"Ballet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... vicinity of the great seaport where St. Paul must have landed from his ship of the Castor and Pollux, on his way from Syracuse. But he does not tell the Doctor that, on the same evening, he attended an opera at the San Carlo in Naples, of which the ballet, if nothing else, would have called down the good ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... . . . The waist is low-cut with a yoke of cream-colored embroidery, the skirt is plain with a shirred hem, the hat is trimmed with violets," another girl was recounting, as she slipped her ballet skirts over ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... respectable woman; she was in the second row of the Varolium ballet for years and years; and she always kept Millie very respectable. Besides, you can't let people go ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... at what is called "the height of the season." Among the operatic attractions of that year—I am writing of the days when the ballet was still a popular form of public entertainment—there was a certain dancer whose grace and beauty were the objects of universal admiration. I was asked if I had seen her, wherever I went, until my social position, ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... over his shoulders hung a royal mantle of velvet, lined with ermine, the train of which was borne by dwarfs. Simultaneously the sound of trumpets, drums, and hautboys filled the air with martial melody, and all the fairies began to dance a ballet, with step so light that the least spring lifted them to the ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... Miss Thackthwaite came on to dance the favourite double hornpipe, and Foker abandoned himself to the delights of this ballet, just as he had to the tears of the tragedy, a few minutes before. Pen did not care for it, or indeed think about the dance, except to remember that that woman was acting with her in the scene where ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... crime, that people make a holiday of a killing-day, and leave their homes and occupations, to flock and witness the cutting off of a head. Do we crowd to see Mr. Macready in the new tragedy, or Mademoiselle Ellssler in her last new ballet and flesh-colored stockinnet pantaloons, out of a pure love of abstract poetry and beauty; or from a strong notion that we shall be excited, in different ways, by the actor and the dancer? And so, as we go to have a meal of fictitious ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "The love 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
... old boon companions. How can a man who has been behind the curtain, and who has seen la premiere danseuse of the Empire practising her steps before the manager Strachey, in familiar chaff and talk with the Council ballet, while the little scene-painter and Press Commissioner stood aside with cocked ears, and the privileged violoncellist made his careless jests—how, I say, can one who has thus been above the clouds on ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... influenza, or of the desperate situation of a people thus visited and unable to procure from abroad the simplest drugs which they cannot manufacture at home or even the anaesthetics necessary for their wounded on every frontier of their country. I forgot to describe the ballet which I saw a few days before leaving. I have said nothing of the talk I had with Eliava concerning the Russian plans for the future of Turkestan. I could think of a score of other omissions. Judging from what I have read since my return from Russia, I imagine people will find my book very poor ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... smart daughter of an alcoholic gentleman artist and of his lady of the French ballet, inherited the perfect non-moral morality of the artist blood that sang mercurially through her veins. How could she, therefore, how could she, being non-moral, be immoral? It is clear nonsense. But ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... up simply because all the people about you think that way—if one can call the process thinking? You don't think, do you, that it is a sign of superiority to be narrow, to be ignorant, to be out of touch with the great masses of one's fellow-beings, to play the part of a harlequin or a ballet-girl on the stage of life? I understand how a stupid ass can fritter away his one chance to live in saying and hearing and doing silly things. But ought not an intelligent person try to enjoy life, try to ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... to 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
... 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 elements and ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... 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 ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... does—though she flies as the Scotchman admitted he joked—"wi' deefeeculty." She spreads her light, gauzy, grey, and shockingly inadequate, skirts, and romps and rollicks away, giving one a fleeting impression of a bold and most disorderly ballet girl. "She" is quite the proper mode of address, for there can be no mistake ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... bark belt and the 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
... what Mr Holmes tells us on good authority, that the vice of ebriety was not among Mozart's failings. "He drank to the point of exhilaration, but not beyond." His fondness for ballet-dancing may seem strange to us, who have almost a Roman repugnance to such exhibitions in men of good station. But it is possible that in some minds the love of graceful motion may be a refined passion and an exalted art; and it is singular that Mozart's wife told of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... Squire Lavingtons around him. At heart, however, Mammoth-blinded, he was 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
... 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
