The Routledge Introduction to Ballet, its Culture and Issues

As an introduction to ballet's history, culture, and meanings, this book draws on the latest ballet scholarship to describe the trajectory of a dance form that has risen to global ubiquity and benefited from many diverse influences along the way.

Jennifer Fisher is the author of Nutcracker Nation (2003), Ballet Matters (2019), and co-editor of When Men Dance: Choreographing Masculinities across Borders (2009). A professor at the University of California, Irvine, USA, she is the founding editor of Dance Major Journal, https://escholarship.org/uc/dmj. Formerly a performer and journalist, Fisher wrote about dance for the Los Angeles Times for many years and has published scholarly articles on topics that include ballet and whiteness, interviewing skills, ballet and gender, the dangers of "so-called" lyrical dance, and Anna Pavlova and the Swan Brand. She is also a ballet coroner whose most recent inquests into the death of Giselle were held at the San Francisco Ballet.

Chapter 1 The ballet landscape Chapter 2 Ballet is actually a form of ethnic dance Chapter 3 The culture of ballet practice Chapter 4 Gender, love, and ballet duets Chapter 5 Ballet and exclusion Chapter 6 Ballet and revolution Chapter 7 Unpacking The Nutcracker Chapter 8 Audiences and the dance of the spectator