REVIEWS 891 resoundingly in Stravinsky’s music, the collective will heard over against that of the individual, be that of an enduring truth or demanding God rather than that of a fascist?’ (p. 282). Royal Academy of Music Anthony Gritten Caddy, Davinia. The Ballets Russes and Beyond: Music and Dance in Belle- Époque Paris. New Perspectives in Music History and Criticism. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 2012. xvi + 237 pp. Illustrations. Music examples. Notes. Select bibliography. Index.£60.00: $99.00. Thoroughly researched and lovingly written, this engaging study of the Ballets Russes in Paris interrogates the gestural relationships between music and dance via a cultural musicological approach. Based at the University of Auckland, Davinia Caddy is a musicologist with publications exploring early twentieth-century French music and dance of the Ballet Russes period. Her book takes a broad perspective, acknowledging both music and dance, and also design and text. The interdisciplinary discussion is rich and raises many questions which are challenged across five chapters, each providing a case study of a particular work or issue. The topic is tackled in a cohesive and probing manner. Significant themes are addressed throughout this volume, and subheadings easily guide the reader along Caddy’s argument. The book is timely, coming just after the Ballet Russes’s centenary (2009) and various exhibitions/conferences (which propagated new volumes on the Ballets Russes, including Jane Pritchard and Geoffrey Marsh (eds), Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes 1909–1929, London, 2010). The new perspective Caddy aims to project is a welcome view of what might have become an old, still fascinating, re-told story. Caddy aims to reassess the Ballets Russes by ‘pull[ing] on the reins of the Ballets Russes bandwagon’, so as to question the aesthetic of particular works in their interdisciplinary socio-cultural context. The book utilizes a plethora of primary source material to look ‘afresh’ at the ‘kinds of discourse’ (p. 14) which were applied to reception of the company. Caddy points out divergence and convergence between the arts of music and dance which were often discussed by appropriating the cultural semantics of the day, for example, military terminology (pp. 127–35). This ‘“alternative” study’ explores the ‘historical, intellectual and aesthetic conditions on which press criticism was inevitably contingent’ (p. 115). Overall, she recognizes characteristics of the Ballets Russes which ‘may afford new perspectives on dance during the belle époque’ (p. 14). The book begins by setting the balletic context. Caddy questions how the company bears affinity to the Parisian ‘cultural phenomena’ (p. 17) and details where significant juxtapositions arise. She details the musicological approach SEER, 91, 4, OCTOBER 2013 892 to dance with specific reference to the construction of meaning, mimesis, gesture and narrative, and provides a personal, reflective introduction which gives the reader a feel for her enthusiasm. This accessible tone continues throughout the book. Chapter two ‘attempt[s] an awakening’ of the state of ballet at the Opéra in pre-First World War Paris, with reference to La Fête chez Thérèse. It explores a wide range of reviews in the Parisian press, using critics as a barometer to assess the balletic climate and the metaphors and ideas which are used to ascertain its value, or to impose value to it. Welcoming the challenge to offer new insight into well trodden territory, Caddy, in chapter three, turns her attention to the ‘hackneyed subject’ (p. 67) of Nizhinskii’s L’Après-midi d’un faune. She questions how Nizhinskii’s choreography ‘conceptualizes’ (p. 73) Debussy’s score, providing evidence that the diegesis resides in all the elements of the production (p. 87). Her interpretation foregrounds the ‘play between obviousness and obscurity’ (p. 97), challenging what the music-dance combination means, and asserting that ascribing meaning ‘may no longer be the point’ (p. 100). Reference to medical journals and contemporaneous hypnosis provides a refreshing contribution to the discourse, as it links Nizhinskii’s choreography to contemporaneous medical concerns. The fact that the Faune ‘resists musicology’ is the point: as Caddy notes, the work ‘contains the seeds of its own understanding’ (p. 114). The metaphors used by the press are the focus of...