The Choreography of Antony Tudor: Focus on Four Ballets

The Choreography of Antony Tudor: Focus on Four Ballets presents both an analytical overview of the ballets created for the stage by Antony Tudor and an in-depth critical analysis of four key works: Jardin aux Lilas (1936), Dark Elegies (1937), Pillar of Fire (1942), and The Leaves Are Fading (1975). Tudor was a British choreographer who spent a large part of his working life in the United States, and although he was not prolific in his output, his works include several masterpieces of twentieth-century ballet repertoire. Characteristic of his work is an exceptionally creative and sensitive relationship of choreography with music, a relationship different from that developed by his equally musical contemporary, George Balanchine, in that it privileges subtle layers of dramatic, often psychological, exposition as well as complex mythmical structures. Tudor's ballets invariably involve a psychological human dimension, even when there is no "story" as such, and it is these two strands - the musical and the dramatic - that the choreographer exploits with consummate skill in the best of his work.