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More "Ballet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... then a few of us would have been willing to begin all over, for when again could we have such a ballroom with perfect floor and such excellent music to dance by? But with the new day came a new light and all was changed, much like the change of a ballet with a new calcium light, only ours was not beautifying, but most trying to tired, painted faces; and seeing each other we decided that we could not get home too fast. In a few days the hospital will be turned ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... o'clock procession that was to march through the streets. Early in the morning, Billy was led into the sawdust ring, and a peculiar saddle like a little platform was strapped to his back. This the monkey was to dance on, dressed as a ballet girl, with yellow, spangled skirts, a satin bodice and a blue cap with a feather in ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery
... Russians in the domain of the ballet has already excited a certain amount of not unfriendly criticism. But our Muscovite visitors are not to be allowed to have it all their own way, and we understand that negotiations are already on foot with a view to enabling the Irish Ballet to give a season at a leading ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... see that, they will know what you are really like, Gerty—instead of buying your photograph in a shop from a collection of ballet-dancers and circus women. That is where you ought to be—in the Royal Academy: not in a shop-window with any mountebank. Oh, Gerty, do you know who is your latest rival in the stationers' windows? The woman who dresses herself ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... dancing, capering naked forms around them, and then the cotton duck attracted the eager, fiery tongues, and in another moment the flames seemed to leap high in the air, but the performers in the aboriginal ballet scurried for shelter. The soldiers sighted their rifles for nine hundred yards, and the little hill blazed and sputtered half a minute with a rapid discharge that sent leaden messengers whistling through the ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... damask, the bed was gilded and hung with faded pink silk curtains. Everywhere there was pink and gilding, and everywhere it was old and faded and rubbed. A few early Victorian lithographs hung on the walls, portraits of ballet-dancers and noblemen with waists and whiskers. No one had tidied the room since the night before, and fine underclothing was flung carelessly about on chairs, a fussy petticoat here, the bodice of an evening dress there; everywhere just that touch of mingled daintiness ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... administration, a ballet was invented by the elder Byrne, in which Miss Smith (since Mrs. Oscar Byrne) had a pas seul. This the lady wished to remove to a later period in the ballet. The ballet-master refused, and the lady swore she would ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... furniture, brought down by dog team from "Up River," was established at the rear extremity of the long building, just inside the entrance to the dancehall, where patrons of the drama might, with a modicum of delay and inconvenience, quaff as deeply of the beaker as of the ballet. ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... from Jean's ingenious hand. It was the bow-backed skeleton behind the door, which had been cleverly arranged as and was called "Madame la Concierge." The skeleton had been arrayed in a short conventional ballet skirt and scanty lace cap, and held a candle in one hand and a bottle marked "Absinthe" in the other. The skirt was to indicate her earlier career, the cap and candle gave an inkling of her later life, while the bottle told the probable cause of her decease. This skeleton was so controlled ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... "Like a ballet-girl!" she interjected. "I am really afraid you are old-fashioned. You begin by offering me gewgaws—the paltry price women set on themselves in the days of their intellectual infancy. We know our value ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... being what they are, why should not all the provinces of public labor and usefullness, which they are capable of occupying, be freely open to them? What else is it save prejudice that applauds a woman dancing a ballet or performing an opera, but shrinks with disgust from one delivering an oration, preaching a sermon, or casting a vote? Why is it less womanly to prescribe as a physician than to tend as a nurse? If a woman have a calling ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... brightness of her eyes by glancing up at the cornice. Madame Marneffe's triumph, however, was not face to face like that of other women. She turned sharply round to return to Lisbeth at the tea-table. This ballet-dancer's pirouette, whisking her skirts, by which she had overthrown ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... "Subjectively considered, Faust is a tragedy. Objectively, we might regard it as a comedy. To the subjective-objective view, it is certainly a ballet pantomime. Ach! he was many-sided, our GOETHE. Here in this drama he has accomplished everything. There is food for our laughter and our tears. It excites us and ...
— Punchinello Vol. II., No. 30, October 22, 1870 • Various
... attempts to imitate elegant manners. Mad Moll and her husband were another pair who flourished in tawdry, gay-colored rags, and tatters, he brandishing a sweep's broom and she a ladle. Jim Crow and a fancifully bedizened ballet-dancer in white muslin, often swelled the ranks, and the rest of the party rigged out in a profusion of gilt paper, flowers, tinsel and gewgaws, their faces and legs colored with brick-dust, made up ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... so sorry, poor, dear Squirrel,' said Anthea; 'and you were looking so lovely. I'll get a wet rag. Bobs, go and hold your hand under the hot-water tap. It's what ballet girls do with their legs when they hurt them. I saw it in ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... followed by this etat major, he is a conspicuous figure upon a field of battle, and produces much the same effect as the head of a circus riding into a town on a piebald horse, surrounded by clowns and pets of the ballet. He was the confessor of the Empress, and is now the aumonier of the Press; but why he wears jack-boots, why he capers about on a fiery horse, why he has a staff of aides-de-camp, and why he has two grooms, are things which no one seems to know. He patronises generals ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... grave and serious mien, in the later pictures, the drapery given to the angel is offensively scanty; his sandals, and bare arms, and fluttering robe, too much a l'antique; he comes in the attitude of a flying Mercury, or a dancer in a ballet. But in the early Italian pictures his dress is arranged with a kind of solemn propriety: it is that of an acolyte, white and full, and falling in large folds over his arms, and in general concealing his feet. In the German pictures, he often wears the priestly ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... satire like the foregoing had by this time begun to attract the attention of the Ministry, whose withers had already been sharply wrung by Pasquin; and it has been conjectured that the ballet of Quidam and the Patriots played no small part in precipitating the famous "Licensing Act," which was passed a few weeks afterwards. Like the marriage which succeeded the funeral of Hamlet's father, ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... who apologized for being late. He had stayed for the ballet, he said, knowing his wife was not alone. He asked Noel to come again, but got no very ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... some people went as far as to say that she disapproved of most things. Disapproval was to her what neuralgia and fancy needlework are to many other women. She disapproved of early morning tea and auction bridge, of ski-ing and the two-step, of the Russian ballet and the Chelsea Arts Club ball, of the French policy in Morocco and the British policy everywhere. It was not that she was particularly strict or narrow in her views of life, but she had been the eldest sister of a large family of self-indulgent ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... upon the stage, which we examined in its various parts and appendages while the ballet practice was proceeding. The curtain was up: the audience part of the house, from the pit to the ceiling, was covered with linen, in order to preserve the satin draperies from dust. Comparative ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... tell you how glad I was to see him doing so well, and how I laughed at all his foolish ideas about Maisa Hubbard. Win I felt he would, though all the ladies of the Casino ballet came out to tell him not to; and when old Dobbin, my own particular turn-out, condescended to move again, I pushed on for Belfort, no longer deluding myself that I was to be within a hundred miles of the winner, but hoping that ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... another thing which girls and their mothers do not seem to consider. The present mode of dress renders waltzing almost as objectionable in a large room as the boldest feats of a French ballet-dancer. Not to put too fine a point on it, I mean that these girls' gyrations in the centre of their gyrating and centrifugal hoops make a most operatic drapery-display. I saw scores and scores of public waltzing-girls last summer, and among them all I saw but one who understood ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... youth and attractions of the daughter of her first. I do not now recall her name, but she was of a noble family, of which fact the mother and daughter were very proud, and the young girl was a good musician, and sang agreeably; but, which appeared to me as ridiculous as indecent, she danced the ballet before a large company in her mother's house, in a costume almost as light as those of the opera, with castanets or tambourines, and ended her dance with a multiplicity of attitudes and graces. With such an education she naturally thought her position not at ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... a prominent part in all the early oratorios, and the composer has also left detailed instructions for its guidance. During the ritornels the four principal dancers accompanied them in "a ballet enlivened with capers," and at the close of the performance stanzas were sung, alternating with dances to ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... James's. Grand dinners were given by the members of the Cabinet; the theatres were free for the night to great and small; at each the National Anthem was sung amidst deafening applause; at Drury Lane there was a curious emblematical ballet—like a revival of the old masques, ending with a representation of the Queen and Prince surrounded by fireworks, which no doubt afforded immense ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... against the will of his family, he married the dancer Lamperi. With her he went first to Warsaw, and then to Berlin, where he supported himself and his children by giving lessons in the languages. One daughter was a prominent member of the Berlin ballet, the other was prepared by a most careful education to be a governess. She gave various lessons to my sisters, and criticised our proceedings sharply, as she did those of her fellow-creatures in general. "I can't help it—I Must say what I think," was the palliating remark ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... John Alien's dance-house we found it in full blast. The hour was eleven in the evening. There were thirteen girls in the saloon, three musicians in the orchestra, and seven customers submitting to the blandishments of an equal number of the ballet- dressed syrens who pervaded the room. Our party consisted of the policeman who accompanied us, three clergymen on the look out for the "elephant," Mr. Albert C. Arnold, of the ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... led the hunt in the days of his opening glory? Later, we might linger on the endless terrace, to watch the great monarch, with his red heels and his golden snuff-box and his towering periwig, come out among his courtiers, or in some elaborate grotto applaud a ballet by Moliere. When night fell there would be dancing and music in the gallery blazing with a thousand looking-glasses, or masquerades and feasting in the gardens, with the torches throwing strange shadows among the trees trimmed into artificial figures, and gay lords and proud ladies ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... while stopping for meals. That high two-wheeled trap with the little ‘tiger’ standing up behind is a tilbury. We used to see the Count d’Orsay driving one like that almost every day. He wore butter-colored gloves, and the skirts of his coat were pleated full all around, and stood out like a ballet girl’s. It is a pity they have not included Louis Philippe and his family jogging off to Neuilly in the court ‘carryall,’—the ‘Citizen King,’ with his blue umbrella between his knees, trying to ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... entertainments—balls, theatricals, concerts or pageants—to which, if they do not care to go themselves, they give away their tickets. Those who intend giving tickets should remember that a message, "Can you use two tickets for the Russian ballet to-night?" sent at seven o'clock that same evening, after the Lovejoys have settled themselves for an evening at home (Celia having decided not to curl her hair and Donald having that morning sent his only dinner coat to be re-faced) can not give the same pleasure that ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... were an abomination to the Independents. Since 1814 they have advanced, and consequently they not only go to plays and dance like other Christians, but the freer, less prejudiced, and more enlightened encourage the ballet, spend their holidays in Paris, and study French character there. Zachariah, however, had a side open to literature, and though he had never seen a play acted, he read plays. He read Shakespeare, and had often thought how wonderful one of his dramas ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... before the palace of the Exhibition, and initiate her into the mysteries of all the fashionables who passed before them. Another time he would drop into their box at the opera, deign to remain there during an act or two, and correct their as yet incomplete views of the morals of the ballet. But in all these interviews he held toward Madame Lescande the language and manner of a brother: perhaps because he secretly persisted in his delicate resolve; perhaps because he was not ignorant that every road leads to Rome—and one as surely ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... which we take from the MS. journal of a highly respectable traveller, is a more correct account: "In 1812 a Signor Guariglia induced several young persons of both sexes—none of them exceeding fifteen years of age—to accompany him on an operatic excursion; part to form the opera, and part the ballet. He contrived to get them on board a vessel, which took them to Janina, where he sold them for the basest purposes. Some died from the effect of the climate, and some from suffering. Among the few who returned were a Signor Molinari, and a female dancer named Bonfiglia, who afterwards became the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... morning when I awoke the sun was just rising behind Vesuvius; and there was a mighty display of gold and crimson in that quarter, as if the curtain was about to be lifted on a grand performance, say a ballet at San Carlo, which is the only thing the Neapolitans think worth looking at. Straight up in the air, out of the mountain, rose a white pillar, spreading out at the top like a palm-tree, or, to compare it to something ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... mentally he is dwarfed, and his effects hardly ever get beyond the orchestra. These new halls, with their circles, and upper circles, and third circles, and Louis XV Salons and Palm Courts, have been builded over the bones of old English humour. They are good for nothing except ballet, one-act plays with large effects, and tabloid grand opera. But apparently the public like them, for the old halls are going. The Tivoli site is to bear a Y.M.C.A. home, and the merriment of the Strand will be still further ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... jaw, watching the unhappy women who dance for gold—sees looming before him, as he lisps out his deep disapproval of increased knowledge and the freedom of obtaining the means of subsistence in intellectual fields by woman, and expresses his vast preference for the uncultured ballet-girl over all types of cultured and productive labouring womenhood in the universe. A subtle and profound instinct warns him, that with the increased intelligence and economic freedom of woman, he, and such as he, might ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... steamer visibly laid over as the wind took them. They gave her nearly three knots an hour, and what better could men ask? But if she had been forlorn before, this new purchase made her horrible to see. Imagine a respectable charwoman in the tights of a ballet-dancer rolling drunk along the streets, and you will come to some faint notion of the appearance of that nine-hundred-ton, well-decked, once schooner-rigged cargo-boat as she staggered under her new help, shouting ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... picture. It is unfortunate that the effect reminds one somewhat forcibly of a transformation scene of a pantomime and thus appears artificial although in reality, it is absolutely natural. The resemblance is still further strengthened by the numerous ladies of the ballet who leisurely stroll along clothed in nature's ebony black. No one seems to know the origin of the name of the town, for the Banana palm is not found ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... scenes was always a fascinating study to Dickens. "One of the oddest sights a green-room can present," he said one day, "is when they are collecting children for a pantomime. For this purpose the prompter calls together all the women in the ballet, and begins giving out their names in order, while they press about him eager for the chance of increasing their poor pay by the extra pittance their children will receive. 