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More "Ballet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— A Good-For-Nothing - 1876 • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... 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 for a long time; but the leak of falsehood made its way—they ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... 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 were in vain, and, at the same time, being ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... a foreign type, Miss Harrison. Last year, in a London ballet, I saw a blonde Spanish girl who ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... was a good one—but the goddess merely as a figure-head: around her a procession of unfrocked and apostate priests, typifying the destruction of ancient hierarchy, mules carrying loads of sacred vessels, the spoils of ten thousand churches of France, and ballet girls in bacchanalian robes, dancing the Carmagnole around ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... performance hardly served to distract his thoughts. He was out in the streets again before the ballet turn came on even. It had started to rain, a slight, indefinite drizzle; Leicester Square presented a drab and dingy appearance. The blaze of lights from the surrounding theatres shone on wet streets and slippery pavements. ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... 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 had ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... the direction of the O.C. Flying Corps de Ballet) will make a personal reconnaissance of the front rows of the Stalls in ...
— Punch, July 18, 1917 • Various
... 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 exerted its natural ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... plagiarisms apparently so gross and frequent that it can hardly be doubted that some intrigue was afoot. For example, on August 2nd, 1845, there appeared in both papers a cartoon almost identical, with the attitudes reversed, entitled "The Political Pas de Quatre"—after the existing ballet at Her Majesty's Theatre, danced by Grisi, Taglioni, Grahn, and Cerito—representing four ballet-skirted danseuses in a grotesque pose or tableau. Those in the Punch cartoon (which, by the way, was suggested at the Table by Gilbert a Beckett, and was executed by ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... briefly. "What you call a renegade, I should say. Has all the vices of both hemispheres, without the redeeming features of either. Low-class music halls, ballet dancers, prize-fighters and the like. At the same time he's got the good sense not to flaunt these vices before the public, and he knows how to conduct himself with dignity when there is any necessity for it. Despite his handsome income, he is frequently in dire need of money. Still, I should never ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... 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: ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... exist, but in Souastre in a large barn, the 56th Divisional troupe, the "Bow Bells," performed nightly to crowded houses. Many of us found time to go more than once, and will always remember with pleasure the songs, dances, and sketches, the drummer-ballet-dancer, and the catching melodies of "O Roger ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... invite him to come (at eleven) with you, and I shall request you to fulfil your promise of captivating us by your performance (not by dancing, but by your superior fingering) of Rubinstein's Ballet, "Feramors." ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... 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 I have seen, to the Italian pines, that come so picturesquely ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... on my 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 other with the affection of long ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... 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 wonderful days of hope when ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... court brightened too. The salons began to resume their former splendour, and gay coats and glittering embroidery which had lain in drawers for years were seen once more in the halls of the palace. In the chapel, Bourdaloue preached in vain to empty benches, but a ballet in the grounds was attended by the whole court, and received with a frenzy of enthusiasm. The Montespan ante-room was crowded every morning with men and women who had some suit to be urged, while her rival's ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... there is nothing new. Other and better men have noted the damage that the personal equation does to music, and some of them have even sought ways out. For example, Richard Strauss. His so-called ballet, "Josefs Legend," produced in Paris just before the war, is an attempt to write an opera without singers. All of the music is in the orchestra; the folks on the stage merely go through a pointless pantomime; ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... which they strike the observer. First of all one's eye is caught by a "bundle" of short skirts—usually of very bright colours—sticking out at the hips, and not unlike the familiar attire of our ballet girls—only shorter. These skirts are made of cotton, silk or satin, according to the ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... o'clock. I was to be dressed as 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 doves (sent from ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... those men wear. They look like ballet girls arrayed for the stage," said one of the ladies in our carriage, pointing to a group on the sidewalk. The men wore tights, low shoes with pompons on the toes, black garters with tassels, blue jackets ornamented with many ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... 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 ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... owed so 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
... 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 matter of ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... sign from the frog the fairies danced a ballet, with which everyone was so delighted that they begged to have to repeated; but now it was not youths and maidens who were dancing, but flowers. Then these again melted into fountains, whose waters interlaced and, rushing down the sides of the ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... 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 ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... tables, disposed here and there, and the genuine 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, 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 submissive youth of ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... forgotten now; so were the sketches and tiles, and the work of the evening. So was everything else but the woman who dominated the room. She kept her seat on the piano-stool, the centre of the group, as a queen of the ballet sits on a painted throne, flashing her eyes from one to the other, wheeling about to dash off an air from some unknown opera—unknown to those who listened— laying her lighted cigarette on the music-rack as she played, and whirling back again to tell some anecdote of the composer who wrote it, ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Half-a-dozen other men found seats somewhere, 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 Campagna to picnic with a party of men; but if any ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... homage to symbols which they know to be nothing but symbols, while the mechanical procession,[1138] the invocations, the apostrophes, the postures, the gestures are regulated beforehand, the same as by a ballet-manager. To any truth-loving person all this must seem like a charade performed by puppets.—But the festival is colossal, well calculated to stimulate the imagination and excite pride through physical excitement.[1139] On this grandiose ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... 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, ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... 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 the ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... 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 in ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... 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 art of dancing. Behind the mask could ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... 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
... the ballet, and that belonged distinctively to France. Before 1681 there were no women dancers in the ballet—only males. All ballets of shepherdesses and nymphs and dryads were represented by men and boys; but at last, the ladies of the court of France took to the ballet for their own amusement, ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... that the Spontini Janissary opera, with its kettledrums, elephants, trumpets, and gongs, is a heroic means of inspiring our enervated people with warlike enthusiasm—a means once shrewdly recommended by Plato and Cicero. Least of all did the youth comprehend the diplomatic significance of the ballet. It was with great trouble that I finally made him understand that there was really more political science in Hoguet's feet than in Buchholz's head, that all his tours de danse signified diplomatic negotiations, and that his every ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... 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. ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... exchange for the labor that they furnish to society, society must guarantee to the peasant and the artisan, as well as to the one who devotes himself to the liberal careers, conditions of existence worthy of a human being. Then we will no longer be affronted by the spectacle of a ballet girl, for instance, earning as much in one evening by whirling on her toes as a scientist, a doctor, a lawyer, etc., in a year's work. In fact to-day the latter are in luck if ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... subconscious personality is now in eternal and irrevocable accord and communication with the subconscious personality of some chit of a girl who is destined to love and marry you! And she's probably a ballet-girl, at that!" ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... day. If we had a censor who started a lofty code of morality and propriety all his own, public opinion would not stand him and his code. Suppose we had a censor who considered "Othello" shocking, and an ordinary decolletee dress or an ordinary ballet costume indecent, an outcry would soon be raised against him which would compel him to resign his purposes or his office. All he can do is to endeavor to order things so that nothing is said or exhibited which might shock society's sense of propriety, and this he can as a ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... 