... the women in their supple glidings and bendings, doublings and swayings. Concha danced with Ignacio Sal, Rafaella with William Sturgis; their pliant grace, as facile as grain rippling before the wind, would have put the best ballet in Europe to the blush. Concha's skirts swept Rezanov's feet, her little slippers twinkled before his admiring eyes, and he lost no sinuous turn or undulation of her beautiful figure; but she never vouchsafed him ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... consisted in a surreptitious cigarette and glass of beer, neither of which he enjoyed, but both of which he pretended to revel in for the sake of being "mannish,"—will talk knowingly of "the latest soubrette," "a jolly little ballet-dancer," "the wicked ways of this world," and "the dens of iniquity in our large cities." Dickens tells us that "when Mr. Feeder spoke of the dark mysteries of London, and told Mr. Toots that he ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... ought to be—quasi tesserata emblemate—as if he had studied them a week beforehand, and had read them instead of speaking them. His harvest at the Opera House is likely to be very successful, for his Saturdays and Tuesdays are so full, that he is going even to attempt the Thursdays. Vestris' Ballet people think too long. "It is impossible that an English audience should be satisfied. They don't know when they have got a good spectacle, and think that finding fault is the only way to pass for judges." Such are the words of ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... 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 early spring of this year, in those ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... in itself, one 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 ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... lived in Julia's mind with particular vividness for years to come, and yet one which she always found it difficult to piece together in her thoughts. They went to one of the less fashionable music halls, where the turns were frequent and there was no ballet. Aaron was very soon able to re-establish his temporarily lost capacity for enjoyment. Maraton, leaning back in his place with a cigar in his mouth, appreciated everything and applauded constantly. It was Julia who found the new atmosphere most difficult. ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... violins and bass; N.A. Strungk's sonatas published at Dresden in 1691; and more especially Agostino Steffani's "Sonate da Camera" for two violins, alto, and bass, published in 1683. An opera by the last-named, which appeared at Hanover in 1699, has an "Air de Ballet," which contains the first notes of "Let the bright Seraphim"; besides, it is known that Handel culled ideas and "conveyed" notes from works of other composers; also, that he turned ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... 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 ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... that perfect ass! And in the taxi: "Fancy me seeing home this dancing-mistress!" Eliza lived at Brook Green. She was very elegant, and quite unexceptionable until she opened her mouth. She related to him how her mother, who had once been a premier sujet in the Covent Garden ballet, was helpless from sciatica. But she related this picturesque and pride-causing detail in a manner very insipid, naive, and even vulgar, (After all there was a difference between First Division and Second Division in the Civil Service!) She was boring him terribly before they reached Brook ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... engaged as a servant in the Caliph's household. Dane was thus not unfamiliar with the methods of unexpected evening visits; and it was fortunate for him that he was so. The little children whom he had picked up, explained to him, by pantomime which would have made the fortune of a ballet-girl, that they were much more comfortable in their new home than they had been in any other, and that they had no wish to leave it. But by various temptations addressed to them, in the form of barley horses and dogs, and ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... "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 ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... the battery for lighting small electric lamps. Skrivanoff has modified the De la Rue cell by substituting a solution of caustic potash for the ammonium chloride, and his battery has been used for "star" lights, that is to say, the tiny electric lamps of the ballet. The Schanschieff battery, consisting of zinc and carbon plates in a solution of basic sulphate of mercury, is suitable for reading, mining, and ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... has been chosen as the most natural translation of orchaesis, which in this dialogue has reference for the most part to the ballet-dancer (pantomimus) of imperial times. On the other hand, Lycinus, in order to establish the antiquity and the universality of an art that for all practical purposes dates only from the Augustan era, and (despite the Greek artists) is Roman in origin, avails himself of the ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... above her head like a ballet-dancer's, pirouetted, curtsied very low so that the skirt spread all about her on the floor, like ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... Alhambra is 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 old friend Blue Beard would be a still better one. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... nor entreaties can win a soft answer, Nor the violet pale of my love-ravaged cheek, To your husband's intrigue with a Greek ballet-dancer, Though you still are blind, ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... wearing the white-feather symbol on their overcoats, advanced toward Winfree. Together, like partners in a ballet, they bent to build snowballs, then stood and let fly. Winfree ducked, found one of the dress sabers ignominiously sheathed in snow, and drew it out. He retreated toward the automobile, the saber raised to ...
