Review
"It has never been done before, what Jennifer Homans has done in Apollo’s Angels. She has written the only truly definitive history of the most impossibly fantastic art form, ballet….Homans accomplishment is akin to setting the most delicate and beautiful of all the imperial Faberge eggs into a fissure high on Mount Rushmore and tracking its unlikely survival…Inspired…The story of Balanchine has been told before, and at greater lengths, but never better…An eloquent and lasting elegy to an unlasting art."
—COVER REVIEW, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
"A tour de force…the publication of Apollo’s Angels is itself a moment in the magnificent history of classical dance."
—THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
"Magisterial… Apollo’s Angels is a cultural history of the highest order…Homans brings to the page a practical knowledge gained in an earlier career as a dancer. Thus she leaps easily from big picture political trends in one sentence to the minutiae of a dancer’s steps in the next, from how dances were made to who the patrons were…Fascinating reading."
—BOOKFORUM
"Here is a book of immense ambition—a one volume history of ballet—and of considerable accomplishment….Homans shows herself to be both dogged and graceful as a historian—a rare and welcome combination of qualities…I follow her gratefully through the centuries as she traces the progress of ballet from its beginnings…Her deft intelligence and lively voice keep the book from sounding too academic, and its vast stock of information is cogently organized."
—NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
"It’s hard to believe that a book like Jennifer Homans’s Apollo’s Angels, on a topic of such obvious interest and importance, has never been written before, but it apparently hasn't, and lovers of the ballet are lucky that it is Homans—herself a former dancer and the dance critic for The New Republic--who took up the task."
— Harper's Magazine
"A magisterial and often moving history of the silent art…The author artfully choreographs a huge, sometimes unruly cast, producing a work of elegance, emotion and enduring importance."
—KIRKUS REVIEWS, starred review «
"Homans brings her intimate experience as a dancer and her discerning dance critic’s eye to her fascinating and exquisitely detailed history of ballet, an art that combines rigor and idealism….[a] glorious landmark study of ballet’s ideals and enchantment."
— BOOKLIST, starred review «
"An important and original work of cultural history…Her cultural critique, as well as her expansive and penetrating view of ballet’s history, recommend this book to all readers who care about the history of the arts as well as their present and possible future."
— PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, starred review «
"Apollo's Angels" is an important addition to the literature on ballet: intellectually rigorous, beautifully written, brilliantly structured… an illuminating history much needed now."
— SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
"Each page of this luminous work delights, enlightens and beckons. Every dancer should live with this book, of course, but every person who loves literature and history, is word-struck and story-addicted, should give themselves a treat with Apollo’s Angels. Treasure this treasure.”—Jacques d’amboise
“This is a wonderful book about how ballet evolved. Written by a gifted dancer, Apollo's Angels is dance history seen from the inside. The wonder to me is how much this accessible, beautifully-crafted book reveals about the times and places in which ballets were made; it makes culture come alive.” —Richard Sennett, author of The Craftsman
"A dancer who is also a historian -- who ever dreamed of such an improbable creature? But here is Jennifer Homans and her indispensable book. She puts the understanding of ballet on a whole new footing. Finally the delicacies of ballet have been restored to the indelicacies of history, and the art seems even more wondrous for it. Apollo's Angels is an enlightenment, a remarkable feat of scholarship and sensibility, an affecting mixture of criticism and devotion, an intellectual joy."—Leon Wieseltier
—COVER REVIEW, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
"A tour de force…the publication of Apollo’s Angels is itself a moment in the magnificent history of classical dance."
—THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
"Magisterial… Apollo’s Angels is a cultural history of the highest order…Homans brings to the page a practical knowledge gained in an earlier career as a dancer. Thus she leaps easily from big picture political trends in one sentence to the minutiae of a dancer’s steps in the next, from how dances were made to who the patrons were…Fascinating reading."
