Choreography and Narrative

The first critical history of French ballet that illuminates relations of politics, spectacle, gender, and narrative. "Undoubtedly, Choreography and Narrative is an important contribution to dance history research." —Nineteenth-Century French Studies "This work is a landmark in the field and belongs in all libraries serving undergraduate, graduate, and faculty researchers in dance." —Choice "Invents a new method for writing the history of performance: Foster has found an innovative way of appealing directly to the kinesthetic imagination of her readers, evoking the elusive styles of the pieces she reconstructs." —Joseph Roach "An impressive work of scholarship, this elegantly staged study . . . uses the concept of a culturally constructed, historically specific body to cut across disciplinary boundaries . . ." —Library Journal Foster examines the development of ballet, and conceptions of the dancing body, as ballet separated from opera and emerged as an autonomous art form during the turbulence of 18th-century French society and history.