"This book offers something entirely new: detailed scene-by-scene descriptions of the action and dancing of five classic ballets, bringing the reader far closer to what the audience saw when the curtain went up on Giselle, Paquita, Le Corsaire, La Bayadère, and Raymonda than has heretofore been possible. Drawing on archival documents, the authors show that (among other things) the classic story ballets could be more like today's pop entertainment: funnier, more violent, more spectacular, and with female characters far stronger than one might expect. This rigorously researched book fills huge gaps in dance history and is bound to be of interest to practitioners, scholars, and devotees of ballet and the arts"--