—BOOKFORUM
"Here is a book of immense ambition—a one volume history of ballet—and of considerable accomplishment….Homans shows herself to be both dogged and graceful as a historian—a rare and welcome combination of qualities…I follow her gratefully through the centuries as she traces the progress of ballet from its beginnings…Her deft intelligence and lively voice keep the book from sounding too academic, and its vast stock of information is cogently organized."
—NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
"It’s hard to believe that a book like Jennifer Homans’s Apollo’s Angels, on a topic of such obvious interest and importance, has never been written before, but it apparently hasn't, and lovers of the ballet are lucky that it is Homans—herself a former dancer and the dance critic for The New Republic--who took up the task."
— Harper's Magazine
"A magisterial and often moving history of the silent art…The author artfully choreographs a huge, sometimes unruly cast, producing a work of elegance, emotion and enduring importance."
—KIRKUS REVIEWS, starred review «
"Homans brings her intimate experience as a dancer and her discerning dance critic’s eye to her fascinating and exquisitely detailed history of ballet, an art that combines rigor and idealism….[a] glorious landmark study of ballet’s ideals and enchantment."
— BOOKLIST, starred review «
"An important and original work of cultural history…Her cultural critique, as well as her expansive and penetrating view of ballet’s history, recommend this book to all readers who care about the history of the arts as well as their present and possible future."
— PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, starred review «
"Apollo's Angels" is an important addition to the literature on ballet: intellectually rigorous, beautifully written, brilliantly structured… an illuminating history much needed now."
— SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
"Each page of this luminous work delights, enlightens and beckons. Every dancer should live with this book, of course, but every person who loves literature and history, is word-struck and story-addicted, should give themselves a treat with Apollo’s Angels. Treasure this treasure.”—Jacques d’amboise
“This is a wonderful book about how ballet evolved. Written by a gifted dancer, Apollo's Angels is dance history seen from the inside. The wonder to me is how much this accessible, beautifully-crafted book reveals about the times and places in which ballets were made; it makes culture come alive.” —Richard Sennett, author of The Craftsman
"A dancer who is also a historian -- who ever dreamed of such an improbable creature? But here is Jennifer Homans and her indispensable book. She puts the understanding of ballet on a whole new footing. Finally the delicacies of ballet have been restored to the indelicacies of history, and the art seems even more wondrous for it. Apollo's Angels is an enlightenment, a remarkable feat of scholarship and sensibility, an affecting mixture of criticism and devotion, an intellectual joy."—Leon Wieseltier
About the Author
Jennifer Homans was a professional dancer trained at the North Carolina School of the Arts, American Ballet Theatre, and The School of American Ballet. She performed with the Chicago Lyric Opera Ballet, the San Francisco Ballet, and Pacific Northwest Ballet. Currently the dance critic for The New Republic, she has written for The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, The New York Review of Books, and The Australian. She earned her B.A. at Columbia University and her Ph.D. in modern European history at New York University, where she is a Distinguished Scholar in Residence.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
Kings of Dance
Music and Dancing, not only give great pleasure but have the honour of depending on Mathematics, for they consist in number and in measure. And to this must be added Painting and Perspective and the use of very elaborate Machines, all of which are necessary for the ornament of Theatres at Ballets and at Comedies. Therefore, whatever the old doctors may say, to employ oneself at all this is to be a Philosopher and a Mathematician.
-Charles Sorel
According to Aristotle, ballet expresses the actions of men, their customs and their passions. -Claude-François Ménestrier
The king's grandeur and majesty derive from the fact that in his presence his subjects are unequal. . . . Without gradation, inequality, and difference, order is impossible. -Le Duc de Saint- Simon
It is to this noble subordination that we owe the art of seemliness, the elegance of custom, the exquisite good manners with which this magnificent age [of Louis XIV] is imprinted. -Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand
WHEN THE FRENCH king Henri II wedded the Florentine Catherine de Medici in 1533, French and Italian culture came into close and formal alliance, and it is here that the history of ballet begins. The French court had long reveled in tournaments, jousting, and masquerades, but even these impressive and lavish entertainments fell short of those traditionally mounted by the princes and nobility of Milan, Venice, and Florence: flaming torch dances, elaborate horse ballets with hundreds of mounted cavaliers arranged in symbolic formations, and masked interludes with heroic, allegorical, and exotic themes.
