Edited by Dr Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel and Dr Jill Nunes Jensen, The Oxford Handbook of
Contemporary Ballet prioritizes connections between ballet communities as it interweaves
chapters by scholars, critics, choreographers, and working professional dancers.
The book looks at the many ways ballet functions as a global practice in the 21st century,
providing new perspectives on ballet's past, present, and future. As an effort to
dismantle the linearity of academic canons, the fifty-three chapters within provide
multiple entry points for readers to engage in balletic discourse.
With an emphasis on
composition and process alongside dances created, and the assertion that contemporary
ballet is a definitive era, the book carves out space for critical inquiry. Many of the
chapters consider whether or not ballet can reconcile its past and actually become present,
while others see ballet as flexible and willing to be remolded at the hands of those with
tools to do so.