"Undoubtedly, Choreography and Narrative is an important contribution to dance history research." -Nineteenth-Century French Studies"This work is a landmark in the field and belongs in all libraries serving undergraduate, graduate, and faculty researchers in dance." -Choice"Invents a new method for writing the history of performance: Foster has found an innovative way of appealing directly to the kinesthetic imagination of her readers, evoking the elusive styles of the pieces she reconstructs." -Joseph Roach"An impressive work of scholarship, this elegantly staged study . . . uses the concept of a culturally constructed, historically specific body to cut across disciplinary boundaries . . ." -Library JournalFoster examines the development of ballet, and conceptions of the dancing body, as ballet separated from opera and emerged as an autonomous art form during the turbulence of 18th-century French society and history.