Dying Swans and Madmen

Description:

From mid-twentieth-century films such as Grand Hotel, Waterloo Bridge, and The Red Shoes to recent box-office hits including Billy Elliot, Save the Last Dance, and The Company, ballet has found its way, time and again, onto the silver screen and into the hearts of many otherwise unlikely audiences. In Dying Swans and Madmen, Adrienne L. McLean explores the curious pairing of classical and contemporary, art and entertainment, high culture and popular culture to reveal the ambivalent place that this art form occupies in American life. Drawing on examples that range from musicals to tragic melodramas, she shows how commercial films have produced an image of ballet and its artists that is associated both with joy, fulfillment, fame, and power and with sexual and mental perversity, melancholy, and death. Although ballet is still received by many with a lack of interest or outright suspicion, McLean argues that these attitudes as well as ballet`s popularity and its acceptability as a way of life and a profession have often depended on what audiences first learned about it from the movies.

Portions copyright 2005 Muze Inc. All rights reserved.

Buying Guides

• How to Start a Book Club
• FAQs About Banned Books
• How to Create Your Own Reading List
• Pulitzer Prize Literature Guide
• Twilight - Beyond the Novels
• Tips on Selecting the Perfect Entertainment Gift

Standard Return Policy:

Items must be returned in new or unused condition and contain all original materials included with the shipment.
More details

FINAL SALE EXCLUSION:

Items marked as FINAL SALE are not returnable unless the problem you experience is the result of our error.

* For your safety, some orders go through our loss prevention department. If we select your order for this process, we will immediately notify you that there may be up to a 3-day delay on your order.
** Most Oversize orders are delivered within 1-4 weeks. Some orders may take 6 weeks to be delivered.

Expedited Shipping:

We offer Next Day, 2 Day, and 3 Day shipping for most items. Expedited shipping is not available for items being shipped to PO Boxes or APO/FPO destinations. For more information on this please view our Expedited Shipping page.
More details