book review

The Essential Jill Johnston Reader
Edited by Clare Croft
Duke University Press, 2024

Everyone knows that post-modern dance began at Judson Memorial Church in the early 1960s, but few people today remember what actually happened there. Luckily, the Village Voice was on the story, and sent its most daring critic to cover it. Jill Johnston’s columns of the 1960s and 70s have now been collected in a book, an invaluable chronicle of dance in the context of a social/

Book: "No Fixed Points. Dance in the 20th Century."
by Nancy Reynolds and Malcolm McCormick
Yale University Press, 2003
and recently reprinted

This book hits readers like a space rock, all 907 pages of it. Its authors, Nancy Reynolds and the late Malcolm McCormack (1927 - 2018) were dancers and have proven themselves to be scholars. My only real objection to the current edition is the difficulty of holding such a thick book in one's hands or even resting it

Book: "Todd Bolender, Janet Reed, and the Making of American Ballet"
by Martha Ullman
West University Press of Florida, 2021
388 pages with black/white photos

The noisiest individual about nationality in dance in the America of the 20th Century was Lincoln Kirstein - sponsor, writer, would-be patriot. Never mind that the choreographer he admired the most, George Balanchine, was from Russia by way of Serge Diaghilev's international Ballets Russes. Kirstein advocated against what he considered the "superficial" Americanism

Book: Francis Cunningham 
5 Continents Editions ($55)
March 18, 2021

A magic moment sometimes at a performance is when the curtains have parted but nothing yet has happened. One's awareness is acutely that of the stage space. The dancers, if already present, are about to be in motion - which differs  from standing still.  Many of Francis Cunningham's paintings and drawings give me the feeling that what is depicted is a theater's stage when things are

Balanchine Variations, by Nancy Goldner
University Press of Florida, 2008 & 2021

Books are selling in this era of the coronavirus quarantine, and University Press of Florida has republished critic Nancy Goldner's 2008 "Balanchine Variations" in which she admires, analyzes and annotates 20 ballets by George Balanchine (1904 - 1983), a  colossus among choreographers. Included in the works discussed are two of Balanchine's earliest surviving ones and also some of his last.

Goldner uses description from her memories of

“The Grand Union: Accidental Anarchists of Downtown Dance: 1970-1976”
by Wendy Perron
Wesleyan, 2020

The Grand Union existed for a mere six years, from 1970 to 1976. Yet its performances were legendary, in good part because a number of its members were among the brightest lights of postmodern dance. Would we still be interested in the Grand Union if it had not included Yvonne Rainer, Steve Paxton, David Gordon, Tricia Brown, Doug Dunn, and Barbara Dilly? I suspect not.

Important,

"Balanchine's Mozartiana - The Making of a Masterpiece"
by Robert Maiorano and Valerie Brooks
Freundlich Books, New York, 1985

Not new, this book about the making of a ballet remains an important item of danced literature. Its principal author, Robert Maiorano, was a dancer with New York City Ballet for 15 years, beginning in 1961. For the company's Tchaikovsky Festival in 1981, Maiorano asked Balanchine's permission to attend rehearsals for his announced new "Mozartiana" that would be premiered at

“Naked Truth – Viennese Modernism and the Body”
by Alys X. George
University of Chicago Press, 2020

Look carefully at the picture on the cover of this book. It shows a naked woman dancing. Her face is turned away so that only part of her profile appears. Her torso seems somewhat flattened, like that of an ancient Egyptian image. The arms and hands are held lightly away from  the body’s center of gravity. The lines of the long legs

"Out Loud, a Memoir"
by Mark Morris and Wesley Stace
Penguin Press, New York, 2019

This book is a cross between an autobiography by dancer, choreographer, dance company director and opera stager Morris and a biography of Morris by novelist and recording artist Stace. I am fairly familiar with Morris's work but had not before encountered any of Stace's. The writing took place when Morris (born 29 August 1956) was 62 years old - mature but, presumably, not at career's

"The Fascist Turn in the Dance of Serge Lifar"
by Mark Franko
Oxford University Press, UK, 2020

Before tackling this exhaustive and exhausting book about the controversial Serge Lifar by Mark Franko, who is a widely published critic and a professor at the University of California's Santa Cruz campus, I suggest that readers review what is generally known about Lifar (1905 - 1986) as a dancer, choreographer, company director, commentator on dance and as a person. I encountered

Book: Edwin Denby – His Life, His Dance Essays, His Poetry
Author: William Dunas
Publication: 2008 in Woodside, NY, USA

This home-made book is a proposal for producing a professionally printed book. The proposal consists of many un-numbered pages of text contained in a black 3-ring folder. The text is photocopied only on the frontside of each sheet of firm white paper. On the cover is the basic bibliographic information and a 1964 drawing by Red Grooms of Denby in profile

Book: “Alles tanzt” issued by Andrea Amort
Published in 2019 by Vienna’s Austrian Theater Museum and Berlin’s Hatje Cantz

This big, weighty volume (almost 380 pages, 10.7 x 8.5 x 1.7 inches) has a German text with English summaries. In addition to the summaries, its plentiful and plush illustrations are proving to be of interest to those who do not read German. The book  served as catalog for the exhibit “Cosmos of Vienna Dance