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. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... 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 get something substantial out of it, try to possess ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... obliged to be content. He retired respectfully, and the justice said, "He seems as sane as I am." The doctor smiled. The justice observed it, and not aware that this smile was a formula, as much so as a prizefighter's or a ballet-dancer's, began to doubt a little: He reflected a moment, then asked who ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... tut! what has the fact of the Lord Mayor of London having a wreath round his neck to do with the Russian ballet?" ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... addition to marriage in their own class, gives these girls a chance of stepping up; whereas the swell girls cannot marry grooms and footmen and raise them to their rank as their brothers can their housemaids and ballet-girls. To be a success the society girl must marry a man of sufficient means to keep her as an expensive toy, and this description of bachelor being scarce in any case, little wonder she has to hunt hard and tries to protect her preserves from poachers. Think ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... very complete book, L'Art de la Lingerie, published in 1771, women's drawers are not even mentioned, and Mercier (Tableau de Paris, 1783, vol. vii, p. 54) says that, except actresses, Parisian women do not wear drawers. Even by ballet dancers and actresses on the stage, they were not invariably worn. Camargo, the famous dancer, who first shortened the skirt in dancing, early in the eighteenth century, always observed great decorum, never showing the leg above the knee; when appealed to as to whether ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... but the author might achieve professional failure; in the office. On the whole it may not be the wiser plan to write about the Origins of Religion in the style which might suit a study of the life of ballet dancers; the two MM. Halevy, the learned and the popular, would make a blunder if they exchanged styles. Yet Gibbon never denies himself a jest, and Montesquieu's Esprit des Lois was called L'Esprit sur les Lois. M. Renan's Histoire d'Israel may ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... the 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 overthrown ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... discomfiture of fame. Chautauqua is a constricted community; and any one who lectures there becomes, by that very fact, a famous person in this little backwater of the world, until he is supplanted (for fame is as fickle as a ballet-dancer) by the next new-comer to the platform. The Chautauqua Press publishes a daily paper, a weekly review, a monthly magazine and a quarterly; and these publications report your lectures, tell the story of your life, comment upon your views of this and that, ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... 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 through the years with an eye single to such recognition ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... afterward. Not that Prince Soubise had not taken all his soldiers with him, but there was another small army by which the French troops are always accompanied. These, the lackeys, valets, cooks, hair-dressers, ballet-dancers, actresses, priests, etc., etc., were not able to run as fast as the French soldiers. The spoils consisted in the equipages of the prince and his staff, in which were boxes and chests containing precious things, their large chests full of delightful perfumes and hair-oils, ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... the basket of fruit which was to be such a feature in her triumphant dance after the robbers had been boiled alive in their own panniers. "There's Margaret Howes. Isn't she lovely in that pomegranate and gold? What queer slippers she has—just like the ballet dancers. And there's Ali Baba with the forty thieves, all the portrait class men in ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... 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
... 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 the painter ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... walls about him looked down many a sweet and noble countenance, such as should have made the room a temple of serenity. Nowhere was there a token of vulgar sensualism; the actress, the ballet-nymph had no place among these chosen gems of art. On the dwarf book-cases were none but works of pure inspiration, the best of old and new, the kings of intellect and their gentlest courtiers. Fifteen years had gone to the adorning ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... "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 ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... profits in a London theatre. This latter enterprise, admirably conducted, had been rewarded by the public with steady and liberal encouragement. Pondering over a new form of theatrical attraction for the coming winter season, Francis had determined to revive the languid public taste for the ballet by means of an entertainment of his own invention, combining dramatic interest with dancing. He was now, accordingly, in search of the best dancer (possessed of the indispensable personal attractions) who was to be found in the ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... and a rectangular portion that formed the place for dramatic performance. The pit was a semicircle, and was not fitted with seats, but constituted the orchestra. This orchestra among the Greeks formed an inferior stage, and, as its name implies, was reserved for the ballet. It was not till Roman times that specially privileged spectators were admitted into it, but it never had the musicians installed in it. These latter were placed in front of the stage, much where is our ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... 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, ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... he was awkwardly uncomfortable in ordinary company. The man, Val sometimes thought privately, lived, ate, slept books. Save when they were the subject of conversation, he was as out of his element as a coal-miner at the ballet. "We should explain the reason for this—this rather abrupt call." He fingered his brief-case, which ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... along with a few of the Ghost-Dancers to let me see what I think of them. Fancy the ballet has been done before. That clever cuss GUS, must have used it at Covent Garden when he put up Robert the Devil. It seems like the Nun Ballet—uncommonly. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various
... of day, The ballet danc'd in twilight glade, The canzonet and roundelay Sung in the silent green-wood shade; These simple joys, that never fail, Shall bind ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... for the post by the retiring chapelmaster, Paesiello (one of Napoleon's Italian favourites), he was a very meritorious and earnest Frenchman whom the appointment saved from starvation. Cherubini's creative genius was never more brilliant than at this period, as the wonderful two-act ballet, Anacreon, shows; but his temper and spirits were not improved by a series of disappointments which culminated in the collapse of his prospects of congenial success at Vienna, where he went in 1805 in compliance with an invitation to compose an opera for the Imperial ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... 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 his Honour, the prophet ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... 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
... 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 ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... 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 be executed "sedately ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... 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" is a ballet-symphonique ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... conveyed pathos and patient endurance as well as any individual speech or gesture in the ordinary theatre. Some groups carried hammer and anvil, and others staggered under enormous blocks of stone. Love for the ballet has perhaps made the Russians understand the art of moving groups of actors in unison. As I watched these processions climbing the steps in apparently careless and spontaneous fashion, and yet producing so graceful ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... mighty company, in the Banqueting-room 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
... ten 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 ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... Ministers of State walk beneath many-coloured official umbrellas, held by obsequious attendants; graceful bedayas, in glittering robes, execute intricate dances, and gamelon players discourse weird music on pipe and drum. Court ballet-girls, known as Serimpi, are borne swiftly through the crowd in gilded litters, and masked actors give al fresco performances of the historic Wayang-wayang, represented by living persons, for the actual "shadow-play" is impossible in broad daylight. The colour ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... from the mime. It was a ballet of action, performed by a single dancer, who not only exhibited the human figure in its most graceful attitudes, but represented every passion and emotion with such truth that the spectators could, without difficulty, understand the story. The ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... the mountains 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 ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [January, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... 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
