What we find are real people in the real world, and so it is with ballet, which despite being shown as undeniably romantic, is never romanticized. When we enter the world of Lorna Hill we do not find ourselves in a fairytale land where cherubic infants spend idyllic lives in perpetual sunshine. In this first of four articles I will look at how ballet is depicted in these two series, how it is one of four main strands running through the twenty titles, all of which contrast and entwine to form a complex and literary body of work. Those who refuse to judge a book by its cover will soon realize that the decorative dust jackets showing dancers in classical poses disguise a text in which ballet forms only the surface layer, a background on which to overlay the larger themes of life, love and art. To the casual observer, the fourteen Sadler’s Wells and six Dancing Peel stories written by Lorna Hill may be imagined to be only of interest to balletomanes.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |