Barbara File Marangon received her ballet training at Balanchine’s School of American Ballet. She danced professionally under contract with the Stadttheater of Klagenfurt in Austria. During her career she has danced in a variety of famous venues such as the Metropolitan Opera, Madison Square Garden, New York World’s Fair, and Italy’s historical Teatro Goldoni in Venice.
Before Carla Fracci’s appointment, Barbara was the choreographer for the Italian Renaissance Festival, La Dama Castellana, for five years.
At the International Dance Grand Prix in Barcelona, Spain, her dancers won a Best Ballet Award for their interpretation and her choreography of L’après midi d’un faune.
She has restaged full-length classical ballets including The Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Firebird, Petrouchka, the musical On Your Toes, and assisted in productions of Swan Lake, Pas de Quatre, Harlequinade, and the opera, Lucia di Lammermoor.
Barbara has an MFA in Dance from the University of Oklahoma where she taught and was the recipient of the Ballets Russes Fellowship.
She is available for teaching and coaching ballet, lecturing, re-staging, and choreography.
Passion and Elegance: How Flamenco and Classical Ballet Met at the Ballets Russes
This book commences with the history of Indian, Egyptian, Arab, and flamenco dance, then compares and contrasts the history of both classical ballet and flamenco.
The book outlines the early roots of flamenco in India, and the journey of the Romani through the Middle East and Europe up to their final destination in Spain. Alongside this, the history of classical ballet is detailed from its beginning in Italy to its later development in France. The book spans the period from the temples of India to Massine’s Spanish ballet, The Three-cornered Hat, for the Ballets Russes. The chronicle of flamenco's journey from India to Spain is important to understanding the development of classical ballet as it relates to The Three-cornered Hat, which is the culmination of the story. The evolution of costumes, space, scenery, and props is examined along with the historical parallels.
This exploration is set to inspire and encourage choreographers to partner other dance forms with ballet as Leonide Massine did with flamenco in The Three-cornered Hat while also challenging the anthropological idea of the language of dance movement tracing the migration of people.
BUY ON AMAZONReader Review
“It is a great pleasure to endorse Barbara File Marangon’s book on flamenco and the Ballets Russes in which she explores one of the richest periods in the history of ballet layered with the enduring and evocative art of flamenco. As a disciplined and thorough researcher, Marangon has created a book that will no doubt be of great value as a text, but it is also an intriguing read as it recounts in detail the dynamic intersection of flamenco and ballet in the early part of the last century.” --Professor Mary Margaret Holt, Dean, Weitzenhoffer Family College of Fine Arts, Chair, Regents’ Professor, and Nichols Presidential Professor, University of Oklahoma