... the third day when Kenny's hatred of dots was approaching a frenzy and a ballet of spades danced with horrible rhythm through his dreams, the package came from Garry. Kenny took it with a careless whistle and ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... is said that heat is only the motions of certain molecules, and light the conatus recedendi which we feel,[150] it astonishes us. What! Is pleasure only the ballet of our spirits? We have conceived so different an idea of it! And these sensations seem so removed from those others which we say are the same as those with which we compare them! The sensation from the fire, that warmth which affects us in a manner ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... flooded from the supper-room into the great hall, and under the gaze of the Three Louis, Oriol with his fancy, Navailles with Cidalise, Taranne, Noce, and the others, each with his raddled Egeria of the opera-house and the ballet. As they fluttered and flirted and laughed and chattered into the great hall, Gonzague held up his hand for a moment, as one that calls for silence, and in a moment the ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... against the space that appalled the savage from without, we erect always more hard and logical images.... All brute material, animate and inanimate, of earth, becomes an organism to confront the soul. Formerly the soul as a simple figure, like a ballet, faced the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... he!" cried Life, and just then the rifle of the first of the sharpshooters rang out, and another ballet increased the ventilation in the daring man's head-covering. The second and the third sharpshooters tried to urge their horses up the rocks, but this could not be done, and they made the leaps ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... course their greatest entertainment, their opera, ballet, and the rest; only they reverse the usual order of things obtaining elsewhere. The women form the orchestra, the men are the dancers, as a rule, though women do on occasions take part too. The dancers ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... 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 ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... the chairs were gilded and padded and covered with worn pink 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 and disorder which ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... might, as a rule, be called with equal propriety millinery dramas. In other words, their success is generally due to their costumes. In this respect they afford a marked contrast to ballet spectacles. The latter give us inanity without clothes; the former, inanity in particularly gorgeous clothes. Which, again, leads to the further remark that the difference between the two styles of inanity is, after all, a clothes thing. This is ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... the auditory centre, which is followed immediately by 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 Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott
... little, the rumours 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 ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... 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 ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... is a class made by sundry French tailors, bootmakers, dancing-masters, and Mr. Brown. They are a corps-de-ballet, for the 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 Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... 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
... best. But denied that function, and 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 to medicine, divinity, ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... tables, ottomans, carpets, couches, as elegant and elaborate as any used now. There are comic and genre pictures of parties, where the gentlemen and ladies are sometimes represented as being the worse for wine; of dances where ballet-girls in short dresses perform very modern-looking pirouettes; of exercises in wrestling, games of ball, games of chance like chess or checkers, of throwing knives at a mark, of the modern thimblerig, wooden dolls for children, curiously ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... 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
... time can be judged from the fact that the "immaculate" Marcus Cato separated from his wife that a friend might marry her; and when the friend died, married her himself again. Scandals and love intrigues were common in the highest circles; noble ladies, and not ballet-dancers[86] merely, thought it of little account to have their names besmirched. Everything in society was splendid, polished, decorous, cultivated without; but ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... with excitement, yet the spirit of the man of affairs worked strongly in him. He deliberately suppressed hysterics. He spoke calmly as might be, both hands in his trouser- pockets beneath the blouse of blue cotton that stuck out like a ballet skirt all round. The belt had slipped down. His eyes were never still. He pulled one hand out, holding the ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... 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 of the banker ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... the top floor back and painted undesirable water-colors, had been once an artist's model, and that she smoked. From the top floor back, in turn, we discovered that the woman across the way, now a writer of more or less impossible plays, had been formerly a ballet girl and still did a turn now and then to aid in the support of a ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... a ballet-dancer or a range-bred bronco mare; She rolled till her engines rattled; she wallowed, but what did I care? It was "Go it, my bucking beauty, if ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... Piedmont, who went to 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 ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... will be silent I will tell him. It is sometimes open—not often. Men must amuse themselves even in war. Some of the German officers come here for their pleasure, and but last week we had the ballet of Mademoiselle Cici. The police approve—but not often, for this is no time for too much gaiety. I will tell you a secret. Tomorrow afternoon there will be dancing—wonderful dancing! Only a few of my patrons know. Who, think you, ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... though it were a matter to which she attached 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 ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... to care, what will be the use of life, sight, hearing? Poems are written, and we cease to admire. Lady Jones invites us, and we yawn; she ceases to invite us, and we are resigned. The last time I saw a ballet at the opera — oh! it is many years ago — I fell asleep in the stalls, wagging my head in insane dreams, and I hope affording amusement to the company, while the feet of five hundred nymphs were cutting ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... publicity is settled to the fullest extent; at least every man must be silent who acquiesces in the concert, the drama, or the opera. We need not dwell on the exposures of the stage or the indelicacies of the ballet, but if Jenny Lind was "an angel of purity and benevolence" for consenting to stand, chanting and enchanting, before three thousand excited admirers; if Madame Sontag could give a full-dress rehearsal (which does not commonly imply a ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... whiskers, which partly compensated him for a loss of hair. He had never done anything but shoot and hunt over his property nine months in the year, and spend the other three months in Paris, where the jockey Club and ballet-dancers sufficed for his amusement. He did not pretend to be a man whose bachelor life had been altogether blameless, but he considered himself to be a "correct" man, according to what he understood by that expression, which implied neither talents, virtues, nor good manners; ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... 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 marching from conquest to ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... to 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 them—from the shilling pit—and doubt it? They ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... rehearsal," in order to get their adjectives manicured and be ready to rise to the occasion. This in itself was quite unique. As a colossal American achievement, the Hippodrome loomed. It combined spectacle, ballet, specialties, acting, singing, novelty. ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... 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
... working on The Daily News When I first heard of her, And from that time Until the day she came to town I longed to see her dance. The night the dancer and her ballet came The Desk assigned me to my nightly run Of hotels, clubs, and undertakers' shops; I was so green I had not learned The art of using telephones To make it seem That I was hot upon the trail of news While loafing otherwhere. How could I do my trick ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton
... appearance, but Mr. Weil did not take him immediately to the point of destination. Instead he walked over to a variety theatre that was then in operation on Twenty-third street, and after spending a short time in the auditorium guided the young man into the "wineroom." Here the ladies of the ballet were in the habit of going when off the stage, for the sake of entertaining the patrons with their light and frivolous conversation, and inducing them if possible, to invest in champagne at five ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... 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, ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... believe that this liar is not forcing his vein when he piles lie upon lie. There is no preceding touch to win the mind to credulity. Spanish Comedy is generally in sharp outline, as of skeletons; in quick movement, as of marionnettes. The Comedy might be performed by a troop of the corps de ballet; and in the recollection of the reading it resolves to an animated shuffle of feet. It is, in fact, something other than the true idea of Comedy. Where the sexes are separated, men and women grow, as the Portuguese call it, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the actor, "what a splendid scene it would make for a ballet, Caroline! That mosque, with a garden alongside, and that other one ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... 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 me ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... 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 ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... 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
... 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
... 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 deep in ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... together, or of straws which have gone limp, and droop like streaks of macaroni. There is a cosy corner; also a milking-stool, but no cow. The lampshades have had ribbons added to them, and from a distance look like ladies of the ballet. The flower-pot also is in a skirt. Near the door is a large screen, such as people hide behind in the more ordinary sort of play; it will be interesting to see whether we can resist the temptation to ...
— Alice Sit-By-The-Fire • J. M. Barrie
... has become sentimentalist; but some of the music of the scene has strength. Then the people conveniently flock in; ambassadors come from all corners of the earth to acknowledge Rienzi; Adriano warns him that mischief is breeding, and Rienzi calmly smiles; there is a most elaborate ballet, occupying many pages of the score and full of trumpery tunes; Orsini stabs Rienzi, and all the patricians are seized by the guards; Rienzi shows himself unhurt, being protected by a breastplate; the conspirators are condemned to ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... and Piccini were composing for the French opera, its affairs flourished liberally under the sway of De Vismes. Gluck, Piccini, and Rameau wrote serious operas, while Piccini, Sacchini, Anfossi, and Paisiello composed comic operas. The ballet flourished with unsurpassed splendor, and on the whole it may be said that never has the opera presented more magnificence at Paris than during the time France was on the eve of the Reign of Terror. The gay capital ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... 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 ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... 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
... ten-thirty, and it is now but 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 by the fire escape. We have now spent eight ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... look 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 Miklefski ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... summers, Stout but sportive) treads a measure, Grinning, in herself a ballet, Fixed ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... the author of the opera of "Eliogabalo," of the oratorio of "Purgatorio," which made such an immense sensation, of songs and ballet-musics innumerable. He is a German by birth, and shows such an outrageous partiality for pork and sausages, and attends at church so constantly, that I am sure there cannot be any foundation in the story that he is a member ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... earnest assiduity, and patient travail, to what breeds men to the most arduous trades. I speak not of kings' grandees, or the like show-figures; but few soldiers, judges, men of letters, can have had such pains taken with them. The very ballet girls, with their muslin saucers round them, were perhaps little short of miraculous; whirling and spinning there in strange mad vortexes, and then suddenly fixing themselves motionless, each upon her left or right great-toe, with the other ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... Popinot) should be engaged as conductor of the orchestra; and at the same time, the Count was careful to send certain elderly amateurs of beauty to the theatre, so that the new manager might be strongly supported financially by wealthy admirers of feminine charms revealed by the costume of the ballet. ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... is over already—over before it was begun. The battle was fought in the council at Berlin, and the allies were beaten. The duke, within the next fortnight, will be deciding on the merits of the ballet in Brunswick, and the French will be madder than ever with triumphs which they never won, preparing for conquests which are already gained, and knocking down thrones, the owners themselves supplying the pickaxes and hammers. You will see the two best armies of the Continent ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... that BONAPARTE, as principal ballet-master, has changed the dance of the whole nation; he regulates their step to the measure of his own music, and discord is mute at the moment: but the question is, whether the French are bona-fide d'accord, (as the Gascoon ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... Dent!' he cried, and drawing from his pocket two little wisps of reddish hair, he held them to his cheeks like sidewhiskers and danced about the studio with the filmy graces of a ballet-girl. ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... it's a scientific and psychical impossibility for you to continue to love her! Your subconscious personality is now in eternal and irrevocable accord and communication with the subconscious personality of some chit of a girl who is destined to love and marry you! And she's probably a ballet-girl, at that!" ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... 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 ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... life, he was 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 ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... 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
... the Season!—the Toso, So very majestic and tall; Miss Ayton, whose singing was so so, And Pasta, divinest of all; The labour in vain of the Ballet, So sadly deficient in stars; The foreigners thronging the Alley, Exhaling the breath of cigars; The "loge," where some heiress, how killing, Environ'd with Exquisites sits, The lovely one out of her drilling, The silly ones out of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 269, August 18, 1827 • Various
... 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 ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... "What you call a renegade, I should say. Has all the vices of both hemispheres, without the redeeming features of either. Low-class music halls, ballet dancers, prize-fighters and the like. At the same time he's got the good sense not to flaunt these vices before the public, and he knows how to conduct himself with dignity when there is any necessity for it. Despite his handsome income, ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... 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 Hulot, now ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... better," said the Tennessee Shad admiringly, regaining his chair, not too openly. "Much better. Looks fine! Great! Say, I've got an idea. Stick the ballet girl under it." ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... suggested convention, at home in any company and showing absolutely no preference. He would be found joking with the stokers in the engine room when he might be walking with the Admiral on the quarter-deck, flirting with a deaf old Duchess when he might be supping with the leader of the ballet. With a sense of humour that would have made his fortune on the stage, he spoke half-a-dozen languages and a dozen dialects. He could imitate the Kaiser or give a Yiddish dialect to a Chinaman. Light-hearted to a fault, he would make a joke at anyone's expense, preferably ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... moment 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 humming about the ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... through which one looked up the green aisle of the Champs-Elysee to the Arc de Triomphe, dimly visible in the moonlight. The Baron entered for one last glance over the preparations for his petit souper for Rosa and her sister of the ballet at ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... 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: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... chaise-longue are of 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
... Carmencita," suggested the other. "And people who have the proud knowledge of knowing her like you and me will call her 'Cinders' for short. And when we read of her dancing before the Czar of All the Russias, and leading the ballet at the Grand Opera House in Paris, we'll say, 'that is our handiwork,' and we will feel that we have not lived ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... King to the daughter of the Emperor Maximilian filled the Court with fetes and celebrations. The King put on a ballet in which Madame and all the princesses were to dance; among them only the Princess de Montpensier could rival Madame in beauty. The Duc d'Anjou and four others were to make an appearance as Moors; their costumes would all be identical, ...
