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2003
finalists.

2003 Hackmatack

Children's Choice Book Award/Prix littéraire - le choix de jeunes

In the dim light of the theater the audience murmurs, anticipting the evening ahead. Behind the stage's red velvet curtain dancers make last minute adjustments to ribbons and costumes and step into position on the stage. The first musical notes float from the orchestra and the curtain rises with a gentle sigh. The magical world of ballet is unveiled.

Footnotes: Dancing The World's Best-Loved Ballets is a behind-the-scenes look at seven classic ballets and the men and women who have danced them. Based on interviews with some of the best-known performers, former principal dancer Frank Augustyn and Shelley Tanaka reveal the reality behind one of the world's most admired art forms.

Illustrated with more than 100 contemporary and archival photographs of dancers both on the stage and behind the scenes, Footnotes is a wondrous journey through the world of ballet. Behind the dazzling stage lights and away from the audience's thunderous applause, a world of instructors, choreographers, costume designers and makeup artists labor to bring each production to life. There are anecdotes about some of the world's greatest dancers, including Rudolf Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Margot Fonteyn and Paloma Herrera. Read about Karen Kain's on-stage nap during a performance of The Sleeping Beauty, and the ballerina who pirouetted herslf off the stage and into the laps of the musicians in the orchestra pit below.

From ballet's auspicious beginnings in the royal courts of seventeenth-century France to the reinvention of the male dancer, Footnotes takes an unforgettably unique look at a world where strength, determination, talent and beauty reign supreme.

Frank Augustyn is a former principal dancer with the National Ballet of Canada. As the first male graduate of the National Ballet School to become an internationally acclaimed dancer, Augustyn went on to a celebrated partnership with Karen Kain. Together they were known as the "gold dust twins." In 1979 Augustyn received the Order of Canada. He has also been the recipient of a Gemini Award, an Actra Award and a Vanier Award. From 1989 to 1994, he was the Artistic Director of the Ottawa Ballet and in 1997 he was the co-producer, with Neil Bregman, of the Footnotes television series. Today he is Director of the Dance Department at Adelphi University in New York, New York.

Shelley Tanaka is a children's book editor and the author of several non-fiction books, including The Illustrated Father Goose, One Board the Titanic, Discovering the Iceman, Secrets of the Mummies and In the Time of Knights. Her books have won the Silver Birch Award, the Mr. Christie's Book Award, the Information Book Award and the Science in Society Award. She lives in Kingston, Ontario.

Suggested Activities

• Mime your feelings without using words. Happy. Sad. Anxious. Irritated.
• Read the synopsis of Romeo and Juliet on page 88. Listen to a recording of the overture (the opening piece of music that introduces the major themes of the ballet). Can you hear Juliet's theme? The music that marks the appearance of her stern father?
• Survey your group to find how many have taken ballet lessons. Why did they want to take ballet? How many of these people are boys? Why do boys take or not take ballet? What other kinds of dance do students study? What do they like about it?