— The Great Potlatch Riots • Allen Kim Lang
... performance there were five persons in our box—the beautiful Miranda, and her husband, a celebrated English man of letters; a German professor of biology; a young Milanese gentleman, whom we called Edoardo; and myself. Edoardo and the professor had joined us just before the ballet. I had occupied a seat behind Miranda and my friend the critic from the commencement. We had indeed dined together first at their hotel, the Rebecchino; and they now proposed that we should all adjourn together there on foot for supper. From the Scala Theatre to the Rebecchino is a ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... woman is the only soaring part of them. Sublimated spiritual bodies may look naturally supernatural with wings attached to the breastbone or between the shoulders behind, but the fairest, most spiritual, woman would appear a trifle ludicrous with them anywhere else unless she should be dancing a ballet with no skirts on worth mentioning. Selah achieved a sort of glorified presence very grateful to the eyes of the farmers' wives and daughters, who did not understand how much of it was due to the wings ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... by bathing it in blood, afterward to wither back into stained and stiffened apathy; and then that whole vast false heaven of sensual passion, full of nymphs, satyrs, graces, goddesses, and I know not what, from its high seventh circle in Correggio's Antiope, down to the Grecized ballet-dancers and smirking Cupids of the Parisian upholsterer. Sweep away all this, remorselessly, and see how much art we ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... 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 ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... filled, and when she gave me the four tickets, presented them to the maid who was dressing her and was prettier than the mistress, and so left the room without uttering a single word. She called me back; I pretended not to hear her, and took a ticket for the pit. After the first ballet, finding the whole performance very poor, I was thinking of going away, when, happening to look towards the chief box, I saw to my astonishment that it was tenanted by the Venetian Manzoni and the celebrated Juliette. The reader will doubtless remember the ball she gave at my ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... went on, "I blundered into a luncheon party Jane was giving. You never saw—you never dreamed of such style—such dresses and dishes and flowers and hats! And I was sitting there with them, enjoying it all as if it were a circus or a ballet, when—Oh, Victor, what a silly, what a pitiful waste of time and money! So much to do in the world—so much that is thrillingly interesting and useful—and those intelligent young people dawdling there at nonsense a child would weary of! I had to run away. If I had stayed ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... third represents the sleep of Faust. This is a trick common to the new school. Wagner uses it in 'Siegfried,' in the close of the Tarnhelm motive, to illustrate the vanishing properties of the cap. In measure fifty-seven of the Ballet you will find a chord of the augmented five-six, a harmony built on the first inversion of the diminished seventh of the key of the dominant, with lowered bass tone, and which in this instance resolves into the dominant triad. ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... he will geue them: and sometimes he offreth them an horse to ride vpon.'[361] Boguet's experience (1598) is more dramatic than that of Danaeus: 'Les autres y vont, tantost sur vn Bouc, tantost sur vn cheual, & tantost sur vn ballet, ou ramasse, sortans ces derniers de leurs maisons le plus souuent par la cheminee.... Les vns encor se frottent auparauant de certaine graisse, & oignement: les autres ne se frottent en aucune facon.'[362] He also ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... transfer the moving scenes before him to canvas; but people moved too quickly for him, so he methodically set about learning how to do with a few strokes what he would otherwise have laboured over. So he reduced his sketching to such a science that he became able to sketch a ballet in full movement; and it is remarked that this practice trained him for presenting the tremulousness of leaves of trees, ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... Meyerbeer, after de Lenz played it. "Three- four," answered Chopin, flushing angrily. "Let me have it for a ballet in my new opera and I'll show you," retorted Meyerbeer. "It's three-four," scolded Chopin, and played it himself. De Lenz says they parted coolly, each holding to his opinion. Later, in St. Petersburg, Meyerbeer met this ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... 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 very latest wrinkles ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... (life), "Il Mondo" (the world), etc. The orchestra consisted of one lira doppia, one clavicembalo, one chitarrone and two flutes. No part is written for violin. At one part of the performance there was a ballet. The whole was performed in church, as already noticed, as a part of ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... 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 priest of ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... was not worth what she cost, even if you got her for nothing. He was supposed to be so entirely blase, that he no longer paid two thousand francs a month for the pleasure of being deceived. His eyes looked coldly down from his opera box on the corps de ballet; never a glance was shot at the capitalist by any one of that formidable swarm of old young girls, and young old women, the ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... to chapel, not at all to the chase, never to the opera. Incorruptible by sacristans, by whippers-in, by ballet-dancers; this made a part of his bourgeois popularity. He had no heart. He went out with his umbrella under his arm, and this umbrella long formed a part of his aureole. He was a bit of a mason, a bit of a gardener, something of a doctor; he bled a postilion who had tumbled from his horse; Louis ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... 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 ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... done so. The reason we are going to Munich is we can't get a sleeper yet, everything is so crowded. Isn't it disgusting. This last opera is rather too noisy at times, and awfully long—longer than the others. But there's a men's ballet in it that is rather nice; not dancing, you know, but singing and posing and walking about, with imitation bare legs, most of them. But I think the best thing about the opera is it leaves you in such an exalted mood. I know I won't be able to think of small ...
