Book – Titian: Metamorphosis – Art, Music, Dance

BM: What follows is a press release on the book about last summer’s Royal Ballet Titian: Metamorphosis project featuring 3 new works created by 7 choreographers close to the company for many years.

It was a great idea and extra reason for us to celebrate it in the book version because 6 pictures by Dave Morgan, The DanceTabs house photographer, are included in the book.

Appropriately we include Dave’s images here. As ever, clicking on them brings up a much larger version to enjoy. Or see the complete gallery.

Sadly Dave isn’t mentioned in the press release but he (and DanceTabs) get mentioned in the photography credits at the end of the book.
 

TITIAN: METAMORPHOSIS – Art, Music, Dance

A collaboration between The Royal Ballet and the National Gallery

Edited and introduced by Minna Moore Ede
Foreword by Dame Monica Mason
Photography by Gautier Deblonde, Andrej Uspenski, Johan Persson and others

Published by Art / Books in association with the Royal Opera House on 28 January 2013
£24.99 hardback – www.roh.org.uk/products

This beautiful publication celebrates a unique collaboration between two of London’s greatest cultural institutions. Together The Royal Ballet and the National Gallery commissioned three acclaimed contemporary artists – Chris Ofili, Conrad Shawcross and Mark Wallinger – to work with leading international choreographers and composers to create three new ballets inspired by the Titian paintings Diana and Callisto, Diana and Actaeon and The Death of Actaeon. As well as designing all the sets and costumes, the artists also produced new works in response to Titian’s masterpieces for a show at the National Gallery.
 

The book tells the story of this extraordinary, complex project from conception to stage and gallery. The artists’ notebooks, sketches and other material from the studio are reproduced to show how they evolved their initial ideas into working designs. Numerous views of the dancers’ rehearsals, the creation of the sets and the gallery installations, as well as dozens of stunning unseen photographs of the performances themselves, take the reader behind the scenes to see the many processes and people involved in transforming the artists’ vision into a finished production.
 

All three creative teams offer their own reflections on the project and on working with very different art forms. An introduction by National Gallery curator and originator of the project, Dr Minna Moore Ede, explains how the collaboration came to fruition and unfolded. A foreword by Dame Monica Mason, outgoing director of The Royal Ballet, completes this lavish volume.
 

MORE DETAILS

Special Edition
A limited edition of 250 copies is also available. Presented with three original signed artists’ prints in a clothbound clamshell case.
ISBN 978-1-908970-07-7 £750.00
 

Dr Minna Moore Ede is Assistant Curator of
Renaissance Paintings at the National Gallery, London,
and curator of ‘Metamorphosis: Titian 2012’.
 

Dame Monica Mason DBE is the former Director of The Royal Ballet, London.
 

The creative teams
Diana and Actaeon – Will Tuckett, Liam Scarlett, Jonathan Watkins, Chris Ofili and Jonathan Dove, with a libretto by Alasdair Middleton.

Machina – Wayne McGregor, Kim Brandstrup, Conrad Shawcross and Nico Muhly.

Trespass – Christopher Wheeldon, Alastair Marriott, Mark Wallinger and Mark-Anthony Turnage
 

www.artbookspublishing.co.uk