Ballet: Beyond the Basics

Ballet: Beyond the Basics is for adult students who have studied ballet basics and find themselves in that in-between area--no longer beginners, but not yet advanced dancers. The aim of this book is to provide intermediate dancers with a reference source for their expanded growth as dancers. It is meant as loving encouragement to students and teachers who are dealing with this most challenging phase of ballet training; the period beyond the basics.

Sandra Noll Hammond trained in ballet in New York at the Juilliard School, the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, and the School of Ballet Repertory. Among her teachers were Antony Tudor, Margaret Craske, Thalia Mara, and Arthur Mahoney. She has performed with the Ballet Repertory Dancers, Connecticut Opera, Arizona Dance Theatre, and Pacific Ballet. She also has worked as a free-lance artist, performing and staging Baroque ballet repertory reconstructed from her own research. A graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara, Hammond's teaching career has focussed on ballet in higher education. She was instrumental in developing a dance major at the University of Arizona, Tucson, where she served as Coordinator of Dance. Later, she served as Director of Dance in the Theatre and Dance Department of the University of Hawaii. Hammond is recognized internationally for her research, lectures, and publications on the history of ballet technique. In addition to Ballet Basics, her publications include Ballet: Beyond the Basics (also published by McGraw-Hill) and numerous articles in dance journals and in ballet encyclopedias and dictionaries. She is a frequent guest artist on university campuses, where she enjoys introducing students to earlier forms of ballet technique and repertory from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.