'Mrs. Johnson, how many?' 'Two, sir.' 'What ages?' 'Seven and ten.' 'Mrs. ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... as engage ballet singers, denote that disagreeable companions and ungrateful friends will be met with. Business will show ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... and among them were the melancholy Spicca, who was a famous duellist, and a certain Casalverde, a man of rather doubtful reputation. The others were members of what Donna Tullia called her "corps de ballet." In those days Donna Tullia's conduct was criticised, and she was thought to be emancipated, as the phrase went. Old people opened their eyes at the spectacle of the gay young widow going off into the ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... there again. She saw him when she took her first glance at the restless Manhattan audience—down in the front row with his head bent a bit forward and his gray eyes fixed on her. And she knew that to him they were alone together in a world where the high-rouged row of ballet faces and the massed whines of the violins were as imperceivable as powder on a marble Venus. An instinctive defiance ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the screening earth, and underneath we find the roots of all those flowers intertwined and matted, so that it is impossible to tell which belong to the Count and which to Wasner, the coachman, which to Miss Lolo, the ballet-dancer, and which to ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... the Crane, the form in which this ballad is now known is no witness of its antiquity. A 'ballet of the Ryche man and poor Lazarus' was licensed to be printed in 1558; 'a ballett, ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... CREATURE. Drop it. What's the good of the secrecy of the ballet if people are going to remember every single ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... touched. And we, a little envious of those who did once see Grisi plain, always shall find solace in this pretty picture of her; holding it to be, for all the artificiality of its convention, as much more real as it is prettier than the stringent ballet-girls of Degas. ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... would be all different. Everything depended on her own balance and accuracy. It would be all trick work then, not riding. As she slid out of her habit and into the ugly ballet-skirts she loathed, her courage vanished and she trembled as she faced the audience for the second time, transformed in white satin and pale blue, the thinness of her ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... altogether incapable. For many years he continued to discharge splenetic remarks about his music, and he was always annoyed at being called his pupil. "I never learned anything from Haydn," he would say; "he never would correct my mistakes." When, the day after the production of his ballet music to Prometheus, he met Haydn in the street, the old man observed to him: "I heard your music last night; I liked it very well." To which Beethoven, alluding to Haydn's oratorio, replied: "Oh! ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... going on, where no Viennese lady, so the baroness declared, would think of being seen, because confetti-throwing was only resorted to by the canaille (and officers and husbands of high-born ladies, who went there with their little friends of the ballet and chorus), but where we did go, contrary to all precedent, persuading the baroness to make up a smart party and "go slumming." Her husband being in Italy, she had no fear of meeting him there, and she took good care to send an invitation to any one who might have ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... literature. In one word, education in science produces specialists; and specialists, though most useful and valuable persons in their proper place, are no more the staple of a civilised community than engine-drivers or ballet-dancers. ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... prepared to fulfil their divine mission on earth. An illustration of this truth is the fact that quite recently over six hundred personal applications—mostly made by girls of from fifteen to twenty—were made in one day at the Grand Opera House in New York to fill places in the ballet and Oriental marches of the spectacle of Lalla Rookh. Assuredly this fact is evidence that the women in New York, like so many women in all quarters of the land, are unwilling to do the work which properly belongs to them to do, and prefer any shift, even ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... the officers here the only ones with whom I can find plenty to talk about are the generals. On what subject under heaven could one talk to a lieutenant? I cannot discuss the agility of ballet-dancers or the merits of jockeys with him, because these things are as dust and ashes to me; and when forced for a few moments by my duties as hostess to come within range of his conversation I feel chilly and grown old. In ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... Gleaming towers, reflecting the last rays of the setting sun, loomed just ahead of him, and the wavy lines of heat rising out of the sandy deserts seemed to make the buildings dance. It was a sunset ballet that never failed to thrill even ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell
... a turn, and Mademoiselle Le Breton took the hint at once. She called others to the front—it was like a change of dancers in the ballet—while she rested, no less charming as a listener than as a talker, her black eyes turning from one to another and radiant ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Saint-Germain and leave her for a short time until she recovered. This stately coquette did not choose to be seen in the midst of medical appliances and without the splendors of apparel. Catherine arranged, as a welcome to her husband, a magnificent ballet, in which six beautiful young girls were to recite a poem in his honor. She chose for this function Miss Fleming, a relation of her uncle the Duke of Albany, the handsomest young woman, some say, that was ever seen, ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... well as children; no grace is equal to their grace; but to go into a hotel at ten o'clock at night, and see little things, eight, ten, twelve years old, who ought to be in bed and asleep, tricked out in flounces and ribbons and all the paraphernalia of ballet-girls, and dancing in the centre of a hollow square of strangers,—I call it murder in the first degree. What can mothers be thinking of to abuse their children so? Children are naturally healthy and simple; why should they be ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... First Quarrel, The Wedding Breakfast, Psyche at the Fountain. The mantel's chastely severe outline was ingloriously veiled behind some pert drapery drawn rakishly askew like the sashes of the Amazonian ballet. Upon it was some desolate flotsam cast aside by the room's marooned when a lucky sail had borne them to a fresh port—a trifling vase or two, pictures of actresses, a medicine bottle, some stray cards out ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... still conscious of stiffness, Esmeralda? That is not a matter for surprise or for anxiety. All your life you have been working for strength, for even your dancing-school teacher was not one of those scientific ballet-masters who, like Carlo Blasis, would have taught you that the strength of a muscle often deprives it of flexibility and softness. You desire that your muscles should be rigid or relaxed at will. Go and stand in front of your mirror, and let your head drop forward toward either ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... patriotic songs they listen respectfully. A song which breathes the glories of literature as represented by Montaigne, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Moliere is tolerated idly. But when the stage is presently cleared for a ballet the young blousards—for they are mostly young men who gather here—are all attention. What is their disgust at perceiving that the dancers are men in ancient Greek costumes, who do a sword-fight ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... radiant afternoon at Moulay Idriss, above the vine-garlanded square, and against the background of piled-up terraces, their vivid groups were in such contrast to the usual gray assemblages of the East that the scene seemed like a setting for some extravagantly staged ballet. ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... words to me about the delight which an artist's soul feels in coming into direct contact with the seething life of the people, and she mentioned with appreciation a French picture, one of Degas' I think, which represents ballet dancers practising their art. Then she and Gorman settled down in two of the three seats reserved for us. Ascher and I retired modestly to the back of what I may call the dress circle. After a while when the performance was well under way, Gorman's brother came in. I suppose the greater ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... the name Canaries to be that of a dance in use in those islands. But he thinks it more likely to have originated in a Ballet in a Mascarade, where the dancers were clad as kings and queens 'de Mauritanie,' as savages, with various coloured feathers. He says it is danced by a gentleman and a lady, from opposite ends of the room, each advancing and then ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... held to be nearer the professional singer's plane. But when people tried to follow Wagner's instructions to the letter, they proceeded so clumsily and timidly that they were not incapable of representing the midnight riot in the second act of the Meistersingers by a group of ballet-dancers. They seemed to do all this, however, in perfectly good faith—without the smallest evil intention. Wagner's devoted efforts to show, by means of his own example, the correct and complete way of performing his works, and his attempts at training ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Court there were the "masks" or "ballets" in which the great took part, wrapped in starry draperies, disguised with gold beards, dressed in skins or feathers, as were at Paris King Charles VI. and his friends on the 29th of January, 1392, in the famous Ballet of Wild Men, since called, from the catastrophe which happened, "Ballet des Ardents" (of men in fire). The taste for ballets and Masks was one of long duration; the Tudors and Stuarts were as fond of them as the Plantagenets, so much so that a branch apart in dramatic literature was created ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... known as Egalite, was one of the most interesting figures among the old nobility. The great-great-great-grandson of Louis XIII, he was a distant cousin of Louis XVI, and ranked as the first noble of France beyond the royal family. His education had been unfortunate. His father lived with a ballet-dancer, while his mother, the Princess Henriette de Bourbon-Conti, scandalized a society which was not easily shocked. During the Terror the sans culottes everywhere averred that the Duke was the son ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... is considered "light work." Thirty pounds of the clean cotton is considered a good day's work. It is pretty severe for the knees. Women gin with the men. The movement of "jump and change feet" when one knee gets tired should be introduced into the ballet; ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... a letter of four whole pages, and expects that I should read it, and, what is more, answer it also; I, who have to go to parade, then dine, then attend the rehearsal of an opera, and the ballet which the cadets will dance at. I will tell her plainly that I have not time, and, if she is vexed, I will quarrel with her ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... king, who was a hundred paces behind the storming party, ahead of his regiment of guards. "'Sir,' said he, 'the company is ready, the violins have come in,'and the masks are at the door; when your Majesty pleases, we will commence the ballet.' 'The king came up to me, and said to me angrily, "Do you know, pray, that we have but five hundred pounds of lead in the park of artillery?" 'I said to him, 'It is a pretty time to think of that. Must the ballet not dance, for lack ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... you live? How nicely you have arranged the room. I never saw a room like this before. How different from the convent! What would the nuns think if they saw me here? What strange pictures!—those ballet-girls; they remind me of the pantomime. Did you buy ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... visited Niblo's in New York during the ballet season. When the short-skirted, gossamer clad nymphs made their appearance on the stage they ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... no ballet! And there used always to be a ballet! You remember," the reader said, "how beatific it always was to have the minor coryphees subside in nebulous ranks on either side of the stage, and have the ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... born sovereign of men, and she felt it. It was her divine right to be preferred. She trod the earth with dainty feet, and a step aspiring as that of the fair Louise de La Valliere when she danced in the royal ballet in the forest of Fontainebleau and stole a king's heart by the flashes of her pretty feet. Angelique had been indulged by her father in every caprice, and in the gay world inhaled the incense of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... was the name of the Bacchanal Queen—"My sister!"—and with one bound, light as a ballet-dancer, she sprang from her movable throne (which fortunately just happened to be stopping), and, rushing up to the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... in mathematics, in which he suspected he was somewhat deficient. But when the same officious friend laughed at him, and called him "green," he determined to trust to fortune, and henceforth devoted himself the more assiduously to the French ballet, where he had already made ...
