Apollo’s Angels A History Of Ballet

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The Bar Method is based on the technique of Lotte Berk, a German dancer who fled the Nazi’s in the late 1930′s and came to London with her British husband.

After injuring her back, Lotte got the idea of combining her ballet bar routines with her rehabilitative therapy to form an exercise system. In 1959 she opened The Lotte Berk Studio in her West End basement. There, she changed the bodies of her students, among them Brooke Shields, Joan Collins and Brit Ekland, as she pleasantly occupied them with bawdy humor and tips on love.

One of her students, an American named Lydia Bach, was so impressed with the technique that she purchased the rights to Lotte’s name and in 1971 opened The Lotte Berk Method studio in Manhattan.

Ten years later, two sisters, Burr Leonard and Mimi Fleischman took their original Lotte Berk Method class and also fell in love with the technique. In 1991, Burr along with her new husband Carl Diehl purchased a license to operate Lotte Berk Method studios in Southern Connecticut.

Burr expended a year studying and instructing The Lotte Berk Method at the Manhattan studio, then opened her primary Lotte Berk studio in Greenwich, Connecticut. Nearly immediately, Burr noticed that a good deal of of her clients’ knees, backs and shoulders were not responding well to the exercises and sought the aid of a physical therapist. Under his guidance she reworked the exercises so that they would target students’ muscles without impacting their joints.

During the 90s, Burr and Carl opened three more Lotte Berk Method studios in New Canaan, Darien and Westport, Connecticut. At the end of their ten-year license term, their four studios were thriving, but their version of The Lotte Berk Method had become so different from their licensor’s that they made the decision not to renew. In 2001, they founded The Bar Method, sold their Connecticut studios and opened their flagship Bar Method studio in San Francisco, California. Two years later, Burr’s sister Mimi Leonard Fleischman opened the initial Los Angeles Bar Method studio in cooperative relationship with her husband Mark.

Since then, Burr and Carl have franchised more than 20 Bar Method studios in California, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Illinois and Washington. They divide their time amid guiding their franchisees and formulating Bar Method media products, amongst them two exercise dvds, “Change Your Body!” and “Accelerated Workout”, that came on the market in 2009.

During the same amount of time that Burr and Carl were opening their firstborn Bar Method studios, other former Lotte Berk Method teachers started out to invent their own versions of the technique. In 2003, Lotte Berk managing directors Fred DeVito and Elisabeth Haffpapp collected up eight of their fellow teachers and left to join Exhale Spa, located ten blocks away from their former studio, where they now instruct a version of Lotte Berk called Core Fusion.

The departure of so numerous key teachers caused The Lotte Berk Method itself to fold in 2005. The next year another off-shoot sprang up when Tanya Becker, a former Lotte Berk Method teacher, became the conductor of Physique 57, a Lotte Berk-styled studio on West 57th Street. Other current Lotte Berk Method spin-offs include Pure Barre, Fluidity, The Dailey Method, BarrePhysique, Barre3, Karve, PopPhysique, Go Figure, Body Fit, The Debbie Frank Studio, and Bodd.

Apollos Angels A History Of Ballet

One of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year

For more than four hundred years, the art of ballet has stood at the center of Western civilization. Its traditions serve as a record of our past. A ballerina dancing The Sleeping Beauty today is a link in a long chain of dancers stretching back to sixteenth-century Italy and France: Her graceful movements recall a lost world of courts, kings, and aristocracy, but her steps and gestures are also marked by the dramatic changes in dance and culture that followed. Ballet has been shaped by the Renaissance and Classicism, the Enlightenment and Romanticism, Bolshevism, Modernism, and the Cold War. Apollo’s Angels is a groundbreaking work—the original cultural history of ballet ever written, lavishly illustrated and beautifully told.

Ballet is unique: It has no written texts or standardized notation. It is a storytelling art passed on from teacher to student. The steps are never just the steps—they are a living, breathing document of a culture and a tradition. And while ballet’s language is shared by dancers everywhere, it is artists have produced distinct national styles. French, Italian, Danish, Russian, English, and American traditions each have their own expression, often formed in response to political and societal upheavals.

From ballet’s origins in the Renaissance and the codification of it is basic steps and positions under France’s Louis XIV (himself an avid dancer), the art form wound it is way through the courts of Europe, from Paris and Milan to Vienna and St. Petersburg. It was in Russia that dance produced into the form most intimate to American audiences: The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, and The Nutcracker originated at the Imperial court. In the twentieth century, émigré dancers taught their art to a generation in the United States and in Western Europe, setting off a new and radical transformation of dance.

Jennifer Homans is a historian and critic who was also a professional dancer: She brings to Apollo’s Angels a cognition of dance born of consecrated practice. She traces the evolution of technique, choreography, and performance in clean, clear prose, drawing readers into the intricacies of the art with bright descriptions of dances and the artists who made them. Her wonderment and love for the ballet shines through on each page. Apollo’s Angels is an authorized work, written with a grace and elegance befitting it is subject.