— The Smart Set - Correspondence & Conversations • Clyde Fitch
... 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 ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... very low, with straps over the shoulders, quite like the modern evening gown; very full tarleton skirts of different shades of pink and cerise, reaching to the knees; ruffled bloomers of apple-green tarleton, the ruffles showing below the skirts; black silk stockings and black ballet slippers, laced with green. Hat of lavender crepe paper, with streamers of gay colors—including, however, no clear red or blue. Hat should be small and very smart—not a shepherdess hat. Columbine ...
— Aria da Capo • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... more correctly, had got round him. She'd a precious sight more gumption than he had ever possessed, and if he had listened to her instead of insisting upon her listening to him it would have been better for him. But there are some men who think that if you have a taste for champagne and the ballet that proves you are intended by nature for a nob, and he was one of them; and any common-sense suggestion of hers only convinced him of her natural unfitness for ...
— The Observations of Henry • Jerome K. Jerome
... to entertain—the fiction that is to serious fiction as the opera-bouffe, the ballet, and the pantomime are to the true drama—need not feel the burden of this obligation so deeply; but even such fiction will not be gay or trivial to any reader's hurt, and criticism should hold it to account if it passes ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... The Dancing Girl at the Haymarket—of course people will talk—why she's nothing to the girls who dance to M. JACOBI's inimitable ballet-music at the Alhambra. Here they have a magic show, which "puzzles the Quaker;" and I don't mind admitting that I was the quaker when I saw a fair and comely young lady up in the air standing still and dancing on nothing at all! Certainly "Aerolithe" ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... paying them a visit. I saw your fair young cousin Miss Newcome in the lobby with her grandmamma Lady Kew. Mr. Bayham with great eloquence pointed out to the Scotch ladies the various distinguished characters in the house. The opera delighted them, but they were astounded at the ballet, from which mother and daughter retreated in the midst of a fire of pleasantries of Captain Goby. I can fancy that officer at mess, and how brilliant his anecdotes must be when the company of ladies does not restrain his ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... you understand it? I—take good care not to understand it.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} That it is possible to draw yet other lessons from the works above mentioned,—I am much more ready to prove than to dispute. That one may be driven by a Wagnerian ballet to desperation—and to virtue! (once again the case in "Tannhauser"). That not going to bed at the right time may be followed by the worst consequences (once again the case of "Lohengrin").—That one ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... 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; it is very elegant. ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... eight-fifty. "Why wait?" says the fair Elsie. "It will never kill him." So we try another hall—and find a lady with a face like a tomato singing a song about the derby, to an American tune that was stale in 1907. Yet another, and we are in the midst of a tedious ballet founded upon "Carmen," with the music reduced to jigtime and a flute playing out of tune. A fourth—and we suffer a pair of comedians who impersonate Americans by saying "Naow" and "Amurican." When they break into "My Cousin Carus'" we depart ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... Bonaparte; there was also the whole crowd of French singers, actors, and adventurers who had flocked to the Congress of Rastadt for the purpose of amusing the distinguished noblemen and delegates by their vaudevilles, comedies, and gay operas. Finally, there were also the French actresses and ballet-girls, who, dressed in the highest style of fashion, were occupying on one side of the road a long row of splendid carriages. Many of these carriages were decorated on their doors with large coats-of-arms, and a person well versed in heraldry ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... the lottery-contractor, the Russian attaches, two from the English embassy, my Lords Deuceace and Punter, who play a jeu d'enfer, and a few more. The same set meet every night at supper: there are seldom any ladies; those who come are chiefly French ladies, members of the corps de ballet. He wins often, but not always. Lord Deuceace is a very fine player. The Chevalier Elliot, the English Minister, sometimes comes, on which occasion the secretaries do not play. Monsieur de Balibari ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... went to the 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 of one mask that is not ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... old fury, to prove the truth of her words, danced a kind of war dance in front of Mr. Calton, snapping her fingers and yelling out curses, as an accompaniment to her ballet. Her luxurious white hair streamed out during her gyrations, and with her grotesque appearance and the faint light of the candle, she presented ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... legislative 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 ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... 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 we have read once more romance, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... morrow of the invasion I found in my study eight of my nocturnal visitors. They were perched, motionless, upon the cross-mouldings of the second window, which had remained closed. The others, having concluded their ballet by about ten o'clock at night, had left as they had entered, by the other window, which was left open night and day. These eight persevering lovers were just what I required ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... occasion the tragedy of "Venice Preserved" was being performed. Edmund Kean was Jaffier and Miss O'Neil Belvidera. They were playing to a greatly excited house, as may well be supposed when two such artists were upon the stage. Mr. St. A—-, who was then ballet-master at the theatre, and who, by the way, was a most graceful dancer, seeing Mrs. Banks, went up to her to exchange compliments. Having done so, Mr. St. A—- remarked how seldom they had the pleasure of seeing Mrs. ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... visible, and 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 burning wagon-covers and ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... 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