— A Good-For-Nothing - 1876 • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... few days in any place or in any occupation. He commands his armies in person. He has won distinction as a writer and a public speaker. He is an excellent shot. He has composed music, written verses, superintended the production of a ballet, painted a picture; the beautiful Byzantine chapel in the Castle of Posen shows his genius for architecture; and, clothed in a clergyman's surplice, he has preached a sermon in Jerusalem. What ruler in all history has exhibited such ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... simulated attitude of simplicity—all now struck him as perfectly comprehensible. He recalled the actress's inimitable touch in certain picturesque realistic details in the dairy—which she had not spared him; he recognized it now even in their bowered confidences (how like a pretty ballet scene their whole interview on the rustic bench was!), and it breathed through their entire conversation—to their theatrical parting at the close! And the whole story of the photograph was, no doubt, as pure a dramatic invention as the rest! The ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... first, as if it had been a ballet-girl of San Carlo whose picture he was making out; but his old hearty warmth declared itself by degrees; and his admiration and his tenderness gave such warm color to his language as it might have shown if her little gloved hand had been shivering even then in his own passionate clasp. And ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... accession to the number of her passengers; for the most part of trim, close-shaved, well-dressed gentlemen, of sober aspect and not many words; though here and there comes some whiskered and moustached personage, with a shirt displaying a pattern of ballet-dancers, a shooting coat of countless pockets, and trousers of that style which, in our college days, we used to call loud. A shrewd bank-manager told us that he always made a mental memorandum of such individuals, in case they should ever come to him ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... relucent, armour-like scales. Upon her curly, light hair was perched, at a rollicking angle, a shining tin helmet. The costume was to be instantly recognized as one of those amazing conceptions to which competition has harried the inventors of the spectacular ballet. One of the officers bore a long cloak upon his arm, which, doubtless, had been intended to veil the I candid attractions of their effulgent prisoner, but, for some reason, it had not been called into use, to the vociferous delight of the ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... Another novelty was a dancing-school, such as Scipio Aemilianus full of indignation describes in one of his speeches, in which upwards of five hundred boys and girls—the dregs of the people and the children of magistrates and of dignitaries mixed up together—received instruction from a ballet-master in far from decorous castanet-dances, in corresponding songs, and in the use of the proscribed Greek stringed instruments. It was a novelty too— not so much that a consular and -pontifex maximus- like Publius Scaevola ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the dancing. Every body knows that at the great theatres of Italy the fashionable part of the audience pay very little attention to the music, unless it be a new opera, but make compensation by listening devoutly to the ballet. The Pergola is the great resort of fashion. A box at the Pergola, and a carriage for the banks of the Arno, are the indispensables, we are told, at Florence. Who has these, may eat his macaroni where he pleases—may dine ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... materialised in the form of Mephistopheles, a proceeding which is both meaningless and inartistic, though perhaps dramatically unavoidable. In the,' last act, after a short scene on the Brocken and a conventional ballet, which are rarely performed in England, we are taken to the prison where Margaret lies condemned to death for the murder of her child. Faust is introduced by the aid of Mephistopheles, and tries to persuade her to fly with him. Weak and wandering though she is, she refuses, and dies to the ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... flaxen hair, next to the dark man on your right, was a ballet girl before she married Sir Frederick Thurston. Everybody prophesied that her high kick would lift her into the aristocracy when she first gained favour. Her name was Poppy Poppleton, and people think she poisoned her husband and let another ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... directors. He frivolously asked them whether they ever went to the theatre, to which they replied very coldly that they went to their boxes when the piece was not on the Index and when there was no ballet. Orsino understood why he never saw them at the opera, and relapsed into silence. The butler, a son of the legendary Pasquale of earlier days, did his best to cheer the youngest of his masters with a great variety of wines; but Orsino would not be comforted either ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... I was some fussed for awhile too, and I expect I does the dummy act, sittin' there gazin' into the limousine mirror where she's reflected vivid. I was tryin' to size her up and decide whether she really was one of the chicken ballet, or only a high school imitation. I'm so busy at it that I overlooks the fact that she has the same chance ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... kind of attractions that the Russian ballet offers in so many of its themes could have easily guessed, without previous enlightenment, what episode in the life of Joseph had been selected for illustration last week at Drury Lane. But they could never have guessed that Herr Tiessen, author of a shilling guide to the intentions of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... fine dining-hall, as used in the supper scene in Macbeth, and equipped with convenient Banquo sliding-panel to kitchen. The latter apartment deserves the epithet Baronial, being transported direct from the successful pantomime, Puss-in-Boots, and capable of accommodating a ballet of two hundred cooks. The elegantly proportioned drawing-room (to which a fourth wall has been since added) was the subject of special mention in several leading newspapers after the production of Epigrams at the Niobe Theatre; while each of the twelve ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various
... much of his fame to poor Emma Harte—the unfortunate Lady Hamilton, who, after having conferred the most serious benefits upon England, was permitted to starve, with her daughter, in a garret somewhere in or near Calais; while some of the spurious offspring of orange and ballet girls filled many of the highest offices in the land ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... considerable physical power were necessary for its completion. "It would be a deal too stagey for my girls," said Mrs. Conway Smith, whose "girls" had, during the last ten years, gone through every phase of flirtation invented in these latter times. Perhaps it did savour a little too much of ballet practice; perhaps it was true that with less care there might have been inconveniences. Faster it grew and faster; but still they had all done it before, and done it with absolute accuracy. It was now near the end. Each lady had ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... But somehow the benefit must redound to society and to practical knowledge, or these abstracted hermits will seem at first useless and at last mad. The logic of nonsense has a subtle charm only because it can so easily be turned into the logic of common sense. Empty dialectic is, as it were, the ballet of science: it runs most neatly after nothing ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... a splendid scene it would make for a ballet, Caroline! That mosque, with a garden alongside, and that other ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... played. The piano was old and needed attention, but he thought that he had never heard finer playing. First she gave him some modern things—some Debussy, Les Miroires of Ravel, some of the Russian ballet music of Cleopatre. These she flung at him, fiercely, aggressively, playing them as though she would wring cries of protest from ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... fondness for the drama, and for poetry of every kind. In all the lyric form predominates, and their compositions are commonly adapted for instrumental accompaniment. Their dramatic entertainments are mainly musical, combining rudely the opera with the ballet,—monotonous singing, and listless, mechanical dancing. Dialogue is occasionally introduced, the favorite subjects being passages from the Hindoo Avatars, the epic "Ramayana," and the "Mahabharata"; ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... "Poor Gentleman," before a great many audiences,—more, I trust, than I shall ever face again. I did not wear a stage-costume, nor a wig, nor moustaches of burnt cork; but I was placarded and announced as a public performer, and at the proper hour I came forward with the ballet-dancer's smile upon my countenance, and made my bow and acted my part. I have seen my name stuck up in letters so big that I was ashamed to show myself in the place by daylight. I have gone to a town with a sober literary ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... which Chiquita took the leading part, and in which, at her request, she was permitted to introduce a dance of her own creation. Among the many guests that had been invited to attend the closing ceremonies was one Signor Tosti, a ballet-master, who at the time was visiting the Capitol with an Italian opera company. A friend whose daughter took part in the exercises had persuaded him, much against his will, to attend; for what possible interest could a veteran of the ballet take ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... and well gifted in orchestral composition, is Clement Philibert Leo Delibes (1848- ). After his education at the Conservatory, and his service as accompanist at the Grand Opera, he received, in 1866, a commission to compose a ballet, "La Source," in which he displayed such a wealth of melody and such fortunate rhythm that his talent was henceforth unmistakable. He has since composed a large number of ballets, many of which are known in all parts of the world, such as ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... The ballet-dancer covered her face, with a low, despairing cry. The dying mother, with a painful effort, lifted her own skeleton hand and removed ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... becomes less and less possible to rely on the army for the pacification of riots, and more and more evident, consequently, that generals, and officers, and soldiers are only figures in solemn processions—objects of amusement for governments—a sort of immense—and far too expensive—CORPS DE BALLET. ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... panaceas, and here the peripatetic Cheap-Jack holding aloft his quack cures for human ills. Here the sleek capitalist and there the sinewy laborer; here the man of science and here the shoe-back; here the poet and here the water-rate collector; here the cabinet minister and there the ballet-dancer. Here a red-nosed publican shouting the praises of his vats and there a temperance lecturer at 50 pounds a night; here a judge and there a swindler; here a priest and there a gambler. Here a jeweled duchess, smiling and gracious; ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... maintained at the government expense is the ballet. We went several times, and it was very gorgeous. It is all pantomime—not a word is spoken—but so well done that one does not ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... round of dissipated amusement which carries foreigners and even young Frenchmen off their feet like a cyclone, depositing them afterwards in strange places and in a damaged condition. It was long since he had dined 'in joyous company,' frequented the lobby of the ballet or found himself at dawn among the survivors of an indiscriminate orgy. Men who know Paris well may not have improved upon their original selves as to moral character, but they have almost always acquired the priceless ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... to the Boss. "They'll think we've pinched her out of a Kiralfy ballet. Hadn't we better send ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... Herold, son of a good musician, made ballet-music artistic while he paced the dance of death with consumption, and died in his forty-second year, a month after his masterpiece, "Le Pre aux Clercs," had been produced and had wrung from him the wail: "I am going too soon; I was just beginning to understand the stage." ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... of Joe Atlee, aetatis four years, with a villainous squint, and something that looks like a plug in the left jaw. A Skye terrier, painted, it is supposed, by himself; not to recite unframed prints of various celebrities of the ballet, in accustomed attitudes, with the Reverend Paul Bloxham blessing some children—though from the gesture and the expression of the juveniles it might seem cuffing them—on the inauguration of the ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... perceptive than her sister, had seized upon Carmen with avidity bred of hope long deferred. The scourge of years of fruitless social striving had rendered her desperate, and she would have staged a ballet on her dining table, with her own ample self as premiere danseuse, did the attraction but promise recognition from the blase members of fashionable New York's ultra-conservative set. From childhood she had looked eagerly forward ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... from behind the bar," Mary answered, "and that's not much better. And the Duchess of C—-, I have heard, was a ballet girl, but nobody seems to remember it. I don't think the people whose opinion is worth having will object to me for very long." The girl was beginning rather ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... wish to do a little investigating of their own in the field of modern music will find interesting examples of 5/4 and 7/4 metres in Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe, in d'Indy's Sonata for Violin and Pianoforte and in the Ballet music ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... that kiss which brings oblivion—that kiss which even the lowliest man and woman receive once in their lives as a benediction from Heaven. So many people imagine that they have found the Ideal Friend when they meet someone with an equal admiration for the poems of Robert Browning; or the Russian Ballet, or one who places the music of Debussy above the music of Wagner. But, I fear, they are often disappointed. For the longer I live, the more convinced I become that Love and Friendship are but "day dreams" of the "soul,"—that all we can ever possess in Life is the second-best ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... with sicknesse, or with hunger, my Lord, not with loue: proue that euer I loose more blood with loue, then I will get againe with drinking, picke out mine eyes with a Ballet-makers penne, and hang me vp at the doore of a brothel-house for ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... These works were given—conducted by Pasdeloup: Symphonic Poem—"Le Chasseur Maudit," Symphonic Variations, piano and orchestra, Second Part of "Ruth." Part II was conducted by the composer and consisted of March and Air de Ballet, with chorus, from "Hulda" and ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... idea entered their heads. I imagine such an indication of civilization would have been at variance with their republican notions of liberty; and the fair ones had no alternative but to pull their garments up to the altitude of those of a ballet-dancer, and to bury their neat feet and well-turned ankles deep, deep, deep in the filthy mire. But what made this conduct irresistibly ludicrous—though painful to any gentleman to witness—was the mockery ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... France in 1577 to superintend the music of Catharine de Medici. In 1581 he composed the music for the nuptials of the Duke de Joyeuse with Mlle. de Vaudemont, sister of the queen, and this is said to have been the origin of the heroic and historical ballet in France. ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... harping a my daughter! well my Lord, If you call me Iepha, I hane a daughter that I loue passing well. Ham. Nay that followes not. Cor. What followes then my Lord? Ham. Why by lot, or God wot, or as it came to passe, And so it was, the first verse of the godly Ballet Wil tel you all: for look you where my abridgement comes: Welcome maisters, welcome all, Enter players. What my olde friend, thy face is vallanced Since I saw thee last, com'st thou to beard me in Denmarke? ...
— The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke - The First ('Bad') Quarto • William Shakespeare
... while giving the mind only triviality to rest upon; and the mind goes to sleep or chafes to move away. We cannot live intellectually and morally in presence of the idea, say, of a jockey of Degas or one of his ballet girls in contemplation of her shoe, as long as we can live aesthetically in the arrangement of lines and masses and dabs of colour and interlacings of light and shade which translate themselves into this idea of jockey or ballet girl; we are therefore bored, ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... meeting fairies with their skirts out ready for the dance - a veritable fairy ballet. Nothing could be more lovely than this remarkably treated tree. The rich yellow fluff that will soon appear, lasting for some four to six weeks, will be one note of the yellow chord to be struck in this court-pansy, daffodil, albizzia, the orange and the yellow background ...
