The Art of Ballet

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Art of Ballet, by Mark Edward Perugini
Adolph Bolm in “Carnival.” from a photograph by E. O. Hoppé
THE ART OF BALLET
BY MARK E. PERUGINI
LONDON: MARTIN SECKER
NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI
First published 1915
TO MY WIFE

Some may possibly wonder to find here no record of Ballet in Italy, or at the Opera Houses of Madrid, Lisbon, Vienna, Buda-Pest, Berlin, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Warsaw, or Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg), not to speak of the United States and South America. This, however, would be to miss somewhat the author’s purpose, which is not to trace the growth of Ballet in every capital where it has been seen. To do so effectively were hardly possible in a single volume. A whole book might well be devoted to the history of the art in Italy alone, herein only touched upon as it came to have vital influence on France and England in the nineteenth century. We have already had numerous volumes dealing with Russian Ballet; and since the ground has been extensively enough surveyed in that direction there could be no particular advantage in devoting more space to the subject than is already given to it in this work, the purpose of which only is to present—as far as possible from contemporary sources—some leading phases of the history of the modern Art of Ballet as seen more particularly in France and England.
A brief series of biographical essays “Cameos of the Dance,” by the same writer, was published in The Whitehall Review in 1909; various articles on the subject also being contributed to The Evening News , Lady’s Pictorial , Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News , Pall Mall Gazette and other London journals during 1910 and 1911; and a series of “Sketches of the Dance and Ballet,” coming from the same hand, appeared in The Dancing Times , 1912, 1913 and 1914. They were based on portions of the manuscript of the present work which, begun some years ago by way of pastime, and written during the scant leisure of a crowded business life, was completed at the publisher’s request, and was—save for a few brief insertions in the proofs—ready, and announced for publication before the Great War began in August 1914.