— The Princess of Montpensier • Madame de La Fayette
... 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 ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... responsible 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 the old ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... all 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 sustained me ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... 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 of the prima ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... 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 ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... fell on the eve of the coronation of Powhatan. The king, being absent when Smith came, was sent for; meanwhile Pocahontas called together a number of Indian maidens to get up a dramatic entertainment and ballet for the handsome young Englishman and his companions. They made a fire in a level field, and Smith sat on a mat before it. A hideous noise and shrieking were suddenly heard in the adjoining woods. The English snatched up their arms, apprehending foul play. Pocahontas rushed forward, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... went 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 to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... came; and at the Star and Garter, Richmond—the place appointed for the 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 ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... twenty years ago, whom to see once was to 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 ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... for a reason similar to that which makes a lovely human face uninformed by intellect seem less permanently attractive than many a homelier countenance. He grows tired of seeing the feathered fairies perpetually weaving their aerial ballet-dance about the flowers, and finds it a relief to watch the little finch or wren or flycatcher of shy temper and obscure protective colouring. Perhaps it possesses a graceful form and melodious voice ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... forward on the stage. On one 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. Banks. "Oh," ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... dreaming that the Japanese would dare to strike the first blow. This incident has been made the subject of a towel design. At one end of the towel is a comic study of the faces of the Russians, delightedly watching the gyrations of a ballet dancer. At the other end is a study of the faces of the same commanders when they find, on returning to the port, only the masts of their battleships above water. Another towel shows a procession of ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... to marriage in their own class, gives these girls a chance of stepping up; whereas the swell girls cannot marry grooms and footmen and raise them to their rank as their brothers can their housemaids and ballet-girls. To be a success the society girl must marry a man of sufficient means to keep her as an expensive toy, and this description of bachelor being scarce in any case, little wonder she has to hunt hard and tries to protect ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... 1577, whither he was 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
... Cox. Mrs. Bouncer, assisted in the musical part of the piece by a chorus of lusty sergeants and gunners, who revelled in dances and choruses, was a great success, while a specially selected chorus of ballet-girls highly distinguished themselves. The production was quite good, and the financial results on behalf of the regimental charities were most satisfactory. In after years the theatrical experiences thus gained gave me considerable ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... 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, ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... 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 sticks of barber's candy, Dane, who was of a ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... there is the singing of folk songs handed down by word of mouth from generation to generation. When the mountain people are asked the origin of their music, the usual reply is "My grandsir larnt me this fiddle tune," or "My Granny larnt me this song-ballet." ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... find a new life as pantomimes. A bottle-nosed Lear will come on with a monstrous corpulence from which he will frantically dance himself free during the midnight storm; Rosalind and Celia will join in a grotesque ballet with shepherds and shepherdesses; Ophelia in fleshings and a voluminous brevity of grenadine will dance through the mad scene, finishing with the famous "attitude of the scissors" in the arms of Laertes; and all the speeches in "Hamlet" will be so ingeniously parodied that the originals ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... where he can sit down and read by a window or look out; where he can come and go whenever he wishes; where he can accumulate a few personal belongings other than those he carries about with him on his back and in his pockets; where he can hang up pictures of his mother, sister, sweet-heart, ballet dancers, or bulldogs, as his heart listeth—in short, one place of his own on the earth of which he can say: "This is mine, my castle; the world stops at the threshold; here am I lord and master." He will be a better citizen, this man; and he will ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... from St Vincent 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 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... 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
... 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, ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... 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 ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... pretty to see the Jam-wagon work. He was sprightly as a ballet dancer, as, weaving in and out, he dodged the other's blows. His arms swung at his sides, and he threw his head about in a manner insufferably mocking and tantalising. Then he took to landing light body-blows, that grew more frequent till he seemed to be beating a regular tattoo on Locasto's ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... 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 should be made up to suggest ...
— Aria da Capo • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... foreign type, Miss Harrison. Last year, in a London ballet, I saw a blonde Spanish girl who ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... comrades, and one of those eccentric geniuses destined to fame and sorrow. Joseph Bridau, who had, to use his own expression, a few sous in his pocket, took Fougeres to the Opera. But Fougeres didn't see the ballet, didn't hear the music; he was imagining pictures, he was painting. He left Joseph in the middle of the evening, and ran home to make sketches by lamp-light. He invented thirty pictures, all reminiscence, and felt himself ...
— Pierre Grassou • Honore de Balzac
... major 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 ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... ballet-dancer or a range-bred bronco mare; She rolled till her engines rattled; she wallowed, but what did I care? It was "Go it, my bucking beauty, if only you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... 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 ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... so far as I understand the language, no poetry; and except the coup d'oeil, which was magnificent, it was poor work. It was on the subject of Constantine and Crispus—marvellous good matter, I assure you. I came home at half-past nine, without waiting the ballet, but I was dog-sick of the whole of it. Went to the Studij to-day. I had no answer to my memorial to the Minister of the Interior, which it seems is necessary to make any copies from the old romances. I find it is an affair of ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Margaret Craven 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 ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... 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
... performance. The pit was a semicircle, and was not fitted with seats, but constituted the orchestra. This orchestra among the Greeks formed an inferior stage, and, as its name implies, was reserved for the ballet. It was not till Roman times that specially privileged spectators were admitted into it, but it never had the musicians installed in it. These latter were placed in front of the stage, much where is our modern proscenium. The actors performed, as nowadays, on the boarded anterior portion, which ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... consisted of layer after layer of gauzy tuck and ruffles and laces, caught here and there with bows of dainty ribbon. The skirts—which of course were of many shades of pink—were so fluffy and light that they stuck out from the fat bodies of the Pinkie women like the skirts of ballet-dancers, displaying their chubby pink ankles and pink kid shoes. They wore rings and necklaces and bracelets and brooches of rose-gold set with pink gems, and all four of the new arrivals, both men and women, carried sharp-pointed sticks made ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... disease in the general etiology of mental disease is made by Ballet.[12] Ballet states that Griesinger's opinion that renal disease had little importance in the etiology of mental disease and that no one would count the cerebral symptoms of Bright's disease as mental is no longer held. Ballet ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... 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 ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... suppressed voices, and the ceremony, lasting between four or five hours, was over. From time to time a man would approach the "Buli" and fall down on all fours and clap his hands before he could speak. I felt at times as if I was watching a comic opera or a ballet, and there were many amusing incidents. I think honours were fairly easy between the big show and myself, as the people kept whispering and looking around at me the whole time. I never passed a hut without ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... the wall. A ruby-hilted kris cut across the manager's wrist as he strove to arrest the splendid rout. Still the miraculous cornucopia deluged the ground, with its pattering, ringing, bumping, crinkling, rolling, fluttering produce until, like the final tableau of some spectacular ballet, it ended with a golden rain that masked the details of the heap beneath a glittering veil of ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... fairly quiet, except 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 proud ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... other men found seats somewhere, 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 Campagna to picnic with a party of men; but ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... that way," he said, after ascertaining his bearings. "She was carrying the baby, and I was reading a ballet-sheet. Then we crossed about here—she so sad and weary, and I speaking to her hardly at all, because of my cursed pride and mortification at being poor. Then we saw the tent—that must have stood more this way." He walked to another spot, it was not really where ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... "She was in the last Russian ballet, and she is waiting now for the rest of the company to start again at Covent Garden. You see, it is Metzger who plays there. They improvise. Rather ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... few possessions carefully and then, on a very hard bed, dreaming of bombs, of Mrs. Brockett dressed as a ballet dancer, of Mr. Zanti digging for treasure beneath the grey flags of Bennett Square, of Clare Elizabeth Rossiter riding down Oxford Street amidst the shouts of the populace, of the world as a coloured globe on which he, Peter ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... so were the sketches and tiles, and the work of the evening. So was everything else but the woman who dominated the room. She kept her seat on the piano-stool, the centre of the group, as a queen of the ballet sits on a painted throne, flashing her eyes from one to the other, wheeling about to dash off an air from some unknown opera—unknown to those who listened— laying her lighted cigarette on the music-rack as she played, and whirling back again to tell some anecdote ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... 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 (consul in 621) should catch the balls in the circus as nimbly as he solved ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... 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 ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... spring, half winter—to make one long to cut capers. The buildings are a blazing mass of royal purple and golden yellow, and national flags, bunting and decorations that laugh in the glint of the Midas sun. The streets a crush of jesters and maskers, Jim Crows and clowns, ballet girls and Mephistos, Indians and monkeys; of wild and sudden flashes of music, of glittering pageants and comic ones, of befeathered and belled horses. A madding dream of color and melody and fantasy gone wild in an effervescent ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... 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 ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... sleeves, then the stockings, then the skirts, then the main portion of the garment covering the legs, successively disappeared, until the low-necked, sleeveless, legless one-piece suit became "the thing"; and women clad in garments scantier than the scantiest on the ballet stage, were parading Kalakaua avenue in the vicinity of the Moana hotel, to the scandal and disgust of some; the devouring gaze of others; and the interested inspection of whomsoever ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... restraints upon social intercourse seem removed. Subjects which the common consent of civilized creatures has banished from mixed society are freely opened and discussed. To people like the ordinary run of the believers in spiritism, the opera, the ballet, and the annual Zola are unknown, and they must take their excitements where they can find them. The dim light, the unhealthy commerce of fictitious ghosts, the unreality of act and sentiment, the unwonted abandon, ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... that under stress or the need of making a livelihood women in many instances do show physical endurance equal to that of men. Women who are expert ballet dancers and those who are skilled acrobats can hardly be termed physiological weaklings. In Berlin, you may see women staggering along with huge loads on their backs; in Munich, women are street-cleaners and hod-carriers; on the island ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... only I promised to give you a detailed personal account; and I have 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 or worldly ...
— The Smart Set - Correspondence & Conversations • Clyde Fitch
... 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, but carefully avoiding any warmer expressions ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... 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 robe, richly embroidered, ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... talent 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
... of a usurer's wife brought to bed of twenty money-bags at a burden, or of a fish that appeared upon the coast on Wednesday the fourscore of April: in short, as Martin Mar-sixtus says (1592), 'scarce a cat can look out of a gutter but out starts a halfpenny chronicler, and presently a proper new ballet of a strange sight is indited.' Chief amongst these 'halfpenny chroniclers' were William Elderton, of whom Camden records that he 'did arm himself with ale (as old father Ennius did with wine) ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... of the singer; of the sensation she had created in certain salons (to Graham, who knew Paris so well, salons in which he would not have liked his wife to appear); of the compliments paid to her by grands seigneurs noted for their liaisons with ballet-dancers, or by authors whose genius soared far beyond the flammantia maenia of a world confined by respect for one's neighbours' land-marks,—all this, which belongs to ground of personal gossip untouched ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... my way to receiving ballet girls, or chorus girls, or actresses, or so-called painters, poets, musicians, and others—in order to keep ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... another dance, the pirouette and other figures dear to the bald-headed beaux of the modern play-house, were practiced in the familiar way. Four thousand years ago, the senses of the young ancient Egyptian—wild, heady lad!—were kicked into confusion by the dark-skinned belle of the ballet, while senility, with dimmed eyes, rubbed its dry hands in feverish approval at the self-same feat. Dear, dear, but it was a bad world four ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... some consider 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