— Palaces and Courts of the Exposition • Juliet James
... you know what the nightly exhibitions in these garlanded temples of whorish incentive are. There is the variety theatre, with its disgusting ballet dancing, and its shamelessly indecent photographs exhibited in every direction. What a clear gain to morality it would be if the accursed houses were burnt down, and forbidden by law ever to be re-built or re-opened; the whole ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... Too't hard went I, when shortly he began, And first read to me honest Mantuan, Then Virgils Eglogues, being entred thus, Me thought I straight had mounted Pegasus, And in his full Careere could make him stop, And bound vpon Parnassus' by-clift top. 40 I scornd your ballet then though it were done And had for Finis, William Elderton. But soft, in sporting with this childish iest, I from my subiect haue too long digrest, Then to the matter that we tooke in hand, Ioue ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... laisser aller of the whole menage, seemed, on the whole, to have offered ample advantages enough; for, at the time I write of, two daughters were already established in marriage, and a third engaged, while my youngest was busy, as yet, in performing that little domestic ballet of the cat with the mouse, in the case of a most ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... campaign interposes in theatrical matters. Whether far away in Prussia or at home in France, he leads tragic authors by the hand, Raynouard, Legouve, Luce de Lancival; he listens to the first reading of the "Mort d'Henri IV." and the "Etats de Blois." He gives to Gardel, a ballet-composer, "a fine theme in the Return of Ulysses." He explains to authors how dramatic effect should, in their hands, become a political lesson; for lack of anything better, and waiting for these to comprehend it, he uses the theatre the same as a tribune ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... there, faster and faster, but all in perfect time and all in perfect order—now flying in long drawn out lines, now in battalions; bowing here, bowing there; now they would "right about turn" and curtsey to the sun. A thousand trained ballet dancer; could not have been in better time. It was as if all joined hands, dressed in green and white; for at every turn a thousand white breasts gleamed in the purple sunset. The restless call of the birds added a peculiar charm to the ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... know that when King Louis wears A Roman kilt and casque His smile hides many secret tears In ballet and in masque, Since to outshine my pomp appears So desperate a task, And royal robes look ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... from temple to temple. When the libertine hero carries off the beauty in the play, and the dotard is laughed to scorn for having the young wife: in the ballad, when the poet bid his mistress to gather roses while she may, and warns her that old Time is still a-flying: in the ballet, when honest Corydon courts Phillis under the treillage of the pasteboard cottage, and leers at her over the head of grandpapa in red stockings, who is opportunely asleep; and when seduced by the invitations of ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Cleopatra and to receive my guests in the drawing-room. At the sound of a fanfare of trumpets I was to go into the theatre preceded by a line of pages, and accompanied by my husband. After we had taken our places in a private box a great ballet, brought specially from a London music-hall, was to give a performance lasting until midnight. Then there was to be a cotillon, led by Alma herself with my husband, and after supper the dancing was to be resumed and kept up until sunrise, when a basketful of butterflies and ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... we spent at the Scala. The opera was stupid, and Madame Bellochi, who is the present primadonna, appeared to me harsh and ungraceful, when compared to Fodor. The new ballet however, amply indemnified us for the disappointment. Our Italian friends condoled with us on being a few days too late to see La Vestale, which had been performed for sixty nights, and is one of Vigano's ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... tango, the sensational revue, for the Russian ballet, was at its height when Madame Vatrotski's name first appeared on the ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... Kitchell bunked on one side, Charlie on the other. A hacked deal table, covered with oilcloth and ironed to the floor, a swinging-lamp, two chairs, a rack of books, a chest or two, and a flaring picture cut from the advertisement of a ballet, was the room's inventory in the ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... correlated revival of sensori-motor images. Although the sensori-motor images of speech can be revived, it is almost impossible without moving the hand to revive kinaesthetic impressions concerned in writing a word. Both Ballet and Stricker admit this fact, and it tends to prove that the sense of hearing is the primary incitation ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott
... of Western Guiana we fell in with a pack of these splendid birds, which gave me the opportunity of being an eye witness of their dancing, an accomplishment which I had hitherto regarded as a fable. We cautiously approached their ballet ground and place of meeting, which lay some little distance from the road. The stage, if we may so call it, measured from four to five feet in diameter; every blade of grass had been removed and the ground was as smooth as if leveled by human hands. On this space we saw one of the birds dance ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [January, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... was drowned in the ballet from Coppelia. "I don't allow any man to worry me!" said Helen ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... popularity; their partisans fought with their opponents for every inch of ground, even though discovery was mining them. And some fragments found their way in a fashion to the stage. But a little while ago there was living a ballet-master, who owed his baptismal name to parental success in the grand ballet of 'Oscar and Malvina, or the Cave of Fingal!' But this must have been produced years after Runciman. The poems had merit, and that floated them for a long ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... the wit, and silenced him for the rest of the night—a circumstance which made the party go off much more pleasantly. After dinner, the conversation, quite that of single men, easy and debonnair, glanced from the turf, and the ballet, and the last scandal, towards politics; for the times were such that politics were discussed everywhere, and three of the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... Almayer's Folly, his first novel, and in a quite casual fashion throws fresh light on that somewhat enigmatic character—reminding me in the juxtaposition of his newer psychologic procedure and the simple old tale, of Wagner's Venusberg ballet, scored after he had composed Tristan und Isolde. But, like certain other great Slavic writers, Conrad has only given us a tantalising peep into his mental workshop. We rise after finishing the Reminiscences realising that ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... Messrs. Hodgson the auctioneers discovered a thin folio consisting of an illustrated title-page and eight lithographed plates depicting scenes in the life of a ballet-girl, among a portfolio of engravings which had been sent to them for disposal. There was no letterpress, but the title ran 'Flore et Zephyr, Ballet Mythologique par Theophile Wagstaffe,' and it was published in London and Paris, 1836. The owner thought it unworthy ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... from some Oriental bazaar were scattered upon the floor. Pictures and prints which even my unpractised eyes could recognize as being of great price and rarity hung thick upon the walls. Sketches of boxers, of ballet-girls, and of racehorses alternated with a sensuous Fragonard, a martial Girardet, and a dreamy Turner. But amid these varied ornaments there were scattered the trophies which brought back strongly ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with their toes turned out—at right angles, in a splay-footed way; now they would walk with their feet crossed, after the manner of the hands of very fancy, old-fashioned piano-players, skipping from base to treble—over cracks. The whole performance would have driven a sensitive drill-sergeant or ballet-master to distraction. And when they came to a brick sidewalk they would go all around the block to avoid it. They could cross Hudson Street on the cobblestones with great effort, and in great danger of being run over; but they could ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... glory of being its defender; the former was satisfied in acting for his party, the latter discontented if he did not stand at its head. No one was more fit to lead off the dance in a rebellion, but it could hardly have a worse ballet-master. Contemptible as his threatened designs really were, the illusion of the multitude might have imparted to them weight and terror if it had occurred to them to set up a pretender in his person. His claim to the possessions of his ancestors was an empty name; but even a name was ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... just leaving a rehearsal at the Opera-house, is going home to eat a miserable dinner, and will return about three o'clock to dress, if she dances in the ballet this evening—as she will, to-day being Monday. This rat is already an old rat for she is thirteen years of age. Two years from now that creature may be worth sixty thousand francs; she will be all or ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... real English rustic perform a solo dance? Perhaps you have only seen a ballet rustic, smiling like a merry countryman in crockery, with graceful turns of the haunch and insinuating movements of the head. That is as much like the real thing as the "Bird Waltz" is like the song of birds. Wiry Ben never smiled: ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... I a red thic ballet o' yourn called Fanny Fear, an, zim ta I, there's naw moril to it. Nif zaw be you da thenk zo ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... over Europe; every one told me she was a marvel. The director of the opera in Paris saw her dance at a child's party at Spa, and offered me an enormous sum if I would give her up to him and let him have her educated for the ballet. I said, 'No, I thank you, sir; she is meant to be something finer than a princesse de theatre.' I had a passionate belief that she might marry absolutely whom she chose, that she might be a princess out and out. It has never left me till this hour, and I can assure you that it has ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... am glad of it with all my heart: I had rather be a kitten, and cry mew, Than one of these same metre ballet-mongers; I had rather hear a brazen canstick turn'd, Or a dry wheel grate on the axletree; And that would set my teeth nothing on edge, Nothing so much as mincing poetry: 'Tis like the forced gait of ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... man named Louvel, Feb. 13, 1820, as he was handing his wife into her carriage at the door of the French Opera House. They carried him back into the theatre, and there, in a side room, with the music of the opera going on upon the stage, the plaudits of the audience ringing in his ears, and ballet-girls flitting in and out in their stage dresses, the heir of France gave up his life, with kindly words upon his dying lips, reminding us of Charles ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... spread about town became lost in a maze of uncertainty. It was said that some foolish young prince, name unknown, had suddenly come into possession of a gigantic fortune, and had married a French ballet dancer. This was contradicted, and the rumour circulated that it was a young merchant who had come into the enormous fortune and married the great ballet dancer, and that at the wedding the drunken young fool had burned seventy thousand roubles at a ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... he might one day cease to be the anvil and become the hammer. But there was no thought for the common weal; each order wrangled for its own privileges, and their meeting-place was closed on the pretext that the hall was wanted for a royal ballet. No protest was raised, and the States-General never met again until the fateful meeting at Versailles, in 1789, when a similar pretext was tried, with very different consequences. Among the clergy, however, sat a young ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... (forty summers, Stout but sportive) treads a measure, Grinning, in herself a ballet, Fixed ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... doubtless," said the advocate; "for, old as Cagliari is, he still turns night into day and burns the candle at both ends. When he married Countess Blanka he was very intimate with the Marchioness Caldariva, formerly known to lovers of the ballet as 'the beautiful Cyrene.' She practised the terpsichorean art with such success that one day she danced into favour with an Italian marquis who honoured her with the gift of his name and rank, after which he shot himself. The marchioness now owns a splendid palace in Vienna, ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... drink and embrace, like the chorus of an opera comique. Let us stretch our calves, and turn on our toes like ballet-dancers. Let us at last rejoice: the Figaro, without getting the credit of it, has overcome the ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... were they talking? Ostend. The ballet-dancers. The races in May. The shooting at Monte Carlo. Gaming-tables, empty purses. ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... white, pinched little face pays you for such extravagances in silliness, then you are a ninny. Wear the fluffy things if you will, but put on the warm ones, too. In making a choice between the raiments of a ballet dancer and those of an Eskimo lady, I'd point the finger of approval toward the latter—at least at those times when the thermometer is lounging around ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... been highly successful in compositions in dance form, managing these without a suggestion of the trivial. Thus her "Air de Ballet," Op. 30, No. 1, is full of brilliancy and nervous energy without ever degenerating into vulgar noisiness. Another "Air de Ballet" by her from the ballet "Callirhoe," to which her widely known "Scarf Dance" also belongs, is crisp, bright and dainty. "Callirhoe" ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... Rienzi now began to assume greater importance. The composition of its second act was finished before we started, and into this I wove a heroic ballet of extravagant dimensions. It was now imperative that I should speedily acquire a knowledge of French, a language which, during my classical studies at the Grammar School, I had contemptuously laid aside. As there ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... She walked through it—the dumb but irresistible model of a French atelier, who made fools of all her lovers, cheated them, sucked them dry and tossed them off with a merry cynicism. When the mood took her she danced and her victims danced behind her, a grotesque ballet, laughing and clapping their hands, as though their cruel sufferings were, after all, a good joke. Neither they nor the audience seemed to be aware that she could not dance at all, and that she was ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... dance, to which everybody carried jack-o'- lanterns, and the rest celebrated the holiday in other characteristic and amusing ways. The campus resembled a cross between the midway at a World's Fair and the grand finale of a comic opera; for ghosts consorted there with ballet dancers and Egyptian princesses, spooks and goblins linked arms with pirates in top-boots and rosy farmers' daughters in calico, and nuns and Puritan maidens chatted familiarly with villainous and fascinating gentlemen, who twirled ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... nearest onlookers stood a respectful yard back and when unbalanced by the push of those behind went through such antics to avoid treading on it, while at the same time preserving the convention of innocence of any taboo that they frequently pivoted and pirouetted on one foot in an awkward ballet. The very hiding of their inhibition emphasized the new awesomeness of the grass; it was no longer to be ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... pink tissue paper, which he wore with a somewhat confusing obstinacy, pinned firmly to his chest. Miss Honey assisted his wavering footsteps rather sulkily; she longed for the white and lacy draperies in front of her and regarded her ballet skirts of stitched newspaper with bare tolerance. It is true she wore a crown of tinfoil and carried a wand made of half a brass curtain rod; but her laced tan boots, stubbed and stained, showed with disgusting plainness, and nobody would ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... callida nupta viro? Nubilis haec virgo, matronaque, virque, puerque Spectat, et ex magna parte Senatus adest. Nec satis incestis temerari vocibus aures; Assuescunt oculi multa pudenda pati ... Quo mimis prodest, scaena est lucrosa poetae, &c. The laxity of the modern ballet is a faint shadow of the ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... feathers on their heads, their bodies painted white, and their faces black as devils. Others were daubed with