ReviewA Look Inside Apollo’s Angels

Rubies Photo by Costas	Serenade Photo by Costas
Nutcracker Snowflakes Photo by Costas	Nikolaj Hübbe in La Sylphide Photo by Costas

From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. In an essential and basi work of cultural history, New Republic dance critic Homans places ballet–an art many times viewed as hermetic and esoteric–in the more spectacular context of the times and societies in which it evolved, flourished, and flagged, only to be revitalized by an infusion of fresh ideas. That revitalization could come from a ballet master like Jean-Georges Noverre, staged by Homans as an necessary Enlightenment figure whose ideas on reforming ballet were consonant with those of Diderot on reforming theater. Renewal came from the talent of dancers like Marie Taglioni, the incarnation of romanticism, whose originality, Homans indisputably shows, reached far beyond dancing up on her tippy-toes. But in a closing division that will be hotly debated, this exhilarating account sounds a despairing note: “ballet is dying,” she declares. Not only is the originative well running arid and performances dull, but more crucially, Homans sees today’s values as inimical to those of ballet (“We are all dancers now,” she writes, evoking what she sees as a misguided egalitarianism that denies an art rooted in discipline and virtuosity). Her cultural critique, as well as her expansive and penetrating view of ballet’s history, commend this book to all readers who care with regards to the history of the arts as well as their present and possible future. Color and b&w illus. (Nov.)
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From Booklist*Starred Review* Homans brings her intimate experience as a dancer and her discerning dance critic’s eye to her arousing and attention holding and exquisitely elaborate history of ballet, an art that combines rigor and idealism. Homans begins with how the Renaissance faith in the transforming power of art engendered the primary ballets, which were performed in the sixteenth-century French court of King Henri II and Catherine de Medici, thence launching ballet’s long association with state governments. Louis XIV then established ballet’s core rules and conventions, including the five “true” or noble positions. Homans exhaustively and conversantly tracks ballet’s flourishing in France, robust flowering in Russia, and a lively interest in the U.S., emphasizing the progress from elaborate artifice to unfathomed expressiveness. Homans likewise warmly profiles pivotal ballet masters, choreographers, and dancers, including the pioneering ballerina Marie Taglioni in La Sylphide (1832), “the basi innovative ballet,” and the necessary Balanchine. Most arrestingly, Homans assesses ballet’s grace underneath terror for the duration of the French and Russian revolutions, the world wars, and the cold war. Homans brings her glorious landmark study of ballet’s ideals and enchantment to a somber close as she asks why this strong and supple “art of belief,” which triumphed over catastrophe and adversity, is now in risk of extinction. –Donna Seaman

Most helpful customer reviews

112 of 117 people found the following review helpful.
A good history of ballet with a sour aftertaste
By Ivy Lin
Jennifer Homan’s book is really two separate books in one. The first is a long, fairly comprehensive history book about ballet. Even if more seasoned balletomanes are already familiar with the basic storyline, Homans is still an excellent historian with a sharp eye for detail. The book is best when talking about the history of ballet: as a court dance in the French royal court, Marie Taglioni’s dancing on the tips of her toes to give her an eternally ethereal look, the great era of Petipa at the Mariinsky Ballet, and of course, the giant of 20th century ballet, George Balanchine. Homans is a real historian — every page is filled with interesting but somewhat arcane facts that shows that she has indeed done her research. What I like about her book is that she doesn’t just focus on the big names (Louis XIV, Bournonville, Petipa, Ivanov, Diaghelev, Balanchine, Ashton). Her book is filled with tidbits on the lesser-known figures of ballet. For instance, she devotes quite a bit of space to Ivan Vsevolovsky, the man mainly responsible for bringing together Peter Tchaikovksy and Marius Petipa. Homans also includes a very funny section on the excesses of the Italian spectacle warhorse, Excelsior, which was a huge popular hit but “all but killed Italian ballet.” Her description of Excelsior: “boasted a cast of more than five hundred, including twelve horses, two cows, and an elephant.” Homans is also careful to link ballet to society at the time, pointing out, for instance, that Marie Taglioni had such a hoarde of Victoria-female admirers because she was plain, demure, yet able to transmit the romantic yearning that females felt into her dancing.

Part of the joy of the book is the exquisitely chosen pictures and thoughtfully written captions. She shows us the original “five positions” in Louis XIV’s court. She includes the original notations of the Italian spectacle ballet Excelsior. She compares the original Mariinsky snowflakes with the Snowflakes Balanchine made for his Nutcracker. By the caption, Homans writes: “The similarities are striking, Balanchine made one important addition: his snowflakes are crowned, emphasizing their Imperial lineage.” For this careful, loving overview of the history of ballet, “Apollo’s Angels” is to be treasured.