The ballet master Guglielmo Ebreo, writing in Milan in 1463, for example, described festivities that included fireworks, tightrope walkers, conjurers, and banquets with up to twenty courses served on solid gold platters with peacocks wandering on the tables. On another occasion, in 1490, Leonardo da Vinci helped to stage Festa de paradiso in Milan, featuring the Seven Planets along with Mercury, the three Graces, the seven Virtues, nymphs, and the god Apollo. The Italians also performed simple but elegant social dances known as balli and balletti, which consisted of graceful, rhythmic walking steps danced at formal balls and ceremonies, or on occasion stylized pantomime performances: the French called them ballets.1
Catherine (who was only fourteen when she married) dominated the French court for many years after Henri's death in 1559, bringing her Italianate taste to bear on French courtiers-and kings. Her sons, the French kings Charles IX and Henri III, carried the tradition forward: they admired the floats, chariots, and parades of allegorical performances they saw in Milan and Naples, and shared their mother's keen interest in ceremonial and theatrical events. In their hands, even strictly Catholic processionals could morph into colorful masquerades, and both monarchs were known to promenade through the streets at night dressed en travesti, adorned with gold and silver veils and Venetian masks, accompanied by courtiers in similar attire. Chivalric themes enacted with dancing, singing, and demonstrations of equestrian skill made for impressive theatrical collages, such as the joust held at Fontainebleau in 1564, which included a full-scale reenactment of a castle siege and battles between demons, giants, and dwarfs on behalf of six beautiful nymphs in captivity.
These festivities, so seemingly gay in their extravagances, were not mere frivolous diversions. Sixteenth-century France was beset with intractable and savage civil and religious conflicts: the French kings, drawing on a deep tradition of Italian Renaissance thought and princely patronage of the arts, thought of spectacle as a way to soothe passions and calm sectarian violence. Catherine herself was no saint of tolerance, as her role in the murder of Huguenots in Paris during the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572 proved. But the brutality of this event should not blind us to the fact that she, her sons, and many others also genuinely hoped that theatrical events might be an important political tool, assuaging tensions and pacifying warring parties.
It was in this spirit that Charles IX established in 1570 the Académie de Poésie et de Musique, modeled after the famous Renaissance Florentine Platonic Academy and drawing its members from a circle of distinguished French poets, including Jean-Antoine de Baïf, Jean Dorat, and Pierre de Ronsard.* Profoundly influenced by Neoplatonism, these poets believed that hidden beneath the shattered and chaotic surface of political life lay a divine harmony and order- a web of rational and mathematical relations that demonstrated the natural laws of the universe and the mystical power of God. Melding their own deeply religious beliefs with the Platonic notion of a secret and ideal realm more real than their own perceived world, they sought to remake the Christian church-not through the old practices of Catholic liturgy but through theater and art, and above all through the classical forms of pagan antiquity. Working with players, poets, and musicians, these men hoped to create a new kind of spectacle in which the rigorous rhythms of classical Greek verse would harmonize dance, music, and language into a measured whole. Number, proportion, and design, they felt, could elucidate the occult order of the universe, thus revealing God.