... talent. 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 ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... 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 ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [January, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... lasses visited Niblo's in New York during the ballet season. When the short-skirted, gossamer clad nymphs made their appearance on the stage they became ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... which is 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 tire ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... glanced at it as he went toward the stairs. Since 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 Arabian's ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... bewildering for all that to come out into real life. There was no romance for the moment on the stained street, and in the passing traffic. The gold braid of the hall commissionaire looked tawdry, and the pictures of ballet-girls but vulgar. It is the common experience, but each time one feels it there is a new surprise. Julie ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... 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)
... 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 hunchback, embraced ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Metastasio. Musically it was radically different in character from the opera, as it was from the liturgical drama. But none the less it contained some of the germs of the modern opera. It had its solo, its chorus and its ballet.[12] But while the characters of these were almost as clearly defined as they are in Gluck's "Orfeo," their musical basis, as we shall see, was altogether different. Nevertheless it was distinctly lyric and secular and was therefore as near the spirit of the popular music ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... savage animals. Those who scoff at the wild animal mind, and say that all this displays nothing but "machines in fur" need to be reminded that this very same line of effort in training and rehearsal is absolutely necessary in the production of every military company, every ballet, and every mass performance on the stage. There is no successful performance without training. Boys and girls require the very same sort of handling that the wild animals receive, but the humans do with a little less ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... stars. Each wore a crown of jewels on his head, while 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
... consequences of such censure. He talked openly about the matter in society, airing his views thereanent. Impetuously and with positive hardihood, he expressed his disapproval in unstinted terms, criticising and condemning the prince's conduct. Once, at the ballet, when within two feet of the Queen, it was with the utmost difficulty that he could be prevented from discussing so obviously unfitting a question, or from sententiously ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... transmutations by Torelli; stage-manager, Moliere; the comedy, "Les Facheux," "The Bores," composed, written, and rehearsed expressly for this occasion, in the short space of fifteen days. This piece was put upon the stage in a new way. The ballet, introduced by Mazarin a few years before, was the fashion, and indispensable. As Moliere had only a few good dancers, he placed the scenes of the ballet between the acts of the comedy, in order to give his artists time to change their dresses and to take three or four different parts. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... Presently the ballet-master appeared, the orchestra struck up, and Christie found herself marching and counter-marching at word of command. At first, a most uncomfortable sense of the absurdity of her position oppressed and confused her; then the ludicrous contrast between ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... 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 ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... 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 essay in my pocket, and seen myself everywhere announced ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... standing up on the log, 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 no crack. Now I will perform the Grand Pas de Fee! ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... 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 ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... I to the Boss. "They'll think we've pinched her out of a Kiralfy ballet. Hadn't we better send for yer ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... missed the 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 a tow-rope; and, went ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... frivolous as simpletons imagine. Frivolity is an excellent, because an unsuspected mask, under which serious and important designs may be safely concealed. I would explain myself further, but must now go to the opera to see the new ballet. Let me know, my interesting, my sublime Olivia, when you are positively determined on your voyage to Petersburg; and then you shall become acquainted with your friend as a politician. Her friendship for you will not be confined to a mere intercourse of sentiment, ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... baskets before them. Here, the lace-sellers; there, the butter and egg-sellers; there, the fruit-sellers; there, the shoe-makers. The whole place looks as if it were the stage of some great theatre, and the curtain had just run up, for a picturesque ballet. And there is the cathedral to boot: scene- like: all grim, and swarthy, and mouldering, and cold: just splashing the pavement in one place with faint purple drops, as the morning sun, entering by a little window on the eastern side, struggles through some stained ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... 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 which followed every ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... famous ballet-dancer, born at Stockholm, the daughter of an Italian ballet-master; made her debut in Paris in 1827 and soon became the foremost danseuse of Europe; married Count de Voisins in 1832; retired from the stage in 1847 with a fortune, which she subsequently lost, a misfortune ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... presumption in having taken it upon himself to do so. The countess, in reply, bowed gracefully to Albert, and extended her hand with cordial kindness to Franz; then, inviting Albert to take the vacant seat beside her, she recommended Franz to take the next best, if he wished to view the ballet, and pointed to the one behind her own chair. Albert was soon deeply engrossed in discoursing upon Paris and Parisian matters, speaking to the countess of the various persons they both knew there. Franz perceived how completely he was in his element; and, unwilling to interfere with the pleasure ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... we 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
... the operation of making sail had been completed—"By the powers, but 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; ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... bells, the stamping keeps time with the melody; he motions; monkeys and bears appear and dance fondly around him. Eagles and other birds. An eagle sits on the head of HINZE who is very much afraid; two elephants, two lions. Ballet and singing.] ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... about music, having studied the art with considerable diligence for a number of years. Impossible to enumerate all the composers and executants on various instruments, the conductors and opera-singers and ballet-girls with whom I was on terms of familiarity during that incarnation. Perhaps I am the only person now alive who has shaken hands with a man (Lachner) who shook hands with Beethoven and heard his voice; all of which may appear when I ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... figures of Italian martyrs, and the full, rich forms of the Antinous, and he read with avidity the Arabian Nights and other Oriental tales, translations from the classics, Suetonius, Petronius, etc. He drew naked models in life schools, and delighted in male ballet-dancers. As a child, he used to perform in private theatricals; he excelled in female parts, and sang the songs of Madame Vestris, encouraged in ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... 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. ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... 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
... 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 Brazenface, and his ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... 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 should ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... entered 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 Howard ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... afterwards, long walks by moon or star light, or music at each other's rooms, and that engrossing technical shop talk that never palls on those who talk it. No Guardsman's talk of turf or sport or the ballet had ever been so good as this, in Barty's estimation; no agreeable society gossip at ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... curved 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
... perhaps more perfect than the so-called Commedia dell' Arte, in which, the parts being 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