red, black, and white. In short, every one decked himself as extravagantly as he could, to dance in this ballet, and contribute something towards the health of the sick man." [ Relation des Hurons, 1636, 116. ] This remedy also failing, a crowning effort of the medical art was essayed. Brbeuf does not describe it, for fear, as he says, of ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... a good deal of comment upon this subject, and Miss Deemas animadverted very strongly upon actors in general and clowns in particular. As to ballet-girls, she could not find words to express her contempt for them; but in reference to this Miss Tippet ventured to rebuke her friend, and to say that although she could not and would not defend the position of these unfortunates, yet she felt that they were very much to be pitied, seeing that ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... and home of the Ballet. In other lands it is an exotic, here a natural outgrowth and expression of the National mind. Of the spirit which conceived it, here is the abode and the Opera Francais the temple; and here it has exerted its natural and unobstructed influence ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... nambas, which they buy on Malekula; the dress of the women is the same as that worn in central Malekula, and consists of an apron of pandanus or some similar fibre, wound several times round the waist; this forms a thick roll, not unlike ballet skirts, but more graceful. It is a pretty dress, though somewhat scanty, and the "skirts" flap up and down coquettishly when the wearer walks. The other parts of the body are covered with a thick layer of soot, filth, oil, fat and smoke, for ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... staring at the landscape you can watch a fat beetle crawling on a blade of grass, or an ant fussing about. It's really much nicer. But you've taken up a pseudo-classical pose, for all the world like a ballet-dancer, when she reclines upon a rock of paste-board. You should remember you have a perfect right to take a rest now. It's no joking matter to come out third! Take your ease, sir; give up all exertion, and rest ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... night, but for the first time in the memory of the Theatre no ballet was to be given. Instead of the "Premiere Danseuse," the idol of Russian society, a new star had appeared, suddenly, miraculously almost, dropped from a Polish Province, and had played himself into the innermost heart ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... lady in a green veil, (all English ladies, who travel, wear green veils,) whose carriage had been attacked, and herself carried off on the road from Florence to Rome. But M. Dumas scorns such commonplace dramatis personae, and is satisfied with nothing less than transporting a French ballet-dancer into the Appenines, with all her paraphernalia of gauze drapery, tinsel decorations, and opera airs and graces; not forgetting the orchestra, in the person of the luckless bass player. Yet so ingeniously does he dovetail ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... activities of society. We find that Washington attended such performances at the early South Street Theatre, and was especially pleased with a comedy called The Young Quaker; or the Fair Philadelphian by O'Keefe, a sketch that was followed by a pantomimic ballet, a musical piece called The Children in the Wood, a recitation of Goldsmith's Epilogue in the character of Harlequin, and a "grand finale" by some adventuresome actor who made a leap through a barrel of fire! Truly vaudeville began early ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... be sure: no ballet! And there used always to be a ballet! You remember," the reader said, "how beatific it always was to have the minor coryphees subside in nebulous ranks on either side of the stage, and have the great planetary splendor ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... gallantry, in their small three-cornered hats, powdered perukes, embroidered coats, and lace ruffles. Their valets served them with ices in the trenches, under the cannon of besieged towns. A troop of actors formed part of the army-train of Marshal Saxe. At night there was a comedy, a ballet, or a ball, and in the morning a battle. Saxe, however, himself a sturdy German, while he recognized their fighting value, and knew well how to make the best of it, sometimes complained that they were volatile, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... public at Covent Garden was probably not Handel but Mlle Salle, a French dancer who had been engaged by Rich. The first performance at the new theatre was a ballet, Terpsichore, in order that she might inaugurate the season. Terpsichore, which includes songs and a chorus, served as prologue to Il Pastor Fido. The next opera was Oreste, a pasticcio made up by Handel himself from his own works; on January 8, 1735, he produced his ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... other State, exists externally for the working class only in the form of taxes. Taxes constitute the existence of the State economically expressed. Officials and parsons, soldiers and ballet dancers, schoolmasters and beadles, Greek museums and Gothic towers, civil list and army list—the communal seeds wherein all these fabulous existences embryonically slumber ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... which would have wholly become Hortense; but for poor Kitty it didn't do at all. Yes, she was a well folded English umbrella, only the umbrella had for its handle the head of a bulldog or the leg of a ballet-dancer. And these were the Replacers whom Beverly's clear-sighted eyes saw swarming round the temple of his civilization, pushing down the aisles, climbing over the backs of the benches, walking over each other's bodies, and seizing those front seats which his family had sat in since New York had ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... many romantic associations with which the name of our floating vehicle was generally connected; yet, suggestive fancy could readily supply their place with kindred ideas culled from our more prosaic surroundings. We had, it is true, no crimson-sashed, ragged, ballet-costumed gondolier to "ply the measured oar;" because, in the first instance, we did not row up at all. We were a trifle too wise in our generation to pull up the river in a lumbering barge under a broiling sun, and fancy we were amusing ourselves! No, we had a horse and ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Chinese lacquer. A heavy bronze incense burner pours forth fumes of Bichara's Scheherazade. From the window frames, stifling the light, depend flame-coloured brocaded curtains embroidered in Egyptian enamelled beads. It is a triumph, this chamber, of style Ballet Russe. Diana is banished ... and shrinking Mildred, returning from school, finds her demure soul at variance with ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... stage. This is a change of questionable propriety from a psychological point of view; while in point of view of effect it leaves the stage for some moments empty of all business. To remedy this, a bevy of green ballet-girls came forth and pointed their toes about the prostrate king. A dance of High Church curates, or a hornpipe by Mr. T. P. Cooke, would not be more out of the key; though the gravity of a Scots audience was not to be overcome, and they merely expressed their disapprobation by a round of moderate ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that the heaviest article she had to carry up was her heart. The divine actress who now leads the English-spoken stage began her professional career as a ballet dancer, and has grown her laurels from her tears. We suspected Miss Anderson's success. It was too triumphant, too easy. After years of weary labor, of heart-breaking disappointments, of dreary obscurity, genius sometimes blazes ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... the Russian Ballet and was bored. He had been excited about Cleopatra the first time he had seen it; he now decided that it was a great mistake to try ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... group of four women promenading a San Francisco street on a pleasant morning is to be reminded of that ballet representing the Four Seasons, which we used to see in the second act of every well-regulated extravaganza. The woman nearest the walls has on her furs—it is always cool in the shade; the one next to her is wearing the ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... of ballet-girls!" cried the Countess in horror. "Such flames cannot last, and must soon leave nothing but ashes and cinders, regret or despair. A wife ought, in my opinion, to bring ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... bunked on one side, Charlie on the other. A hacked deal table, covered with oilcloth and ironed to the floor, a swinging-lamp, two chairs, a rack of books, a chest or two, and a flaring picture cut from the advertisement of a ballet, was the room's inventory in the ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... no importance. I discovered presently that a peculiar story was circulating among her friends. They said that Charles Strickland had become infatuated with a French dancer, whom he had first seen in the ballet at the Empire, and had accompanied her to Paris. I could not find out how this had arisen, but, singularly enough, it created much sympathy for Mrs. Strickland, and at the same time gave her not a little prestige. This was not without its use in the calling which she had ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... perfect himself in mathematics, in which he suspected he was somewhat deficient. But when the same officious friend laughed at him, and called him "green," he determined to trust to fortune, and henceforth devoted himself the more assiduously to the French ballet, where he had already made some ...
— A Good-For-Nothing - 1876 • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... excitement, not only in Paris, but throughout the country. Another poisoning case had not long before this occupied the minds of the public very greatly—that of the hypocritical Castaing for the murder of Auguste Ballet. Indeed, there had been a lot of poisoning going on in French society about this period. Political and religious controversy, moreover, was rife. The populace were in a mood either to praise extravagantly or just as extravagantly to condemn. It happened that rumour convinced them of the ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... days; for the whole palace was afterwards rebuilt by the Corsini, and many parts of it were changed. Christina had been in Paris and had seen Louis Fourteenth dance as Alcibiades in Benserade's ballet, a sight to rejoice the gods of Olympus, who must certainly have laughed even louder at the bewigged King's mincing steps than they did at Vulcan's limp; for with many gifts, the Sun-King possessed no more sense ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... casket leaped a tiny Baby Elephant, about as large as a mouse, and began capering about on its toes. It was dressed in short, fluffy skirts, like those worn by a ballet-dancer, and it danced so funnily that all who saw ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum
... had always considered herself the daughter of Lorenzo Chiappini, formerly gaoler of Modigliana, and subsequently constable at Florence, and of his wife Vincenzia Diligenti. Possessed in her girlhood of fascinating appearance and charming manners, she came out as a ballet dancer at the principal opera at Florence, and one night she so impressed Lord Newborough that, by means of a golden bribe, he had her transferred from the stage to his residence. His conduct towards her was ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... fixed and invariable, the dialogue is extemporised by masked actors. In the ancient Saturnalia we have probably the germ of the present carnival, which is entirely an Italian invention. The Opera and the Ballet were also the invention of the Italians: two species of theatrical amusement, in which the dramatic interest is entirely subordinate ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... a genuine "Ballet Extravaganza," the story being told in pantomimic action, illustrated by M. JACOBI'S sympathetic music. Aladdin was an excellent subject for Mr. JOHN HOLLINGSHEAD to take, though I venture to think that our ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... this guise, and followed by this etat major, he is a conspicuous figure upon a field of battle, and produces much the same effect as the head of a circus riding into a town on a piebald horse, surrounded by clowns and pets of the ballet. He was the confessor of the Empress, and is now the aumonier of the Press; but why he wears jack-boots, why he capers about on a fiery horse, why he has a staff of aides-de-camp, and why he has two grooms, are things which no one seems to ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... lay full on their floors of dusty mosaic, and their gardens where nothing grew. It seemed to me, as it seems to everybody, that Pompeii was not dead, but asleep, and her tints were so clear and gay that her dreams might be those of a ballet-girl. A solitary yellow dog chased a lizard in the sun, and the pebbles he knocked about made an absurdly disturbing noise. Beyond the vague tinted roofless walls that stretched over the pleasant little peninsula, the blue sea rippled tenderly, remembering much ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... those behind went through such antics to avoid treading on it, while at the same time preserving the convention of innocence of any taboo that they frequently pivoted and pirouetted on one foot in an awkward ballet. The very hiding of their inhibition emphasized the new awesomeness of the grass; it was no longer to be lightly approached or ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... that dhrag of mine is a wondherful invention entirely! Do ye notice, Harry, me bhoy, how it's modherated the little huzzy's paces? Bedad, she's goin' along as sober as a Quaker girl to meetin' instead of waltzin' away like a ballet-dancer! But wait until one of those light-heeled picaroons comes along, and then won't we surprise thim above a bit! If it's not blowing too hard when ye come on deck in the middle watch ye may give her the stunsails; it'll look more ship-shape, and ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... sent by Marshal de Brissac to superintend the music of Catherine de Medici. He was probably the introducer of Italian dances into Paris, and he delighted the Court as much by his skill on the Violin as by his writing of ballet music. ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... sentiment. He had married for money, and his wife had died in a mad-house. He was now anxious to marry again for position; and while looking round the market for a sufficiently perfect person of high-breeding, he patronized the theatre largely, and 'protected' several ballet-girls and actresses. Everyone knew that his life was black with villainy and intrigue of the most shameless kind, yet everyone swore that he was a good man. Such is the value of ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... surprise was drowned in the ballet from Coppelia. "I don't allow any man to worry me!" said Helen over ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... of Poland, then a young man, came back from a journey, the whole Lescinskian House gathered together at Lissa to receive him. The schoolmaster, Jablowsky, prepared a festival in commemoration of the event, and had it end with a ballet performed by thirteen students, dressed as cavaliers. Each had a shield, upon which one of the letters of the words "Domus Lescinia" (The Lescinskian House) was written in gold. After the first dance, they stood in such a manner that their shields read "Domus Lescinia"; after the second dance, they ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... Negra will laugh when he hears that the soldiers of six counties are hunting for him in the depths of the forests and tapping every rotten tree-stump in search of him while he is sitting comfortably in some large theatre and eyeing the ballet-dancers through his opera glass; but he will be very much surprised when, one fine day, without any preliminary siege-operations we shall tap at his own door and enquire: 'Is ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... regular only in his excesses. He was very rich, so that he could give the rein to almost all his whims. Indeed, reports of a rather fantastic kind, somewhat recalling Duke Charles of Brunswick, were current about him, the most extravagant being of a ballet he had had performed for him by fifty naked dancing girls. There was a certain amount of exaggeration about this, perhaps. In any case he troubled himself no longer about his ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... the children prancing with impatience to begin their ballet, much excited by the music, gaslight, and gay dresses, which made it seem like "a truly ball." All welcomed Jessie, and she soon forgot the cheap slippers, mended gloves, and old dress, as she gayly led her troop through the pretty dance with so much ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... into Houlgate, a mad dash through the village, dogs and chickens running for dear life, and out again with the deadly rush of a belated wild goose hurrying to a southern clime. Our host sat beside the chauffeur, who looked like the demon in a ballet in his goggles and skull-cap. The Man from the Quarter and I crouched on the rear seats, our eyes on the turn of the road ahead. What we had left behind, or what might be on either side of us was ...