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... holding out her arms to balance herself. A pretty picture she made,—lithe and slender as a reed, her fair face all aglow with life and merriment, and the sunshine all round her. "See!" she cried, "I am Taglioni, the queen of the ballet. I had—a—oh! I nearly went over that time—I had a paper-doll once, named Taglioni. She was truly—lovely! You stood her on a piece of wood—just like this; only there was a crack which held her toes, and this has ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... see by the Paris papers, has also discovered a comedie-ballet by Moliere, written in 1654, and never included in any edition of his works. It is entitled Le Ballet des incompatibies, and appears to have been written by order of the Prince de Conti, and acted before him by Moliere himself and other persons of the Prince's circle. That it remained so long unknown is ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... of no principle, who six years earlier had kept a ballet-girl, and who now, thanks to his position, made himself a seraglio with the pretty wives of the under-clerks, and lived in the world of journalists and actresses, became devotedly attentive all the evening to Celestine, and was the last to leave ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... to be misleading; and 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, ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... to be out-done in the attempt at display, the natives gave a concert, and then a dance, executed by twenty women crowned with China roses. This magnificent ballet was followed by another performance by fifteen men. But we shall never end, if we attempt to give an account of the wonders of this enthusiastic reception. It justly gained for the Tonga archipelago the name ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... 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 ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... she conceded, slowly. "That in itself would have been a miracle—one I'd never believe if I hadn't seen it with these eyes. But everything disproves the theory. Do you think she could have trained those children to advance and retreat like a Casino ballet? On the contrary, it's evident that they literally live on him. They've worn the creases off his trousers! Didn't you notice where the creases left off and the sliding-place ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... 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
... extraordinary attempt was a BALLET of proverbs. Before the opera was established in France, the ancient ballets formed the chief amusement of the court, and Louis the Fourteenth himself joined with the performers. The singular attempt ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... saw her once. I went to the Alhambra to see a ballet that was admired very much, and I recognised Rosie on the stage in spite of her paint and ballet dress. I couldn't stay another moment after that. I should have left the theatre if—if—well, never mind. Don't speak again, Fan, we must go ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... 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 upon a brick pavement, ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... came into the box, the orchestra played the 'Star-Spangled Banner,' and all the people in the house arose; whereupon I was very much embarrassed. After I had been an hour at the play, the manager came around and asked me to go underneath the stage, as they were putting on a ballet of 300 girls, the finest ballet in Europe. It seems there is a little hole on the stage with a hood over it, in which the prompter sits when opera is given. In this instance it was not occupied, and I was given the position in the prompter's seat, and saw ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... 'Charite' has become, in the modern mind, a gift, whether from God or man, only to the wretched, never to the happy: and lastly, 'Grace' in its physical sense has been perverted, by their social vulgarity, into an idea, whether with respect to form or motion, commending itself rather to the ballet-master than either to ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... 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 forward to the footlights, and they perform on each ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... breakfasting—accompanied with one English friend, he impatiently awaited what reinforcements the bride should bring to grace the ceremony. A rich muster she had made. They came in six coaches—the whole corps du ballet—French, Italian, men and women. Monsieur de B., the famous pirouetter of the day, led his fair spouse, but craggy, from the banks of the Seine. The Prima Donna had sent her excuse. But the first and second Buffa were there; and Signor Sc——, and Signora Ch——, and Madame ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... at our engagements, dear boy. We will try to arrange it. I can tell you at the ballet," and the Princess smiled encouragingly up at him. "My godchild has not seen our national dancing yet, so we go to-night with Prince ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... 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 for a long time; ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... charity 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 ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... me 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
