TRIBUTE TO BALLET, in poems by John Masefield and pictures by Edward Seago. by (Seago, Edward). Masefield, John - 1938.

New York: The Macmillan Company, 1938., 1938.. Very good. SIGNED BY 7 BALLET DANCERS, INCLUDING FREDERIC FRANKLIN - Quarto, 12-3/4 inches high by 10 inches wide. Blue cloth titled in gilt on the front cover and the spine. The corners are bumped and the spine and edges of the covers are faded. 72 & xiv plus [i] pages, illustrated with a tipped-in color frontispiece portrait of Michel Fokine, 8 tipped-in color, 4 full-page monochrome plates, and 14 pages of black and white illustrations bound in at the end. Among the black & white images are 3 illustrations depicting Frederic Franklin in "The Seventh Symphony", "Gaite Parisienne" and as "Prince Igor". Very good.

First trade edition.

Signed by seven ballet dancers on the front endpaper: Frederic Franklin, Tatiana Grantzeva, Lubov Rostova, Armand Picon, Bettina Orth and Kari Karnakoski.

Laid into the front of the book is an original 9 inch high by 6 inch wide softcover program for August 5 to 9, 1942 performances by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. The 16 page program includes performances by Frederic Franklin in "Scheherazade" and in "Gaite Parisienne".

The British-American ballet dancer Frederic Franklin (1914-2013), sometimes known as "Freddie" began his career dancing with Josephine Baker at the Casino de Paris. He went on to dance with the precursor to the Royal Ballet Company, the Vic-Wells Ballet and the Markova-Dolin Ballet. Franklin went on become the premier dancer with Leonide Massine's Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, and became the company's ballet master in 1944. He and Alexandra Danivola came to be regarded as legendary ballet partners. Performing works by Massine, Fokine, Bronislava Nijinska, Frederick Ashton, Balanchine, Agnes de Mille, Ruch Page and Velerie Bettis among others, Franklin performed with such accomplished ballerinas as Alicia Markova, Irina Baronova, Agnes de Mille, Moira Shearer, Tamara Toumanova, etc. He co-founded the Slavenska-Franklin Ballet in 1952 and later became co-director of the Washington Ballet. Franklin subsequently co-founded the National Ballet of Washington, D.C. and was its artistic director. Throughout his life, Franklin was associated with numerous companies, including the Dance Theatre of Harlem, and was featured in the documentary "Ballets Russes" in 2005.