Dance: A Very Social History
Dance: A Very Social History
Metropolitan Museum of Art/Rizzoli | 1986 | ISBN: 0870994867/084780819X | English | PDF | 127 pages | 25.42 Mb
Metropolitan Museum of Art/Rizzoli | 1986 | ISBN: 0870994867/084780819X | English | PDF | 127 pages | 25.42 Mb
"The Ball nights in Bath are moments snatched from Paradise, rendered bewitching by music, beauty, elegance, fashion, etiquette…."
Thus did Charles Dickens in Pickwick Papers describe the magic of a grand ball. Even the names of such dances as the minuet, the quadrille, and the waltz are enough to evoke the image of a resplendently dressed assemblage performing with grace and style. The anticipation that precedes such a great social occasion and the afterglow of recollection are intensified not just by the dance and the music but also by the costumes that are so integral a part of the experience. Dance offers a feast for the eye as well as the ear, for it is in response to the grand ball that costume artists have produced some of their most inspired designs. The collections of the Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art are especially rich in clothing made expressly for dancing, from the formal gowns of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the mini-dresses of the twentieth.
Foreword
Philippe de Montebello
Preface
Diana Vreeland
Introduction
Yoshio Ohno
Chapter 1: Dreams of Flight
Carol McD. Wallace
Dancing Lessons
Stages of the Ball
Chapter 2: The Evolution of Social Dancing
Don McDonagh
Chapter 3: The Fabric of Dance: Whalebone and Swirling Silk
Jean L. Druesedow
Chapter 4: The Iconography of Dance
Laurence Libin and Constance Old
Picture Credits
Philippe de Montebello
Preface
Diana Vreeland
Introduction
Yoshio Ohno
Chapter 1: Dreams of Flight
Carol McD. Wallace
Dancing Lessons
Stages of the Ball
Chapter 2: The Evolution of Social Dancing
Don McDonagh
Chapter 3: The Fabric of Dance: Whalebone and Swirling Silk
Jean L. Druesedow
Chapter 4: The Iconography of Dance
Laurence Libin and Constance Old
Picture Credits
Carol Wallace | Constance Old | Don McDonagh | Jean R. Druesedow | Laurence Libin
Dance: A Very Social History