... As for the ballet-girl, she was everywhere, with her sisters, the model and the grisette. And the artistic ability shown in the treatment of her had nowhere been hampered by any Philistine scruple in ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... room in the Chinese style, popularized by the craze for barbaric decoration introduced by Bakst and the Russian Ballet into England. The walls were enameled the same brilliant glossy red as the door and hung at intervals with panels of magnificent black and gold lacquer work. The table which ran down the centre of the room was of scarlet and gold lacquer like the fantastically ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... millions of bulls, at length far away there appeared something terrible. I can only describe its appearance as that of an attenuated mountain on fire. When it drew nearer I perceived that it was more like a ballet-dancer whirling round and round upon her toes, or rather all the ballet-dancers in the world rolled into one and then multiplied a million times in size. No, it was like a mushroom with two stalks, one above and one below, or a huge top with a point on which it spun, a swelling belly and ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... called to her from her pillow, when she appeared, "you find me flat enough, this morning. If there was anything wrong about going to the opera last night, I was properly punished for it. Such wretched stuff as I never heard! And instead of the new ballet that they promised, they gave an old thing that I had seen till I was sick of it. You didn't miss much, I can tell you. How fresh and bright you do look, Lydia!" she sighed. "Did you sleep well? Were you lonesome while we were gone? Veronica says you ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... attract me," he admitted; "or, rather, she raises a great many questions, natural in a person named Cytherea. The pair of castanets on a nail—Claire used them in an Andalusian dance—might almost be an offering, like the crutches of Lourdes, left before her by a grateful child of the ballet." ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... dance, n. ballet, cotillion, quadrille, waltz, reel, fandango, polka, two-step, polonaise, mazurka, schottische, allemande cancan, minuet, courant, bolero, gavot. Associated Words: ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... just (to use one of their own expressions) "made a bout of it," and were mutually unbosoming their hearts as they entered the box. Through the fumes of a certain number of bottles and various glasses of various liquors, Giroudeau pointed out to Philippe a plump and agile little ballet-girl whom he called Florentine, whose good graces and affection, together with the box, belonged to him as the representative of an ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... as if it might be some old lady demanding of him pink tights and a place in the front row of the ballet. However, he checked the exclamation that rose to his lips. But for a moment he did not know what to say. Uncle Buzz—wanting to go to work at Bromley's!—An ancient and ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... library, filling a wall amply, crept a chill and insolent pencil of sunlight touching with frigid disapproval Therese of France and Ann the Superwoman, Jenny of the Orient Ballet and Zuleika the Conjurer—and Hoosier Cora—then down a shelf and into the years, resting pityingly on the over-invoked shades of ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... mulberry-tree as his badge. These devices in their turn supplied the poets and painters of his court with themes on which they were never tired of exercising their wit and ingenuity. Moors and Moorish costumes were introduced in every masquerade and ballet, a Moorish page was represented brushing the robes of Italy in a fresco of the Castello of Milan, while mulberry colour became fashionable among the ladies of the Moro's court, and was commonly worn by the servants and pages in the palace. Lodovico early gave signs of the love of literature ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... premiere danseuse of the ballet, And she tripped the light fantastic like a fay; She was so sweet and cunning, And withal so very stunning, That I was bound to meet ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... they hadn't a bean. Many might have been somewhat hazy as to antecedents, but all were well-provided with a certain stock-in-trade—personal charm. There were young men who composed music, others who designed everything from a lampshade to the decors of a ballet, young women who sang or danced, actresses who had not got on because managers would make love to them—or wouldn't, as the case might be. All types and many classes were represented, but a common object bound them together, ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... 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 those of ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... to go with me. It was the first time in twenty years, since her farewell performance, that she had entered the Opera. It made a great impression on her. During the ballet especially, she trembled, she beamed, all her former triumphs sparkled in her eyes. How fortunate one is to have such emotions. A perfect type of his class, that Nabob. You must bring him to see me. It would amuse ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... itself! My gracious! how we laughed at it! There were Epping Forest verderers, and beef-eaters from the Tower, and pipers of the Scots Guards, and ladies of the ballet shivering on shaky stools and pretending to be 'Freedom' and 'Commerce,' and last of all the City King himself, smiling and bowing to all his subjects, and with his liegemen behind him in yellow coats and red ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... extravagant 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"; or from legends, peculiar to Siam, of gods, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... told you so,' replied he with a melancholy smile, and he hastened to speak of a ballet that he had seen the evening before at the opera, and with which ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... spot, where it alights upon its feet, nor is it ever known to miss, although the point may be so small as to admit its four feet only by their being closely pressed together. The manner in which it balances itself after such leaps is also admirable: our ballet-dancers would consider it a model of a perfect a plomb. The monster of the antediluvian world, the mammoth, must have been an inhabitant of this country, since many of its bones ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... of a new piece, with its dirty-booted actors, its cloaked and hooded actresses en