A powerful alloy of mystical theology, recondite magic, and classical rigor, the new Academy represented a distinct form of idealism: music and art could summon men to their highest capacities and goals. The key lay in turning spirituality and learning to concrete theatrical effect. And so the Academy proposed an encyclopedic course of inquiry, including natural philosophy, languages, mathematics, music, painting, and the military arts. The focus, as one adherent later explained, was to perfect man "both in mind and body." Music-"the beautiful part of mathematics"-held a special place, with its celestial harmonies, Pythagorean logic, and penetrating emotional intensity seen as an unmatched suasion. "Songs," it was said (following Plato), "are the spells for souls." Or, as the statutes of the Academy put it, a
bit more dryly, "where music is disordered, there morals are also depraved, and where it is well ordered, there men are well disciplined morally."2
So it was with dance. Indeed, the Academicians saw in ballet a chance to take man's troublesome passions and physical desires and redirect them toward a transcendent love of God. The body had long been seen as pulling man down, sacrificing his higher spiritual powers to material needs. On the Great Chain of Being, ranking all living things from the lowliest vegetative and material creatures up to the angels who occupied the highest rungs near God, man was consigned to the middle rungs: suspended perilously between beasts and angels, his highest spiritual aspirations were forever constrained by his earthly ties and gross bodily functions.
But if he danced, so the men of the Academy believed, man might break some of these earthly ties and raise himself up, closer to the angels. The movements of the body, disciplined with poetic rhythm and meter and brought into accord with musical and mathematical principles, could tune him to celestial harmonies. Pontus de Tyard, a poet involved with the Academy, wrote of the logic justifying such claims in characteristically humanist terms: "The spread of the two arms and the extreme opening of the legs correspond to the height of the man: as does the length of the head multiplied eight or nine or ten times, according to different statues." It was this sense of perfect mathematical proportion that led the Abbé Mersenne, in a moment of high inspiration in 1636, to refer to "the author of the Universe" as "the great Ballet-master."3
To bring these lofty ideals to theatrical life the artists of the Academy labored to fit poetry and music to the meter of Greek verse. They scanned dance steps following a pattern of long and short syllables and notes, thus training gestures, walking, and skipping motions to the rhythms of music and poetry. Every Sunday the players performed for the king and other patrons. In sharp contrast to the lively social occasions of court performances, in which eating, drinking, and conversation were commonplace, the concerts at the Academy were given in absolute silence, and no one would be seated after the music and dances began. It was this devotional character that made subsequent generations of Catholic thinkers admire the Academicians as "Christian Orpheuses" who proved that with musical discipline "the whole of Gaul, in fact the whole world should ring to the greater glory of God and the hearts of all be inflamed with divine love."4
In 1581 the researches of the Academy came to fruition in the Ballet comique de la Reine. This ballet was given in celebration of the marriage of the queen's sister, Marguerite de Vaudémont, to the Duc de Joyeuse, himself an ardent supporter of the Academy. The Ballet comique was one of seventeen entertainments, including tournaments, a horse ballet, and fireworks, and the poets of the Academy prepared the celebrations in the ancient style, mixing sung verse, music, and dance. Performed in Paris in a large salle at the Petit-Bourbon to an audience of "persons of mark," the spectacle nonetheless attracted crowds numbering in the thousands who pressed their way to the palace, eager to witness the event. As was not uncommon, the performance began at 10:00 p.m. and lasted nearly six hours, finishing deep in the night.5
It was a spectacular but intimate affair. Elevated platform stages did not yet exist, and the actors of the Ballet comique performed up close in the audience's midst. The story they told was an allegorical tale of the enchantress Circe vanquished by the powerful gods Minerva and Jupiter. Like painters, ballet masters commonly worked with mythological manuals, thick reference books that detailed the allegorical and symbol...
Kings of Dance
Music and Dancing, not only give great pleasure but have the honour of depending on Mathematics, for they consist in number and in measure. And to this must be added Painting and Perspective and the use of very elaborate Machines, all of which are necessary for the ornament of Theatres at Ballets and at Comedies. Therefore, whatever the old doctors may say, to employ oneself at all this is to be a Philosopher and a Mathematician.
