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[Helene]

Marian Smith, who wrote Ballet and Opera in the Age of "Giselle", and who, with Doug Fullington and Peter Boal, was responsible for the great PNB production of "Giselle" last spring, has edited and contributed to a new book on "La Sylphide", published by dancebooks.co.uk:

Here's the announcement:

'La Sylphide: 1832 and Beyond', edited by Marian Smith, is the first English-language book
dedicated to La Sylphide, one of the most enduring of the Romantic ballets in today's repertory.

The contributors to this collection of essays are practitioners and historians of dance and music,
and they bring to bear their expertise in a wide variety of specialties
including technique, literature, folklore, iconography, dance reconstruction,
historiography, and performance practice. Indeed, nothing less than this
expansive reach is required to do justice to La Sylphide, an immensely popular musico-dramatic
stage work inspired by literature, influenced by the visual arts and la mode; a work that made history

with its choreography and its star performer, cropped up in countless productions (some heretofore
little known) delighting its audiences and occasionally — for interesting reasons — dismaying them. Contributors are Ivor Guest, Debra H. Sowell, Sandra Noll Hammond, Matilda Ertz, Erik Aschengreen,
Helena Kopchick Spencer, Ole Nørlyng, Alexander Bennett, Ornella di Tondo and Marian Smith. Copies may be ordered from: http://www.dancebooks.co.uk/

[sandik]

I'm really looking forward to seeing this book -- Smith has the ability to combine high level scholarship with vivid descriptions of what was happening onstage.