Dancing the fairy tale

In Dancing the Fairy Tale, Laura Katz Rizzo claims that The Sleeping Beauty is both a metaphor for ballet itself and a powerful case study for examining the art and the variables surrounding its production, performance, and reception. Using Marius Petipa and Pyotr Tchaikovsky's classical ballet - specifically as it was staged in Philadelphia over the course of nearly seventy years - Katz Rizzo looks at not only the gendered nature of women staging, coaching, and reanimating this magnificent ballet but also the ongoing push-pull between tradition and innovation within the art form. -- from back cover.