... confounded cross-examination I was under, and was glad to end it by any coup d'etat. One wretch was persecuting me about green crops, and another about the feeding of bullocks; about either of which I knew as much as a bear does of a ballet." ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... enterprise, admirably conducted, had been rewarded by the public with steady and liberal encouragement. Pondering over a new form of theatrical attraction for the coming winter season, Francis had determined to revive the languid public taste for the ballet by means of an entertainment of his own invention, combining dramatic interest with dancing. He was now, accordingly, in search of the best dancer (possessed of the indispensable personal attractions) who was to be found ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... kingdom. When, after some verses well sung but indifferently composed, these nymphs descended from their elevation, and took part in an intricate maze of dance, the Polish spectators remarked, in the excess of their admiration, that the French ballet was something that could be imitated by none of the kings of the earth. "I would rather," dryly adds a contemporary historian, "that they had said as much respecting ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... face, and strong jaws, ornamented with an enormous pair of whiskers, which partly compensated him for a loss of hair. He had never done anything but shoot and hunt over his property nine months in the year, and spend the other three months in Paris, where the jockey Club and ballet-dancers sufficed for his amusement. He did not pretend to be a man whose bachelor life had been altogether blameless, but he considered himself to be a "correct" man, according to what he understood by that expression, which implied neither ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... chef-d'oeuvre was 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, ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... 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 children, and her particular form of indulgence had ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... 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 gossip and told him that he loved Chopin. ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... him about the merits of their respective confessors and 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 by very dry champagne or ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... 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, ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... anxieties, anticipations, expectations, pessimisms, morbidities, and the whole ghostly train of fateful shapes which our fellow-men, and especially physicians, are ready to help us conjure up, an array worthy to rank with Bradley's 'unearthly ballet of bloodless categories.' ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... 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 ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... 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 ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... 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, "Richard ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... 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
... with bricklayers," returned the Minor Poet. "Now, why not? The stockbroker flirts with the barmaid—cases have been known; often he marries her. Does the lady out shopping ever fall in love with the waiter at the bun-shop? Hardly ever. Lordlings marry ballet girls, but ladies rarely put their heart and fortune at the feet of the Lion Comique. Manly beauty and virtue are not confined to the House of Lords and its dependencies. How do you account for the fact that while it is common ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... Constance 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 me ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... no preceding touch to win the mind to credulity. Spanish Comedy is generally in sharp outline, as of skeletons; in quick movement, as of marionnettes. The Comedy might be performed by a troop of the corps de ballet; and in the recollection of the reading it resolves to an animated shuffle of feet. It is, in fact, something other than the true idea of Comedy. Where the sexes are separated, men and women grow, as the Portuguese ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... remembered her nocturnal apparition, recalled that bob-tailed wrapper, that cap with the tall ribbon (and why should there be a ribbon on a night-cap?), the whole of that ridiculous figure, at which all his visions had dispersed into dust, as though at the whistle of the machinist in a fantastic ballet! He even made Platosha repeat the tale of how she had heard him shout, had taken fright, had leaped out of bed, had not been able at once to find either her own door or his, and so forth. In the evening he played cards with her and ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... (1911) 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 Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... obtained command of the cavalry of Gambinino in Syria and Egypt. He also acted as legate for Caesar in Gaul about 52 B.C., as nearly as I can recall the year. I do not know exactly what a legate is, but it had something to do with the Roman ballet, I understand, ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... in his bed, looked across. "There was a line of Germans came upon us," he said, "at Bras. I thought I must be suffering from a nightmare when I saw them. They had thrown away their rifles and had all joined hands. They came dancing towards us just like a row of ballet girls. They were shrieking and laughing, and they never attempted to do anything. We just waited until they were close up and then shot them down. It was like killing a lot of kids who had come to have a ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... every one knows, the ostrich is decidedly decollete as well as utterly indifferent to the covering of its legs. Accordingly a troop of them, as they came balancing and tiptoeing toward me, reminded me of a company of ballet dancers tripping down the stage. While the head of the ostrich is unusually small, its eyes are large and have an expression of mischief which gives warning of danger. During a visit to one of the farms, I saw a male bird pluck two hats from unwary men, ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... 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
... homeless one from house to house—The Huguenot Lovers, The 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 of ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... teachers could not prevent him from taking up theatricals, but they made him take theatricals seriously. All his plays were indeed "plays for Puritans." All his criticisms quiver with a refined and almost tortured contempt for the indulgencies of ballet and burlesque, for the tights and the double entente. He can endure lawlessness but not levity. He is not repelled by the divorces and the adulteries as he is by the "splits." And he has always been ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... the rehearsal, "is the sentiment of a great man." The Great Man was a phrase, to use Pope's words, "by common use appropriated to the first minister"—that is, to Walpole. In the next scene the effrontery of the piece culminates in a ballet where the Prime Minister appears, leading a chorus of false patriots, who, to use Fielding's own words, are set in the 'odious and contemptible light' of a set of "cunning self-interested fellows who for ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... were it not for the wings of bright 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 ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... [E] Ballet, in his "Dissertations sur la Mythologie Francaise," shows that this popular story of the dog of Montargis is much older than the time of Charles V.; and that Albericus, an old monkish chronicler, records it as happening in the ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... about him looked down many a sweet and noble countenance, such as should have made the room a temple of serenity. Nowhere was there a token of vulgar sensualism; the actress, the ballet-nymph had no place among these chosen gems of art. On the dwarf book-cases were none but works of pure inspiration, the best of old and new, the kings of intellect and their gentlest courtiers. Fifteen years had gone to the adorning of this sanctuary; of money, ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... arose a giggling and laughing. M. Knaak assumed a ballet pose which expressed a conventionalized horror. "O dear," he cried. "Halt, halt! Kroeger has got in among the ladies. En arriere, Miss Kroeger, back, fi donc! All understand it now except you. Quick, away, back with you!" And he drew out his yellow silk handkerchief ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... a show that night with the feeling of guilt and shame one has who has betrayed his family. That $114 with ten more to come for brown shoes, flickered in the spot light and babbled on the lips of the singers. They danced it in the ballet. Each of us was thinking with guilty horror of how he would break the news of that uniform bargain to his wife. So we went home tired that first night, through the grim dark streets of Paris and to our rooms. And there were those 43rd street uniforms still unwrapped in the bureau drawer. Henry ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... 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 his Honour, the prophet Brudenell. John St. John says that the ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... architecture. He was now telling Jimphy of the glories of French Cathedrals, and Jimphy, who cared even less for French Cathedrals than he cared for English ones, was wondering just how he could change the conversation to a discussion of the latest ballet at the Empire and particularly of a girl he knew who was a perfect lady and, as a matter of fact, lived with her mother. The supper party seemed likely to end dismally, and Henry, when he was not wishing ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... "The ballet was distinguished by nothing remarkable, except that the principal she-dancer went into convulsions because she was not applauded on her first appearance; and the manager came forward to ask if there was 'ever a physician in ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... expected first volume of collected prose, Divagations, in which we find the prose poems of early date; medallion or full-length portraits of Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Poe, Whistler, and others; the marvellous, the unique, studies in the symbolism of the ballet and the theatrical spectacle, comparatively early in date; Richard Wagner: reverie d'un Poete francais, Le Mystere dans les Lettres; and, under various titles, the surprising Variations sur un Sujet. The hesitation of a lifetime having been, it would seem, overcome, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... tut, tut! what has the fact of the Lord Mayor of London having a wreath round his neck to do with the Russian ballet?" ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... all 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 dress ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... companionway that led down into the cabin. 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
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... 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
... 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
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