papillote, bears about the same relation to the gala, wax-lit, and bespangled ballet, as the raw young gentleman of yesterday to the epauletted, belted, and sabretasched dragoon, whose transformation is due to a few hours of head-quarters, and a ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... a "Ballet of the Nations." The "nations," of course, represented the Allies. We had the delectable vision of the Russian ballerina dancing with arms entwined about several maids of Japan. The Scotch lassies ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... suggested the expression the "poetry of motion"? It should have been made for her. Her dancing is like nothing but poetic inspiration, and seems as if she was composing while she executed it. I wonder if it is the ballet-master who devises all the steps of these great dancers,—of course, not the national dances, but the inconceivably lovely things that Taglioni does, or whether she orders her own steps, and (given a certain dramatic ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... opera is a very abrupt transition; nevertheless, both have a share in this story. A company of French dancers appeared in Mexico, a twentieth-rate ballet, and the chief danseuse was a little French damsel, remarkable for the shortness of her robes, her coquetry, and her astonishing pirouettes. On the night of a favourite ballet, Mademoiselle Pauline made her entree in ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... struck, and that amidst painted trees and houses! This effect, except to the most literal and prosaic minds, is revolting and discordant. But this the modern drama is strenuously endeavoring to produce. 'In opera, ballet, and spectacle, scenery and illustrations must be effective, because they form elements of the piece. In the drama, where the source of entertainment is intellectual, they are merely accessories, and should be used in such wise as to keep up the harmony of effect, but never so as to ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... 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 them—from the shilling pit—and doubt it? ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... 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
... since the days when she tottered her first steps for her mother's and Bubru Singh's delight. Long before an American converted the Russian Royal Ballet, and the Russian Royal Ballet in return took all the theatre-going West by storm—scandalizing, then amazing, then educating bit by bit—Yasmini had developed her own ideas and brought them by arduous practise ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... no talent, the other saw that she had something else. This was a pair of shapely legs, which, as a ballet-dancer, could yet twinkle in front of ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... the most artistic skirts—always ball-room back and ballet front. Her grandchild was sitting on the floor yesterday, reading the Bible, when suddenly she looked up and said: "Grandma, there's a grammatical error in this Bible," and my landlady said: "Well, kill it, child, kill it!" She spends whole hours each day talking to her birds, which, she ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... this is a corruption of the pious in the Quarto, is made clearer from the 1st Quarto: 'the first verse of the godly Ballet wil tel ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... British Committee made this appeal she induced Russia to send a ballet for a single performance; and she also persuaded the manager of the Opera House to open it for a gala performance for another organization. There is a romantic flavor about all the countess's work, and just how practical ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... 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 ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... to go with me. It was the first time for twenty-five years since her farewell performance, that she had been inside the Opera-House. It made a great impression on her. During the ballet, especially, she trembled, she beamed, all her old triumphs sparkled in her eyes. Happy who has emotions like that. A real type, that Nabob. You will have to bring him to see me. He has a head that it would amuse ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... as an improvvisatrice. She composed, when only ten years of age, some really excellent canzone and, more than this, she set them to her own tunes for the lute and pipe, and arranged a very graceful ballet. ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... 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?' ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... 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 of a coachman in the service ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... deficit. Nor was he benefited by the performances of his "Tannhaeuser," which were given at the grand opera in March, 1861, by order of Napoleon, at the request of the influential Princess Metternich. He had refused to interpolate a vulgar ballet in the second act for the benefit of the members of the aristocratic Jockey Club, who dined late and insisted on having a ballet on entering the opera-house. They took their revenge by creating such a disturbance every evening ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... allows himself to be dragged to the floor where the couple dance en deux. The dance includes a great deal of entreaty, aversion, hope, and despair, all in dumb show, and ends by the lady being led to a seat. I saw this dance introduced in a ballet at the Grand Theatre in Moscow, and wondered why it never appeared on the ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... secret to the king. Louis was resolved on the downfall of his minister. The fete took place upon a scale of almost unparalleled splendor. Le Brun painted the scenes, La Fontaine wrote verses for it, and Moliere prepared a ballet for the occasion. The king concealed his wrath at this display of wealth, and very much enjoyed Moliere's amusements; and suggested a new comedy to the comedian, while talking with him at ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... have done with this solemn letter. I can see you sitting at a window that looks out on the bay of Naples, and Vesuvius with a faint smoke in the distance: a half-naked man under you cutting up watermelons, etc. Haven't I seen it all in Annuals, and in the Ballet of ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... 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