-Charles Sorel
According to Aristotle, ballet expresses the actions of men, their customs and their passions. -Claude-François Ménestrier
The king's grandeur and majesty derive from the fact that in his presence his subjects are unequal. . . . Without gradation, inequality, and difference, order is impossible. -Le Duc de Saint- Simon
It is to this noble subordination that we owe the art of seemliness, the elegance of custom, the exquisite good manners with which this magnificent age [of Louis XIV] is imprinted. -Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand
WHEN THE FRENCH king Henri II wedded the Florentine Catherine de Medici in 1533, French and Italian culture came into close and formal alliance, and it is here that the history of ballet begins. The French court had long reveled in tournaments, jousting, and masquerades, but even these impressive and lavish entertainments fell short of those traditionally mounted by the princes and nobility of Milan, Venice, and Florence: flaming torch dances, elaborate horse ballets with hundreds of mounted cavaliers arranged in symbolic formations, and masked interludes with heroic, allegorical, and exotic themes.
The ballet master Guglielmo Ebreo, writing in Milan in 1463, for example, described festivities that included fireworks, tightrope walkers, conjurers, and banquets with up to twenty courses served on solid gold platters with peacocks wandering on the tables. On another occasion, in 1490, Leonardo da Vinci helped to stage Festa de paradiso in Milan, featuring the Seven Planets along with Mercury, the three Graces, the seven Virtues, nymphs, and the god Apollo. The Italians also performed simple but elegant social dances known as balli and balletti, which consisted of graceful, rhythmic walking steps danced at formal balls and ceremonies, or on occasion stylized pantomime performances: the French called them ballets.1
Catherine (who was only fourteen when she married) dominated the French court for many years after Henri's death in 1559, bringing her Italianate taste to bear on French courtiers-and kings. Her sons, the French kings Charles IX and Henri III, carried the tradition forward: they admired the floats, chariots, and parades of allegorical performances they saw in Milan and Naples, and shared their mother's keen interest in ceremonial and theatrical events. In their hands, even strictly Catholic processionals could morph into colorful masquerades, and both monarchs were known to promenade through the streets at night dressed en travesti, adorned with gold and silver veils and Venetian masks, accompanied by courtiers in similar attire. Chivalric themes enacted with dancing, singing, and demonstrations of equestrian skill made for impressive theatrical collages, such as the joust held at Fontainebleau in 1564, which included a full-scale reenactment of a castle siege and battles between demons, giants, and dwarfs on behalf of six beautiful nymphs in captivity.
These festivities, so seemingly gay in their extravagances, were not mere frivolous diversions. Sixteenth-century France was beset with intractable and savage civil and religious conflicts: the French kings, drawing on a deep tradition of Italian Renaissance thought and princely patronage of the arts, thought of spectacle as a way to soothe passions and calm sectarian violence. Catherine herself was no saint of tolerance, as her role in the murder of Huguenots in Paris during the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572 proved. But the brutality of this event should not blind us to the fact that she, her sons, and many others also genuinely hoped that theatrical events might be an important political tool, assuaging tensions and pacifying warring parties.
It was in this spirit that Charles IX established in 1570 the Académie de Poésie et de Musique, modeled after the famous Renaissance Florentine Platonic Academy and drawing its members from a circle of distinguished French poets, including Jean-Antoine de Baïf, Jean Dorat, and Pierre de Ronsard.* Profoundly influenced by Neoplatonism, these poets believed that hidden beneath the shattered and chaotic surface of political life lay a divine harmony and order- a web of rational and mathematical relations that demonstrated the natural laws of the universe and the mystical power of God. Melding their own deeply religious beliefs with the Platonic notion of a secret and ideal realm more real than their own perceived world, they sought to remake the Christian church-not through the old practices of Catholic liturgy but through theater and art, and above all through the classical forms of pagan antiquity. Working with players, poets, and musicians, these men hoped to create a new kind of spectacle in which the rigorous rhythms of classical Greek verse would harmonize dance, music, and language into a measured whole. Number, proportion, and design, they felt, could elucidate the occult order of the universe, thus revealing God.
