'  he seems to be asking. It's not a question easily answered, but
Scholl's exploration of the debates that surround Petipa's legacy and the
authenticity factor are revealing. Scholl begins to unpack the baggage
Sleeping  Beauty has accumulated since its premiere in 1890, admirably
trying to sort out the competing myths and ideological agendas that still
haunt the ballet's latest 'authentic' version, reconstructed amid new
controversies in the Russia of 1999."


Francis Mason, editor of Ballet Review:
"Everyone wants to know how the old Russian ballets came to be, how they
changed history and why we are still in their thrall. Tim Scholl tells us."