The second part of the book is a lengthy epilogue in which Homans declares that “ballet is dead.” Even though this part if obviously much shorter than the first part, its tone is so different from the previous part of the book that it might as well be a separate book. Homans’ careful, academic study on ballet is thrown out the window for Homans’ theory that ballet is dead. Not just going through a dry spot choreographically, but dead. Homans decries the lack of exciting choreographers on the horizon (has she seen Ratmansky’s work, one wonders). Not just that, but Homans declares of today’s performers: “For performers, things are no easier. Committed and well-trained dancers are still in good supply, but very few are exciting or interesting enough to draw or hold an audience. Technically conservative, their dancing is opaque and flat, emotionally dimmed. And although many can perform astonishing stunts, the overall level of technique has fallen. Today’s dancers are more brittle and unsubtle, with fewer half-tones than their predecessors.” Moreover, Homans declares that ballet is out of step with today’s culture: “Today we no longer believe in ballet’s ideals. We are skeptical of elitism and skill, which seem to us exclusionary and divisive. Those privileged enough to obtain specialized training, so this thinking goes, should not be elevated above those with limited access to knowledge or art. We want to expand and include: we are all dancers now. Ballet’s fine manners and implicitly aristocratic airs, its white swans, regal splendor, and beautiful women on pointe (pedestals), seem woefully outmoded, the province of dead white men and society ladies in long-ago places.”

The arguments are familiar: today’s dancers are losing their links with great choreographers and pedagogues. There has been no real great choreographer since Balanchine’s death. Yet such a long, bitter epilogue after such a loving history of ballet leaves a sour taste in one’s mouth, even if I can agree with some of her points. First of all, I hate to think that such a painstakingly researched book was just to prove a point that ballet is dead. Second of all, I dislike declaring any art form dead. Wasn’t it the great works of Marius Petipa in Russia that rescued ballet from the excesses of Italian ballet? It seems narrow-minded, knee-jerk conservative, and somehow deeply mean to declare an art form dead. The author assumes that if people enjoy ballet today, they are somehow ignorant, and that kind of elitist attitude doesn’t help anybody. The other issue is that somehow I wonder if the epilogue was tacked on to sell more books, as a lengthy history book about ballet might not garner nearly as much controversy, and thus publicity. Homans is a former dancer, which I suppose gives her opinions weight, and she obviously loves ballet. That is evident in the care in which she writes about ballet history. Yet I can’t give this book five stars, simply because of the epilogue, which has now become more well-known than the entire book.

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful.
misjudged
By yan ek
From everything I heard and read prior to receiving and reading this book for myself I expected to be irritated by it. It is extremely well written and some obscure details the author brings out with great clarity. I enjoyed everything except the epilogue and even that is not as bad as what I’d feared. The author clearly thinks that the present moment in ballet is the final death knell. Print matter is supposed to be dead, the theatre is supposed to be dead, classical music is supposed to be dead… It is just too facile an assumption. Some of the points I agree with but cannot see them in such dire terms. Dancers have become universal in their technique and lots of “cookie cutter” dancers are manufactured. Some of this is very regrettable but it is the world we live in now. Globalization is not restricted in dance or anywhere else. Choreography certainly is not at the low ebb she suggests. There will not BE another Balanchine or Ashton. Get over it. So many interesting choreographers are working just now it is impossible to see enough to actually judge. Someone else will come up that grabs everyone’s attention and for awhile everyone will love them and then think after that nothing they do is any good any longer. That is our fault as critics in not allowing them to develop freely and being patient in their choreographic life. Everyone wants the next great ballet!!! Great choreographers makes bad ballet sometimes but if even one is good that is enough.

When Balanchine, Ashton,Tudor and the other great lions of dance were creating it was a rare opportunity that the major voices in dance were invited in to make ballets for other companies. Balanchine created only a handful of works outside NYCB and the same is true for Ashton and the Royal. Tudor left Rambert and London and devoted himself to life in New York. Times are different now as evidenced by Christopher Wheeldon and Morphoses or Ratmansky. ABT now does the same Balanchine ballets that they once looked at from a distance. Kylian works are everywhere, done mostly to profit the choreographer rather than enrich a dancers or an audience’s experience. Everyone complained in times past that ballet was not run by good business principals and now, more and more, it is and that seems to please few as well. It would be wisest to be patient and offer patronage and support when one can and let the art form take its own course. In any case who made Ms. Homans the voice of authority because she is published?

The actual danger of this book is that someone might not know enough to think for themselves and let the author tell them ballet is dead. More people will go to dance performances than will read this book. When this changes, then worry. Go out and see a ballet.

52 of 58 people found the following review helpful.
Gift for the Ballet Lover
By Eileen Pollock
Put everything down and read this book! It will hold you spellbound. A beautifully written and produced history of ballet, this is a book that will be treasured by the ballet lover. The author covers ballet’s earliest history in 16th century court dance up to the present. There are plentiful illustrations and photographs, and the author’s commentary (she is dance critic for The New Republic) is incisive and informed. She writes glowingly of Balanchine and describes his major work. Though I knew much of the history of ballet through my reading, the author’s critical lens casts a new light on this evanescent art form. I give my wholehearted appreciation to Jennifer Homans for transmuting the beauty of dance to the printed page.