... university and German law were failures; German society, in an American sense, did not exist, or if it existed, never showed itself to an American; the German theatre, on the other hand, was excellent, and German opera, with the ballet, was almost worth a journey to Berlin; but the curious and perplexing result of the total failure of German education was that the student's only clear gain — his single step to a higher life — came from time wasted; studies neglected; vices indulged; education reversed; — it came from the despised ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... 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 ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... different tale. We have our balls regularly, for instance; and there are artists on board this ship, who, though they cannot, perhaps, make as accurate a right angle with their legs as the first dancer of a leaping ballet, can go through their figures in a gale of wind; which is more than can be said of the highest jumper of them ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... courtiers as a star whose light might some day become the focus of all favor and power. And yet Louis XIV., a few years previously, had not even condescended to offer his hand to that "ugly girl" for a ballet; and Buckingham had worshipped this coquette "on both knees." De Guiche had once looked upon this divinity as a mere woman; and the courtiers had not dared to extol this star in her upward progress, fearful to disgust the monarch whom such a ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... unreasonable desire to fly in the face of Doctor Levillier's advice, and of his own secondary antagonistic desire, and to sit again with Julian. Everything in which he sought to find distraction, lacked savour. As he sat watching a ballet that glittered with electricity, and was one twinkle of coloured movement, he found himself longing for the silence, the gloom, the live expectation of the tentroom, night, and Julian. At White's the conversation of the men struck him as even more scrappy, more desultorily scandalous, ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Lancers 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 ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... where hope is reduced to speculate for the meanest stakes. Mme. Vauquer alone can breathe that tainted air without being disheartened by it. Her face is as fresh as a frosty morning in autumn; there are wrinkles about the eyes that vary in their expression from the set smile of a ballet-dancer to the dark, suspicious scowl of a discounter of bills; in short, she is at once the embodiment and interpretation of her lodging-house, as surely as her lodging-house implies the existence of its mistress. You can no more imagine the one ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... the Creole a great lover of good light music, but the whole region for blocks about the Opera House is populated by old musicians from the opera's orchestra, and women, some middle aged, some old, who used to be in the ballet or the chorus, and who not only keep alive the musical tradition of the district, but pass it on to the younger generation. Indeed there are almost as many places in the French quarter where music may be heard, as ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... interest upon a human association. Not one of them professes any concern with the sea or ships for their own sake. The sea is a sad, solemn reality, the theatre upon which the seaman acts his life's tragedy. It has no more of enchantment to him than the "magic fairy palace" of the ballet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... the ballet at the Kalbsbraten theatre in my time was Springbock, from Vienna. He had been a regular zephyr once, 'twas said, in his younger days; and though he is now fifteen stone weight, I can, helas! recommend him conscientiously as a master; and I determined ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... continued the Court Painter. "He knows all languages perfectly: sings deliciously: plays every instrument: composes operas which have been acted a thousand nights running at the Imperial Theatre of Crim Tartary, and danced in a ballet there before the King and Queen; in which he looked so beautiful, that his cousin, the lovely daughter of the King of Circassia, died for love ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... these people chance to have a taste for intoxication, tobacco, hard hats, false hair, the nude ballet, ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... its base narrow, her natural movement in a costume which does not conceal the action of the hip and knee-joints is unavoidably awkward, though none the less attractive to the eye of the other sex. [Footnote: For instance, the movements of ballet-dancers, except the very artificial ones of the feet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... head, which so dazed and surprised the little man that he staggered and fell down on his back, upsetting a decanter and several glasses. They raised him up, gave him some brandy to drink, thumped him on the back. The old man smiled and hiccoughed. 'To-morrow,' said Ferdinando, 'we'll have a concerted ballet of the whole household.' 'With father Hercules wearing his club and lion-skin,' added one of his companions, and all three ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... effrontery of 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, it certainly "followed hard upon." But the reformation of the stage had already been contemplated ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... should have said) was strengthened by one or two women. They were all soloists, did not very often join in the performance, but stood disengaged at the back part of the stage, and looked (in ridi, necklace, and dressed hair) for all the world like European ballet-dancers. When the song was anyway broad these ladies came particularly to the front; and it was singular to see that, after each entry, the premiere danseuse pretended to be overcome by shame, as though led on beyond what she had meant, and her male assistants made a feint of driving her ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson |
