The complete 8-year curriculum of Leningrad's famed Vaganova Choreographic School, which trained Nureyev, Baryshnikov, and Makarova, including over 100 photographs. A volume which no teacher, scholar, or student of the dance can afford to miss. “A serious, indeed indispensable, textbook.” –Clive Barnes

A Killer Life is a book about just that: the killer life of an alternative film producer who's forged her own path of success between the disparate pillars of art and commerce. Strong, steady, creative, loyal, funny, artistic, and doggedly determined to produce films that have meaning and substance and staying power in the pantheon of great cinema, Christine Vachon, a member of the Academy and born and bred on the realistic, unforgiving streets of New York City, is one of the most important people working behind the scenes in the film industry today. How did she get there? Why do directors love her? What does it take to produce great movies? What happened on the set of Kids? These answers and more are in her book!

This practical reference manual, with its precise, authentic instructions on how to speak in more than 100 dialects, has established itself as the most useful and comprehensive guide to accents available, now increased by a third in this revised printing. As before, the accents range from regional U.S. and British dialects to European accents that include, among others, the Germanic, Slavic and Romance Languages. Completing his around-the-world journey, the author then covers the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Includes two CDs.

While television commercials often elicit groans from the viewer, they mean work for actors and can be the bread-and-butter backbone of an actor's career, providing a safety net of income while he or she climbs the ladder to greater success. And for those actors who achieve face-to-product recognition, commercial work can provide handsome residuals for years to come. While many books on the market include some information on commercial work, Acting in the Million Dollar Minute deals exclusively with the art and business of acting in commercials. Here the “art” is narrow: script terminology and procedure, commercial dialogue, camera staging, working the product, sample commercial scripts, and detailed analysis of how a commercial is actually shot; while the “business” side, reflecting the general industry, broadens to include training, photos, the resume, unions, actor-agency contracts, the interview, the screen test, callbacks, pay and working conditions, and a complete list of SAG and AFTRA offices. In this revised and updated edition, this book provides direction on how to: Decipher the meaning behind the commercial script; Begin and end every commercial performance; Get the auditioners' attention immediately when the camera begins rolling; Compel the auditioners, with the sheer force of your performance, to actually watch your playback tape; Take the camera from another actor (i.e. upstaging); Give the director a performance that makes his or her job easier in the editing room.

Blumenfeld convincingly argues that the basic techniques of acting apply whether the actor is performing onstage or in a sound studio. Numerous practice exercises help the actor to speak the words of a text that can be enhanced by the varying sounds of the human voice.