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Article: Dying Swans and Madmen: Ballet, The Body, and Narrative Cinema.(Book review)
- Article from:
- Cineaste
- Article date:
- September 22, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 Cineaste Publishers, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Dying Swans and Madmen: Ballet, The Body, and Narrative Cinema By Adrienne L. McLean. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2008. 304 pages, illus. Hardcover: $70.00 and Paperback: $26.95.
British ballerina Margot Fonteyn once remarked that that if most audiences knew how difficult and painful ballet was the only people who would watch it would be those who enjoyed bullfighting. Fonteyn's words came to mind as I read Adrienne L. McLean's superb new book on the image of ballet in popular cinema--images, as her title implies, frequently rife with suffering, sacrifice, obsession, madness, and even death. (Although sometimes, not particularly overflowing with ...