Ballet (Cecil Beaton) (1951) (SIGNED)

Signed by Cecil Beaton

This personal memoir of the ballet in its author’s time records, in Cecil Beaton’s photographs, drawings and highly individual prose, his reactions to dancing since the days when, as a boy during the first war, he admired the precision drill of the original ‘Palace Girls’. Then came the revelation of Pavlova and, later, when the undergraduate Beaton was beginning to evolve novel effects with a Brownie camera, the first splendid shock of the Diaghileff Ballet. From then on, much of Beaton’s life and activities have centered on dancing and dancers—as a photographer, designer and delighted connoisseur of ballet wherever it has flourished throughout the world, and perhaps, most particularly, at our own Sadler’s Wells. His memories and impressions range from London to Paris, Monte Carlo, Venice, New York and India, and his incomparable photographs and drawings record these memories wherever he went. Over a hundred of Beaton’s photographs are included in this book—portraits of ‘star’ dancers, close-ups, scenes of ballet in action and scenes behind the scenes. In addition, the text is decorated with dozens of drawings from his sketchbooks, large and small, and there is an enchanting colour title-page.

Condition: front board a little stained along bottom edge. Lacks front endpaper. Small patch of wear to front pastedown. Toning to margins of rear endpaper and half-title page.