Heroism And The Harem Analysis

As I was reading “Heroism and the Harem” for the first time, I caught myself getting caught up in the elegant writing style Jowitt used to describe the nineteenth century ballerina. On page 49 of the text, we are introduced to “she”. The woman she described was “Persian, Indian or Moorish”. She was also described as provocatively beautiful”, a woman who danced on her toes. She was a ballerina of the nineteenth century. This introduction stuck out to me because of the fairytale like way the ballerina was described. Throughout the reading, I was drawn in by the interesting history of the nineteenth century ballerina, however I did find the reading difficult to sift through when it came down to finding facts. In the first few pages of “Heroism …show more content…
Throughout my time at Meredith, I began to see a very clear connection between all of my classes in the dance major. When reading, “Heroism and the Harem”, I began to think about how this assignment connects to previous classes and this class in general. My roots in dance history began in high school when I decided to do my senior project on dance history. This assignment included a eight page research paper. Although dance history was not taught at my school, I began researching dance history anyway, creating a timeline, including references. This reading touches on things I was aware of, such as the themes orientalist brought to the nineteenth century ballet. This reading is also related to previous experiences with dance history because of its detailed history of the nineteenth century ballet. The author does a good job setting the scene in the first three pages, including regions of the world, dates and literature from the time period. In our classes so far, we have started with the most basic facts of the time period, such as Baroque dance beginning roughly in 1660 and evolving from the French courts. The Jowitt text would be a good resource to reference for information about this time period for future papers and