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Authenticity in Ballet Revival By Gerald Dowler for the Dancing Times
We all know that the provenance of an antique makes all the difference to its value in the auction room, and so it is with ballets: just as a proven inventory of ownership will send the price of a work of art soaring, so a clear, unbroken performing tradition raises the ‘stock’ of a piece of choreography. Why this should be so, given that ballet has always relied upon the creation of the new, more often than not by the very young, and so should be the art form least bothered with precedent, tradition and authenticity? And yet, ballet, in its classical guise at least, exists through the most bizarre of paradoxes: simply by virtue of its very form, what is newly created instantly becomes part of its tradition – the present automatically becomes the past.
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