— The Man In The High-Water Boots - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Baader, F. X. Baber. Baby-Farming. Bachelor. Backgammon. Baden: Grand Duchy. Badger. Badminton. Bagatelle. Bahamas. Balaklava. Bale, John. Baliol. Ballet. Ballot. Balneotherapeutics. Bamboo. Ban. Banana. Bank-notes. Barbados. Barbarossa. Barbed Wire. Barcelona. Barclay, Alexander. Barere de Vieuzac. Barium. Barlaam and Josaphat. Barley. Barnes, William. Barometer. Barrister. Barrow, Isaac. Bastiat, F. Bastille. Baths. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... at the end of the last act in the grand ballet, where all the dancers performed intricate manoeuvers under changing lights. Every time the wheeling figures brought her round to the footlights, there was a greeting from the front, and, despite warnings, she could not suppress ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... laid their small heads and ears together when fairly under way, beating time with their highly polished hoofs—pat, pat, pat, pat, as true as the most disciplined regiment marching to a soul-stirring quick step, or a troupe of well-trained ballet girls, bounding across the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... Mrs. Osbourne had arranged to meet her husband in that city, she decided to join some of her friends in their removal to the coast, and began to make preparations for the long, hard journey. In those days little girls wore very short dresses, with several white petticoats, like ballet dancers, and long white stockings. This dress seemed peculiarly unsuitable for the dusty stage trip across the desert, and Mrs. Osbourne, meeting the situation with her usual common sense, bought a boy's suit and dressed ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... a pistol and the whistle of a ballet close past them interrupted the man's speech; and, looking down, they saw Potter standing aft near the lashed wheel with a smoking revolver in his hand, which he still pointed ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... upon the clavier, and also composed pieces. At one time he wrote an opera, which was performed with great splendour in the theatre of his palace. On this occasion the emperor led the orchestra, and his two daughters, Maria Theresa and Maria Anne, danced in the ballet. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu speaks of an opera which she saw at Vienna in 1716, the decorations and dresses of which cost the emperor thirty thousand pounds. He called Metastasio from Italy to compose the operas for his court. Maria Theresa inherited this love of music, and in 1725, when ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... see him the other day in that ballet? Of course I knew he could dance, because he can do everything, but I never thought he was going to be so gloriously ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... some excuse for existence we have depicted the Earth in an imaginary ballet skirt, which without in any way hampering her movements complies with the strict regulations pertaining to ...
— This Giddy Globe • Oliver Herford
... Taglioni, who will always occupy an important place in the annals of Terpsichore. Without great personal charm, her success was due to her wonderful skill, which was the result of the mercilessly severe training that she had received from her father, Filippo Taglioni, who was a ballet master of some repute. Born at Stockholm, where her father was employed at the Royal Opera, she made her debut at Vienna, where she created an immediate sensation. Hitherto ballet dancing had been somewhat ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... and the preceding we spent at the Scala. The opera was stupid, and Madame Bellochi, who is the present primadonna, appeared to me harsh and ungraceful, when compared to Fodor. The new ballet however, amply indemnified us for the disappointment. Our Italian friends condoled with us on being a few days too late to see La Vestale, which had been performed for sixty nights, and is one of Vigano's masterpieces. I thought the Didone Abbandonata left us nothing to regret. The ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... were necessary for its completion. "It would be a deal too stagey for my girls," said Mrs. Conway Smith, whose "girls" had, during the last ten years, gone through every phase of flirtation invented in these latter times. Perhaps it did savour a little too much of ballet practice; perhaps it was true that with less care there might have been inconveniences. Faster it grew and faster; but still they had all done it before, and done it with absolute accuracy. It was ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... he wants, expecting it to come to him. Every wolf in the band knew that no matter how hard and long he might look that splendid food in the tree would not drop down into his waiting mouth. So they began to jump for it, and it was this midnight and wilderness ballet that Albert ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... and for poetry of every kind. In all the lyric form predominates, and their compositions are commonly adapted for instrumental accompaniment. Their dramatic entertainments are mainly musical, combining rudely the opera with the ballet,—monotonous singing, and listless, mechanical dancing. Dialogue is occasionally introduced, the favorite subjects being passages from the Hindoo Avatars, the epic "Ramayana," and the "Mahabharata"; or from legends, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... sisters in comparison with you, they seem like caricatures of women. I know I oughtn't to say such things of my mother—she really is an exceptional person—but a woman should be something more than mind. My sisters could no more do what you do than a lame duck can lead a ballet. I suppose it is because I have had to live with a lot of ailing women all my life that I feel as I do toward you. I worship your health and strength. I really do. Your care of me on that trip was very sweet—and ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... a river of blood before you had the slightest chance of setting foot on the flowery banks on which they invited you to repose—tracts which rouged poor Christianity on the cheeks, clapped a crown of innocent daffodillies on her head, and set her to dancing a pas de zephyr in the pastoral ballet in which St. Simon pipes to the flock he shears; or having first laid it down as ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... I may mention it's my sovereign intention To revive the classic memories of Athens at its best, For my company possesses all the necessary dresses, And a course of quiet cramming will supply us with the rest. We've a choir hyporchematic (that is, ballet-operatic) Who respond to the CHOREUTAE of that cultivated age, And our clever chorus-master, all but captious criticaster, Would accept as the CHOREGUS of the early Attic stage. This return to classic ages is considered in their ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... temple to temple. When the libertine hero carries off the beauty in the play, and the dotard is laughed to scorn for having the young wife: in the ballad, when the poet bid his mistress to gather roses while she may, and warns her that old Time is still a-flying: in the ballet, when honest Corydon courts Phillis under the treillage of the pasteboard cottage, and leers at her over the head of grandpapa in red stockings, who is opportunely asleep; and when seduced by the invitations of the rosy youth she comes ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for some of the music. They were not allowed to play the flute, but could indulge in the tabor and other instruments. Some of the scenes depicted closely resemble the modern stage, and it is more than probable that, when the audiences of to-day applaud our own ballet scenes, they are enjoying themselves in ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... violin and mandolin orchestra, composed of Prestrud, Sundbeck, and Beck, contributed several pieces, and our excellent gramophone was heard for the first time. Just as it started the waltz from "The Count of Luxembourg," there appeared in the companion-way a real ballet-girl, masked, and in very short skirts. This unexpected apparition from a better world was greeted with warm applause, which was no less vigorous when the fair one had given proof of her skill in the ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... reason, the weird "Elsie Dinsmore" series is found under the popular Christmas tree, while nobody gives the Rollo books to anybody. Why? One may begin to believe that that degeneracy which the prevalence of jazz, lip-sticks, and ballet costumes adapted to the subway is supposed to indicate, is a real menace when one discovers that "Penrod" or "Seventeen" has ceased ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... QUESTION.—The general idea of the forthcoming new Opera at the Savoy appears to be "all Dance to SOLOMON's music." Is it to be a pantomime-drama, like L'Enfant Prodigue, or simply a ballet? If neither, where do song-words ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 2, 1891 • Various
... is the history of human civilization, of its progress and regress. To be sure, as the human mind remains ultimately the same, mankind has often unintentionally returned again to the old forms. The pirouette, which the artists of the ballet invented a hundred years ago, and which was applauded as the wonder of its time, as we now know, was danced by old Egyptians. Not seldom the same outer forms referred to very different mental motives. We learn that many people danced half naked as an expression ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... "that is, upon causes which are unalterable, that the action of the various parts of a state depends. The machine may vary as to its dimensions; but its movement and acting springs still remain intrinsically the same." Elsewhere he speaks of government as "a great ballet or dance in which ... everything depends upon the disposition of the figures." He does not deal, that is to say, with men as men, but only as inert adjuncts of a machine by which they are controlled. Such an attitude is bound to suffer from the patent vices of all abstraction. ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... shortly he began, And first read to me honest Mantuan, Then Virgils Eglogues, being entred thus, Me thought I straight had mounted Pegasus, And in his full Careere could make him stop, And bound vpon Parnassus' by-clift top. 40 I scornd your ballet then though it were done And had for Finis, William Elderton. But soft, in sporting with this childish iest, I from my subiect haue too long digrest, Then to the matter that we tooke in hand, Ioue and Apollo for the Muses stand. Then noble Chaucer, in those former times, The first inrich'd ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... the day when he had shown it for the first time to Beryl Van Tuyn and Arabian he had not seen either of them. Nor had he had a word from them. This had not troubled him. Already he was at work on another sitter, a dancer in the Russian ballet, talented, decadent, impertinent, and, so Garstin believed, marked out for early death in a madhouse—altogether quite an interesting study. But now, looking at ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... chesnut favourites from his own carriage to draw a pageant upon the stage, I saw them yesterday evening harnessed all abreast, their own master in a dancer's habit I was told, guiding them himself, and personating the Cid, which was the name of the ballet, if I remember right, making his horses go clear round the stage, and turning at the lamps of the orchestra with such dexterity, docility, and grace, that they seemed rather to enjoy than feel disturbance at the deafening noise of instruments, the repeated bursts of applause, and hollow ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... kindly and upright. A man of a stately presence; a broad, honest north-country face; a high square forehead, bland and unwrinkled. I sketch him here once for all, because I have no part for him after this scene in my corps de ballet. ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... few minutes, his speech to the audience merged into a private conversation with its occupants. The noise increased, and M. Laporte declared that he was not to be "intimidated," a word which roused the "omnibus" party to perfect fury. He retired, and the curtain rose for the ballet, in which a new dancer was to have made her appearance. The noise, now, became terrible; yells, hisses, and all sorts of uncouth sounds were blended in frightful discord. The dancers, perceiving all attempts at a performance ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... fashionable dress, and made ludicrous attempts to imitate elegant manners. Mad Moll and her husband were another pair who flourished in tawdry, gay-colored rags, and tatters, he brandishing a sweep's broom and she a ladle. Jim Crow and a fancifully bedizened ballet-dancer in white muslin, often swelled the ranks, and the rest of the party rigged out in a profusion of gilt paper, flowers, tinsel and gewgaws, their faces and legs colored with brick-dust, made up a comical crowd. But even these mild ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... room was to be paid for; and, having accompanied his future master and Mr. Green downstairs, the latter accomplishing the descent not without difficulty and contusions, and having pointed out the way to Mr. Slowcoach's rooms, Mr. Robert Filcher relieved his feelings by indulging in a ballet of action, or pas d'extase; in which poetry of motion he declared his joy at the last valuable addition to ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... talking? Ostend. The ballet-dancers. The races in May. The shooting at Monte Carlo. Gaming-tables, empty ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... disapproved of most things. Disapproval was to her what neuralgia and fancy needlework are to many other women. She disapproved of early morning tea and auction bridge, of ski-ing and the two-step, of the Russian ballet and the Chelsea Arts Club ball, of the French policy in Morocco and the British policy everywhere. It was not that she was particularly strict or narrow in her views of life, but she had been the eldest sister of a large family of self-indulgent children, and her particular form of indulgence ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... floor nearly a yard high, and commenced an extempore pas seul of a Jim Crow character, which he continued with unabated vigour during several minutes. This "Mazurka d'ecstase," or whatever a ballet-master would have called it, having at length, to my great joy, concluded, the performer of it sank exhausted into a chair, and regarding me with a face still 19somewhat the worse for his late violent exertions favoured me with the ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... poker and the tongs and the bellows and the warming-pan flee across the house with the movements of their vengeance; and the next hour you'd hear 'em singing 'The Spotted Cow' together as peaceable as two holy twins; yes—and very good voices they had, and would strike in like professional ballet-singers to one another's support in ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... their toes turned out—at right angles, in a splay-footed way; now they would walk with their feet crossed, after the manner of the hands of very fancy, old-fashioned piano-players, skipping from base to treble—over cracks. The whole performance would have driven a sensitive drill-sergeant or ballet-master to distraction. And when they came to a brick sidewalk they would go all around the block to avoid it. They could cross Hudson Street on the cobblestones with great effort, and in great danger of being run over; but they could not possibly travel ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... been there several times, as well when there was a tragedy as when there was a ballet; for the pieces in which there were the greatest number of characters on the stage were the most interesting to see from the flies. One sat pretty much in the dark up there, and most people took their supper up with them. Once ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... from Anglisky Prospect. Therefore, at the end of three weeks, Henry Bohun discovered himself to be profoundly wretched. There seemed to be no hope anywhere. Even the artist in him was disappointed. He went to the Ballet and saw Tchaikowsky's "Swan Lake"; but bearing Diagilev's splendours in front of him, and knowing nothing about the technique of ballet-dancing he was bored and cross and contemptuous. He went to "Eugen Onyegin" and enjoyed it, because there ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... friends, anxious to know the impressions produced on his mind by scenes and characters so different from what he had been accustomed to at home, inquired what sort of business his son carried on? "Ou," said he (in reference to the operatic singers and the corps de ballet), "he just keeps a curn[76] o' quainies[77] and a wheen widdyfous[78], and gars them fissle[79], and loup, and mak murgeons[80], to please ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... having made their appearance, Miss Austin directed that the ball should commence. I requested the honour of Miss Eurydice's hand in a cotillon, which was to open the ball. At this moment stepped forth the premier violin, master of the ceremonies and ballet-master, Massa Johnson, really a very smart man, who gave lessons in dancing to all the "'Badian ladies." He was a dark quadroon, his hair slightly powdered, dressed in a light blue coat thrown well back, to show his lily-white waistcoat, only ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... a message to Mademoiselle Nid de Merle that she was to prepare to act the part of a nymph of Paradise in the King's masque on Wednesday night, and must dress at once to rehearse her part in the ballet specially designed ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the crush-room. The opera was just over, and some parties who were not staying the ballet, had already assembled there. As he passed along he was stopped by Lady Fitz-pompey, who would not let such a capital opportunity escape of exhibiting Caroline and ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... of my Rienzi now began to assume greater importance. The composition of its second act was finished before we started, and into this I wove a heroic ballet of extravagant dimensions. It was now imperative that I should speedily acquire a knowledge of French, a language which, during my classical studies at the Grammar School, I had contemptuously laid aside. As there were only four weeks in which to recover the time I had lost, I engaged an excellent ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... a class made by sundry French tailors, bootmakers, dancing-masters, and Mr. Brown. They are a corps-de-ballet, for use of private entertainments. They are fostered by society for the use of young debutantes, and hardier damsels, who have dared two or three years of the "tight" polka. They are cultivated for their heels, not their heads. Their life begins at ten o'clock in the evening, and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... regarded as an ideal country by officials of all ranks! Literature was in the service of the censorship; military drill was all that was taught at the universities; the troops were trained like a ballet, and the peasants paid the taxes and were mute under the lash of serfdom. Patriotism meant the wringing of bribes from the quick and the dead. Those who did not take bribes were looked upon as rebels because they ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the Queen of Sheba; and that radiant afternoon at Moulay Idriss, above the vine-garlanded square, and against the background of piled-up terraces, their vivid groups were in such contrast to the usual gray assemblages of the East that the scene seemed like a setting for some extravagantly staged ballet. ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... 'that's English! Franks, you remember the ballet divertissement they improvised at the Bodley race-ball, when the magnificent footman fired a curtain and caught up ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... dear Blount," said Alcide, "we have come too soon, like honest citizens who like to get their money's worth. All this is before the curtain rises, it would have been better to arrive only for the ballet." ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... sufferer should have been rejoiced to see them, "Here we all are—here we all are!" The visionary, if I recollect right, was so much shocked at their appearance, that he retired abroad, in despair that any part of Britain could shelter him from the daily persecution of this domestic ballet. ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... adulter, Verbaque dat stulto callida nupta viro? Nubilis haec virgo, matronaque, virque, puerque Spectat, et ex magna parte Senatus adest. Nec satis incestis temerari vocibus aures; Assuescunt oculi multa pudenda pati ... Quo mimis prodest, scaena est lucrosa poetae, &c. The laxity of the modern ballet is a faint shadow of the indecency ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... opera—to the Pergola? Yes, but not to discuss the music or the dancing. Every body knows that at the great theatres of Italy the fashionable part of the audience pay very little attention to the music, unless it be a new opera, but make compensation by listening devoutly to the ballet. The Pergola is the great resort of fashion. A box at the Pergola, and a carriage for the banks of the Arno, are the indispensables, we are told, at Florence. Who has these, may eat his macaroni where ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... faint [No, you Sham, not for IT]: the King had almost done the like. His tears flowed abundantly. The Princes and Princesses were overcome with sorrow. At last, Gotter judged it time to put an end to this tragic scene. He entered the Hall, almost like Boreas in the Ballet of THE ROSE; that is to say, with a crash. He made one or two whirlwinds; clove the press, and snatched away the Princess from the arms of the Queen-Mother, took her in his own, and whisked her out of the Hall. All the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... at St. James's. Grand dinners were given by the members of the Cabinet; the theatres were free for the night to great and small; at each the National Anthem was sung amidst deafening applause; at Drury Lane there was a curious emblematical ballet—like a revival of the old masques, ending with a representation of the Queen and Prince surrounded by fireworks, which no doubt afforded immense satisfaction to ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... he met Dallas, who apologized for being late. He had stayed for the ballet, he said, knowing his wife was not alone. He asked Noel to come again, but got no very ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... and amusement during the stay at the capital. One day he took us to see trotting matches, a very popular form of sport in Petrograd although it struck me as rather dull. We dined at different clubs, went to the Ballet one night, and another night were taken to the Opera where we occupied the Imperial box in the middle of the house. In those days Russian society thoroughly understood the art of welcoming a guest of the country, ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... officers here the only ones with whom I can find plenty to talk about are the generals. On what subject under heaven could one talk to a lieutenant? I cannot discuss the agility of ballet-dancers or the merits of jockeys with him, because these things are as dust and ashes to me; and when forced for a few moments by my duties as hostess to come within range of his conversation I feel ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... her head, and we joined the promenaders. The band was playing, and, for a ship-band, playing very well, the ballet music of Delibes' 'Sylvia'. The musicians had caught that unaccentuated and sensuous swing of the melody which the soft, tropical atmosphere rendered still more languorous. With Mrs. Falchion's hand upon my arm, I felt a sense of capitulation to the music and to her, uncanny in its suddenness. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... meddler's itch, from corns to crime, is now traced to the pernicious activity of some microbian. Even our currency system is blasted by goldbugs, and Prohibition milk- sickness is being treated with vermifuge. A Kansas M.D. has succeeded in hiving the old-age microbe, and is now treating the ballet girls whom Weis & Greenwall and Rigsby & Walker will bring South next winter, while a New York empiric has discovered the insanity insect and is fumigating the brain of the Rev. Mr. Parkhurst. Thus does medical science go ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... refined sensibilities, so the next morning while she was yet beating the hay, I packed my little suitcase and took it on the run away from there, leaving her, you might say, on the pan. I went into the pony ballet of a La Salle Theatre show—can you see me as a pony?—and I heard that she was advancing Art with a stock burlesque in South Chicago. That evening she was among those present at the aforementioned social function. And while we kissed and embraced each ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... the theatres were going every night, including Sundays. Karsavina appeared in a new Ballet at the Marinsky, all dance-loving Russia coming to see her. Shaliapin was singing. At the Alexandrinsky they were reviving Meyerhold's production of Tolstoy's "Death of Ivan the Terrible"; and at that performance I remember noticing a student of the Imperial School of Pages, in his ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... some time the poems held their own, retained their popularity; their partisans fought with their opponents for every inch of ground, even though discovery was mining them. And some fragments found their way in a fashion to the stage. But a little while ago there was living a ballet-master, who owed his baptismal name to parental success in the grand ballet of 'Oscar and Malvina, or the Cave of Fingal!' But this must have been produced years after Runciman. The poems had merit, and that floated them ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... platform to take up the passengers; but no such idea entered their heads. I imagine such an indication of civilization would have been at variance with their republican notions of liberty; and the fair ones had no alternative but to pull their garments up to the altitude of those of a ballet-dancer, and to bury their neat feet and well-turned ankles deep, deep, deep in the filthy mire. But what made this conduct irresistibly ludicrous—though painful to any gentleman to witness—was the mockery of make-believe gallantry exhibited, in seating all the ladies before any gentleman was ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... shoulder-piece of her gown, how another makes play with the brightness of her eyes by glancing up at the cornice. Madame Marneffe's triumph, however, was not face to face like that of other women. She turned sharply round to return to Lisbeth at the tea-table. This ballet-dancer's pirouette, whisking her skirts, by which she had ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... neighbor, the artist Pesne, on the subject of the paintings which his masterly hand had executed, and then turning to Mademoiselle von Schwerin, he painted in glowing colors the future of Berlin—the future when they would have a French theatre, an Italian opera, and of all things, an Italian ballet-corps. For the latter the most celebrated dancers would be engaged, and it should eclipse every thing of the kind that had ever been seen ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Metternich, then Austrian ambassador at the court of the Tuileries, and an amateur musician of no mean order, he had written the libretto of a ballet called "Le Roi d'Yvetot." This was given on the professional stage, but met with little success, if exception is made of the "first night," when again "all Paris" turned out to see the prince lead the orchestra, and to applaud the brilliant young ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... that it has three pockets on each side outside, and a rolled back collar suitable for the throat of an opera singer, and as many buttons as a harem skirt. Beyond that, it's a first-class, steady, reliable, quiet, religious fantaisie, such as any retired French ballet master might be ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... his nephew than the Judge, who thought he could read a questionable history in his face,—or the old Doctor, who knew men's temperaments and organizations pretty well, and had his prejudices about races, and could tell an old sword-cut and a ballet-mark in two seconds from a scar got by falling against the fender, or a mark left by king's evil. He could not be expected to share our own prejudices; for he had heard nothing of the wild youth's adventures, or his scamper over the Pampas at short notice. So, then, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... that when King Louis wears A Roman kilt and casque His smile hides many secret tears In ballet and in masque, Since to outshine my pomp appears So desperate a task, And royal robes look ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... comedy. Now and then came a flash of cockney humour, now and then some old lady, a character such as Charles Dickens might have drawn, would amuse them by her garrulous oddities. Once a woman came who was a member of the ballet at a famous music-hall. She looked fifty, but gave her age as twenty-eight. She was outrageously painted and ogled the students impudently with large black eyes; her smiles were grossly alluring. She had abundant self-confidence and treated Dr. Tyrell, vastly amused, with the easy familiarity ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... one of the greatest of musical epics, and well worthy of the poem whence it had risen. The fruit of the winter of 1883 and 1884, included also the too-popular "Nathalie" dances, (where, for once, Ivan over-melodized); the "Cinderella" ballet; and his symphonic poem "Dream of Italy." These completed, he sank into a state of torpor from which nothing seemed to rouse him. Overwork had shorn him alike of vitality and of the imagination which had become as the breath of life ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... to me about the delight which an artist's soul feels in coming into direct contact with the seething life of the people, and she mentioned with appreciation a French picture, one of Degas' I think, which represents ballet dancers practising their art. Then she and Gorman settled down in two of the three seats reserved for us. Ascher and I retired modestly to the back of what I may call the dress circle. After a while when the performance was well under way, Gorman's brother came in. I suppose the greater part ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... is where you live? How nicely you have arranged the room. I never saw a room like this before. How different from the convent! What would the nuns think if they saw me here? What strange pictures!—those ballet-girls; they remind me of the pantomime. ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... against the public sources of sensual appeal not merely the houses of prostitution and street solicitation, but the vile shows, indecent pictures and books, and other means by which the greed of money panders to the sex instinct. The questions concerning the drama, the ballet, and the nude in art will recur when we come to discuss the general relations of art and morality. Closely parallel are the problems concerning the costume of women; these are phases of the eternal conflict between beauty ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... cared more about women than fireworks, and lagged behind, seeing the masquers and half-dressed women running and yelling ( fun was fast and loose then). I passed a woman leading a little girl dressed like a ballet-girl, and looked at the girl who seemed about ten years old, then at the woman, who winked. I stopped, she came up and said, "Is she not a nice little girl?" I don't recollect having had any distinct intention at the time I stopped; but at her words ideas came ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... we started on a round of the theaters. I prevailed upon our friends to prolong their stay, to be our guests. We saw Burton and Edwin Booth. We went to the Opera, saw the ballet which Fannie Ellsler had previously inaugurated. The Independent was denouncing the theater as an unmitigated evil; the ballet was a shocking exhibition of legs. Still they had come, and New York ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... something pleasant and interesting, while giving the mind only triviality to rest upon; and the mind goes to sleep or chafes to move away. We cannot live intellectually and morally in presence of the idea, say, of a jockey of Degas or one of his ballet girls in contemplation of her shoe, as long as we can live aesthetically in the arrangement of lines and masses and dabs of colour and interlacings of light and shade which translate themselves into this idea of jockey or ballet girl; we are therefore bored, ruffled, or, ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... learned self-containment in a hard school, looked up at him, and said: "Spanish filly! Do you mean that girl we saw dancing in the Pandemonium Ballet? Well, you are a thief and a blackguard." It had been the last straw on a sorely loaded consciousness; reaching up from his chair Dartie seized his wife's arm, and recalling the achievements of his boyhood, twisted it. Winifred endured the agony with tears in her eyes, but no murmur. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... are there in vogue? And who danced best in the last grand ballet? Come, sweet servant, you shall tell ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... established this, the clear, cold, sunny days came to an end. Rain began to drizzle half-heartedly out of a murky sky. Overnight the rain changed to snow, great flat flakes eddying soundlessly earthward in an atmosphere uncannily still. For two days and a night this ballet of the snowflakes continued, until valley and slope and the high ridges were two feet ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... blood before you had the slightest chance of setting foot on the flowery banks on which they invited you to repose; tracts which rouged poor Christianity on the cheeks, clapped a crown of innocent daffodillies on her head, and set her to dancing a pas de zephyr in the pastoral ballet in which Saint-Simon pipes to the flock he shears; or having first laid it down as ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... bright little girl, who spoke French with a perfect accent. Her mother had been a "French ballet-dancer, which probably accounted for it. Although she was only six years old, it was easy to perceive that she had been several times in love. ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... in the grounds and Lulli was installed as superintendent of the royal music. Among other entertainments a Ballet des Saisons was given, in which the King, in a gorgeous costume representing Spring, danced with his usual grace and skill, while Madame, in a gown of shining tissue, delicate as a butterfly's wing, led her troupe of Bacchantes, Louise ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... beautiful items on the programme— "Shtchedryk." Again, as Mr. SMILLIE must have bitterly reflected, how can we possibly render justice to the cause of Bolshevism so long as we are unable to pronounce the names of its leaders correctly? The same remark applies to the Russian Ballet; the Yugo-Slav handbell-ringers; the vegetarian Indian-club swingers from the Karakoram Himalayas; the polyphonic gong-players from North Borneo; the synthetic quarter-tone quartette from San Domingo; the anthropophagous back-chat comedians from the Solomon Islands; not to mention ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... thus politely invited to be seated included, among others, Bizet, Delibes, Massenet, and the writer of these lines. Massenet and I would have been satisfied with writing a ballet for the Opera. He proposed the Rat Catcher from an old German tale, while I proposed Une nuit de Cleopatra on the text of Theophile Gautier. They refused us the honor, and, when they consented to order a ballet from Delibes, they did not dare ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... spy and that he had escaped from England and was serving with the Austrian army. As to his parentage I can enlighten you in a measure. He was a Eurasian. His father was an aristocratic Chinaman, and his mother a Polish ballet-dancer—that was his parentage; but I would scarcely hesitate to affirm that he came from Hell; and I shall presently show you that he has certainly ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... given—conducted by Pasdeloup: Symphonic Poem—"Le Chasseur Maudit," Symphonic Variations, piano and orchestra, Second Part of "Ruth." Part II was conducted by the composer and consisted of March and Air de Ballet, with chorus, from "Hulda" and the Third and ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... and concerns Move like a Russian ballet made of eggs; A bright-smirched canvas heaven heaves and burns ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke
... continued in spirit in Sergeant Kendall's refined portraits, augmented by a painted wood sculpture of unusual quality, reminiscent of the masters of the early German Renaissance. Louis Kronberg has his customary ballet girl and Hermann Dudley Murphy some of his typical, refined marines. His surfaces are always delectable and like the inside of a shell in their glistening blues and pinks. Both Nelson and Hansen, two native Californians, ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... with its magnificent resources and proudly developing energies, should be the last to unite in adjudging its judicial officers to the labors of galley slaves, and to then pay them by the year less than a ballet-dancer receives by the month in all its principal cities. Two thousand five hundred dollars per year is the astounding sum which this same Empire State pays to its highest judicial officers. If we reverse the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... music was at its height, And the waltz was wildest—behold, a sight! The stilts began to hop and twirl Like the saucy feet of a ballet-girl. And their haughty owner, through the air, Was spin, spin, spinning everywhere. Everybody got out of the way To give the dangerous stilts fair play. In every corner, at every door, With faces looking like unfilled blanks, They watched the ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... girl will not give her photograph to any young man until she is engaged to him. What nice girl would care to see her picture neighbored by ballet dancers and footlight favorites in a young man's rooms! She will be equally careful about corresponding with men, writing to but a few intimate and long-known friends, making her letters bright and gay, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... illuminated, in which a masked ball is taking place. At the rise of the curtain a ballet is being performed in the centre of the hall. Masked dancers are grouped around, watching it. Two of them, women, are conversing on the ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... away and replaced by a miraculous race of Amadises, Lisvarts, Galaors, Gradasilias, Orianas, Pintiquinestras, Fradalons, and so forth, who flit across our vision, in company with the indispensable necromancers, fairies, dwarfs, giants, and duennas, like some huge ballet: things without character, passions, pathos; knights who are never wounded or killed, princesses who always end with marrying the right man, enchanters whose heads are always chopped off, foundlings who are always ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... since popular chorus is one of the most effective elements of the opera, we can hardly object to lyric rustics in elegant laced boddices and picturesque motley, unless we are prepared to advocate a chorus of colliers in their pit costume, or a ballet of charwomen and stocking-weavers. But our social novels profess to represent the people as they are, and the unreality of their representations is a grave evil. The greatest benefit we owe to the artist, whether painter, ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... Bartimaeus springs to his feet at once with a bound. So we should leap to meet Jesus, our sight-giver. How slothful and languid we often are. We do not put half as much heart into our Christian life as people do into common things. Far more pains are taken by a ballet-dancer to learn her posturing than by most Christians to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... appears to me purely musical—it is of a sonorous design. The symphony in D major (the second) suggests to me visual-motor images—I set a ballet to the first part and keep track altogether of the ballet that I picture. The Heroic Symphony (aside from the funeral march, the meaning of which is indicated in the title) suggests to me images of a military character, ever since the ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... for art were superseded by criticism and low intrigues, the theatre became a mere political engine, intended to divert the thoughts of the population, of the great cities from the discussion of topics dangerous to the state by the all-engrossing charms of actresses and ballet-dancers. ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... off the influences with which the Pasteur had overwhelmed her. While his maledictions were in full flow she sank in a huddled heap upon the couch. Of a sudden she revived; she sprang up; notwithstanding her bulk she leapt into the air like a ballet-dancer. She tore the golden mantilla from her head, letting down a flood of raven hair, streaked with grey, and waved it round her. She called upon the names of spirits or demons, long, resounding names with an Eastern ring ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... dream of for a week, to touch whose white hand would have been joy, to kiss whose red lips would have been to foretaste Heaven. I heard only the other day that the son of an old friend of mine had secretly married a lady from the front row of the ballet, and involuntarily I exclaimed, "Poor devil!" There was a time when my first thought would have been, "Lucky beggar! is he worthy of her?" For then the ladies of the ballet were angels. How could one gaze at ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... from Macbeth,' suggested Fraulein usefully. It was finally decided to do Naomi and Ruth and Orpah. Ursula was Naomi, Gudrun was Ruth, the Contessa was Orpah. The idea was to make a little ballet, in the style of the Russian ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... here to keep the whole together? Since the unwise people stopped learning, I have become the schoolmaster of the dear kine, and am giving them lessons in the art of making life agreeable. I am the dancing master of the goats, and have opened a ballet school ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... my good master. "We have to look out for safety. Perhaps it will be necessary to leave Paris, where, no doubt, we shall be wanted; and even to fly to Holland. Alas! I foresee that there I shall write lampoons for ballet girls with that same hand which has been employed to annotate right amply the alchemistic treatises of Zosimus ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... highly successful in compositions in dance form, managing these without a suggestion of the trivial. Thus her "Air de Ballet," Op. 30, No. 1, is full of brilliancy and nervous energy without ever degenerating into vulgar noisiness. Another "Air de Ballet" by her from the ballet "Callirhoe," to which her widely known "Scarf ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... were the "masks" or "ballets" in which the great took part, wrapped in starry draperies, disguised with gold beards, dressed in skins or feathers, as were at Paris King Charles VI. and his friends on the 29th of January, 1392, in the famous Ballet of Wild Men, since called, from the catastrophe which happened, "Ballet des Ardents" (of men in fire). The taste for ballets and Masks was one of long duration; the Tudors and Stuarts were as fond of them as the Plantagenets, so much so that a branch apart in ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... Janet turned to her with the look of one pressed to the last extremity. "Is it true that you are going to write your own experiences in the corps de ballet?" she asked ironically. ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... cradle and home of the Ballet. In other lands it is an exotic, here a natural outgrowth and expression of the National mind. Of the spirit which conceived it, here is the abode and the Opera Francais the temple; and here it has ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... by prodigious and dexterous spitting into a dangerously far receptacle, and the clerks and police murmured together. The Mayor, finally glancing at a watch enamelled, Jasper Penny saw, with a fay of the ballet, spoke to the room in general. "Ten and past. Well! Well! Where are the others? Who is to come ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... on the 8th October; and in our passage to the coast of Brazil some new disputes arose among the men. After various consultations, it was determined that one Page, second mate of the Duchess, should be removed into the Duke, whence Mr Ballet was to remove into the Duchess. Captain Cooke was sent to execute this order, which Page refused to obey, but was brought away by force. Being accused of mutiny, he requested leave to go to the head before entering on his defence, which was permitted, when he jumped ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... with Anton, and Anton, whose dancing puts that of the Russian Ballet into the shade, continually apologized for not being able to do it well enough. Ponting gave a great lecture with slides which he had made since we arrived, many of which Meares had coloured. When one of these came up one of us would shout, "Who coloured ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... logic dismissed, at two-thirty, she sought out Dozia. "Come along, Doze," begged Jane, "don't let us waste a moment. The girls are all busy now, and perhaps we can make a survey without having a ballet de follies dancing around." Dozia made her notebook safe and swung into Jane's trot for Lenox. Warburton Hall, one of the larger buildings, was just emptying a class from lecture but Jane and Dozia made a complete detour of it to ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... Portlands, Maine and Oregon, and the two Cairos, Illinois and Egypt, the Parises of Kentucky and France, the Yorks and Londons, old and new; in Germany, Italy, and Japan, fathers, monarchs, mayors, editors stormed against the new dance; societies passed resolutions; police interfered; ballet-girls declared the dances immoral and ungraceful. The army of the dance went right ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... other spheres was during the autumn just past, when Paris's luxurious opera-house was given over to the fantastic revels of the ballet in an attempt to typify the apotheosis of the automobile. This was rather a rash venture in prognostication, for it may be easy enough to "apotheosize" the horse, but to what idyllic heights the automobile is destined to ultimately reach ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... like prehistoric stone idols, come down to peddle their handiwork in the streets. The people throng the narrow ways, a chattering, happy, careless stream of buoyant humanity. Preposterous children rigged out with the shortest of ballet skirts and gilt wings, howl, underfoot, among the effervescent crowds. Especially is the arrival of the presidential party, at the opening of the season, attended with pomp, show and patriotic demonstrations of enthusiasm ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... assumes benedictory airs over me, is still the same man we remember at Oxbridge, when he was truckling to the tufts, and bullying the poor under-graduates in the lecture-room. An hereditary legislator, who passes his time with jockeys and blacklegs and ballet-girls, and who is called to rule over me and his other betters, because his grandfather made a lucky speculation in the funds, or found a coal or tin-mine on his property, or because his stupid ancestor happened to be in command of ten thousand men as brave as himself, who overcame ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... he danced;—all foreigners excel The serious Angles in the eloquence Of pantomime;—he danced, I say, right well, With emphasis, and also with good sense— A thing in footing indispensable; He danced without theatrical pretence, Not like a ballet-master in the van Of his drill'd ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... here," said Simon Verstage, interrupting the singer, "We all of us know that there ballet, pretty well. It's vastly long, if I remembers aright, something like fourteen verses; and I think we can do very well wi'out it to-night. I fancy your brother-inlaw, Thomas, mightn't ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... comfortable green curtain, that cool resting-place for the haggard eye, to be the grass-like drop, mildly alternating with splendid crime and miserable innocence: away with those gaudy intermediates, and, still worse, some intruded ballet; bring back Garrick's baize, and crush the ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... New French Ballet of the "Tempest."—A curious example of modern scenic perfection, giving the construction and use of an appliance of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... banana peel. I hadn't wanted to be premature; still, it was necessary to give some other girl time to get a bridesmaid's dress. Just then the only thing in London that anybody cared about was the Russian opera and ballet, and it occurred to Di that it would be original to clothe her eight attendant maidens in Leon Bakst designs. Most of the girls were pale blondes, whom she had chosen because they would form an effective contrast to herself; but they were ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... a quite casual fashion throws fresh light on that somewhat enigmatic character—reminding me in the juxtaposition of his newer psychologic procedure and the simple old tale, of Wagner's Venusberg ballet, scored after he had composed Tristan und Isolde. But, like certain other great Slavic writers, Conrad has only given us a tantalising peep into his mental workshop. We rise after finishing the Reminiscences realising that we have read once more romance, in whose half-lights and modest ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... any woman ever had a beard?' The answer to which, was, 'Yes—when Judith bore the head of Holofernes.' It was singular that such a question could have been agitated, when the legends of the saints contained the story of the bearded saintess of the Tyrol—a converted ballet-dancer, who was thus rendered hideous in accordance with her prayer, that she might be made so repulsive as to frighten away all lovers. And yet Mr. Barnum's Bearded Lady ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... outburst was that of 'I Villegiatori Rezzani,' at the King's Theatre, February 21, 1809. The first piece, in which Naldi and Catalani were the principal singers, was followed by d'Egville's musical extravaganza, 'Don Quichotte, on les Noces de Gamache.' In the 'corps de ballet' were Deshayes, for many years master of the 'ballet' at the King's Theatre; Miss Gayton, who had played a Sylph at Drury Lane as early as 1806 (she was married, March 18, 1809, to the Rev. William Murray, brother of Sir James Pulteney, Bart.—'Morning Chronicle,' December 30, 1810), ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... flow and flock; They twitter as they pass; They're picking at the solid rock, They're rooting in the grass. A tiny ballet swiftly throws Its gossamer of rust, Brown fairies on their little toes ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... The origin of dancing is probably purely sexual. In folk-dances we still see this element plainly. The later development of dancing as a religious ceremony joins itself to the preceding element and the two together take artistic form and emerge as the ballet. ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
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