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- “Ballet taught me to stay close to style and tone. Literature taught me to be concerned about the moral life.” — Joan Acocella
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Tag Archives: Ballets Russes
2020 Books Read
What a year, huh. What a dumpster-fire year. I read a lot, mostly in the mornings, and it helped create rituals for the days, which often seemed endlessly the same, interchangeable. I read a lot of long and challenging books … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Austria, ballet, Ballets Russes, Belfast, Biography, books read, Croatia, Czechoslovakia, Czeslaw Milosz, dance, Dubravka Ugrešić, Elinor Lipman, Elizabeth Bishop, Eminem, essays, Ezra Pound, fiction, H.D., Hannah Arendt, Hitler, Ireland, Jane Austen, Jean Arthur, Marcel Proust, Nick Tosches, nonfiction, Olivia Laing, poetry, Poland, politics, Rebecca West, Robert Kaplan, Roman empire, Russia, Ryszard Kapuściński, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Shirley Jackson, Stalin, true crime, Ukraine, war, WWII, Yugoslavia
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Year in Review: Running my mouth in 2020, Part 2
Here’s part 1, a list of things I’ve written for other outlets. This list, then, is a hodge-podge of the things I’ve written here this year. Anyone familiar with this joint knows that I do tribute posts for people’s birthdays. … Continue reading
Posted in Actors, Books, Movies, Music, Personal, writers
Tagged A. E. Housman, Alexander Pope, Anna Karina, Anne Spencer, Austin Clarke, Ballets Russes, baseball, Basil Bunting, dance, Eminem, England, France, Frances Farmer, friends, Harlem Renaissance, Hediyeh Tehrani, Hope, Iranian film, Irish poetry, John Donne, Melvin B. Tolson, Nick Tosches, Nijinsky, Philip Larkin, poetry, Poland, Rhode Island, Robert Frost, Romania, Scott Walker, Stanley Kubrick, women directors, year in writing
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The Books: Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints, ‘Heroes and Hero Worship’, by Joan Acocella
On the essays shelf: Twenty-eight Artists and Two Saints: Essays by Joan Acocella. The next essay is called ‘Heroes and Hero Worship’, and it is about the legendary collaboration between Lincoln Kirstein and George Balanchine, the duo who created the … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged ballet, Ballets Russes, dance, essays, Joan Acocella, New York, Russia, Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints
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The Books: Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints, ‘After the Ball Was Over’, by Joan Acocella
On the essays shelf: Twenty-eight Artists and Two Saints: Essays by Joan Acocella. The next essay is called ‘After the Ball Was Over’, about legendary Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. Vaslav Nijinsky was born in the late 19th century and was … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged ballet, Ballets Russes, dance, essays, Joan Acocella, Nijinsky, Russia
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Baby Ballerinas
That’s what they called them, the three young Russian ballerinas who starred in the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo in the 1930s. Tamara Toumanova, Irina Baronova, and Tatiana Riabouchinska. They were 13, 14 years old, on the run from the … Continue reading