A powerful alloy of mystical theology, recondite magic, and classical rigor, the new Academy represented a distinct form of idealism: music and art could summon men to their highest capacities and goals. The key lay in turning spirituality and learning to concrete theatrical effect. And so the Academy proposed an encyclopedic course of inquiry, including natural philosophy, languages, mathematics, music, painting, and the military arts. The focus, as one adherent later explained, was to perfect man "both in mind and body." Music-"the beautiful part of mathematics"-held a special place, with its celestial harmonies, Pythagorean logic, and penetrating emotional intensity seen as an unmatched suasion. "Songs," it was said (following Plato), "are the spells for souls." Or, as the statutes of the Academy put it, a
bit more dryly, "where music is disordered, there morals are also depraved, and where it is well ordered, there men are well disciplined morally."2
So it was with dance. Indeed, the Academicians saw in ballet a chance to take man's troublesome passions and physical desires and redirect them toward a transcendent love of God. The body had long been seen as pulling man down, sacrificing his higher spiritual powers to material needs. On the Great Chain of Being, ranking all living things from the lowliest vegetative and material creatures up to the angels who occupied the highest rungs near God, man was consigned to the middle rungs: suspended perilously between beasts and angels, his highest spiritual aspirations were forever constrained by his earthly ties and gross bodily functions.
But if he danced, so the men of the Academy believed, man might break some of these earthly ties and raise himself up, closer to the angels. The movements of the body, disciplined with poetic rhythm and meter and brought into accord with musical and mathematical principles, could tune him to celestial harmonies. Pontus de Tyard, a poet involved with the Academy, wrote of the logic justifying such claims in characteristically humanist terms: "The spread of the two arms and the extreme opening of the legs correspond to the height of the man: as does the length of the head multiplied eight or nine or ten times, according to different statues." It was this sense of perfect mathematical proportion that led the Abbé Mersenne, in a moment of high inspiration in 1636, to refer to "the author of the Universe" as "the great Ballet-master."3
To bring these lofty ideals to theatrical life the artists of the Academy labored to fit poetry and music to the meter of Greek verse. They scanned dance steps following a pattern of long and short syllables and notes, thus training gestures, walking, and skipping motions to the rhythms of music and poetry. Every Sunday the players performed for the king and other patrons. In sharp contrast to the lively social occasions of court performances, in which eating, drinking, and conversation were commonplace, the concerts at the Academy were given in absolute silence, and no one would be seated after the music and dances began. It was this devotional character that made subsequent generations of Catholic thinkers admire the Academicians as "Christian Orpheuses" who proved that with musical discipline "the whole of Gaul, in fact the whole world should ring to the greater glory of God and the hearts of all be inflamed with divine love."4
In 1581 the researches of the Academy came to fruition in the Ballet comique de la Reine. This ballet was given in celebration of the marriage of the queen's sister, Marguerite de Vaudémont, to the Duc de Joyeuse, himself an ardent supporter of the Academy. The Ballet comique was one of seventeen entertainments, including tournaments, a horse ballet, and fireworks, and the poets of the Academy prepared the celebrations in the ancient style, mixing sung verse, music, and dance. Performed in Paris in a large salle at the Petit-Bourbon to an audience of "persons of mark," the spectacle nonetheless attracted crowds numbering in the thousands who pressed their way to the palace, eager to witness the event. As was not uncommon, the performance began at 10:00 p.m. and lasted nearly six hours, finishing deep in the night.5
It was a spectacular but intimate affair. Elevated platform stages did not yet exist, and the actors of the Ballet comique performed up close in the audience's midst. The story they told was an allegorical tale of the enchantress Circe vanquished by the powerful gods Minerva and Jupiter. Like painters, ballet masters commonly worked with mythological manuals, thick reference books that detailed the allegorical and symbol...
