Back Dance in America: A Reader’s Anthology

Dance in America: A Reader’s Anthology

Edited by Mindy Aloff

Spanning two centuries, 100 selections about the beauty and magic of American dance—from ballet and Balanchine to tap and swing.

With a foreword by Robert Gottlieb

Overview
News & Views
Table of Contents
Contributors

Overview

Story of the Week Carolyn Brown, “The VW Years”
April 7, 2020

Interviews “A project of self-transformation”—Benjamin Moser on the life and work of Susan Sontag
September 25, 2019

News Mindy Aloff: George Balanchine, the Shakespeare of dance—and our contemporary
January 8, 2019

From the beginning, American dance has been an exciting fusion of many disparate influences, with European traditions of ballet and social dancing encountering Native American rituals and African American improvisations to create something new and extraordinary. In this landmark collection, dance critic Mindy Aloff brings together an astonishing array of writers—dancers and dance creators, impresarios and critics, and enthusiastic literary observers—to tell the remarkable story of the artistry, innovation, and sheer joy of a great American art form. Here is dance in its many varieties and locales: from tap and swing to ballet and modern dance, from Five Points to Radio City Music Hall, and from the Lindy Hop to Michael Jackson’s Moonwalk.

With 100 selections spanning three centuries, this is the biggest and best anthology on American dance ever published. Here are the most acclaimed dance critics, including Edwin Denby, Joan Acocella, Lincoln Kirstein, Jill Johnston, and Clive Barnes; the most inventive and influential choreographers and dancers, among them George Balanchine, Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp, Allegra Kent, and Mikhail Baryshnikov; and a dazzling roster of literary figures, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, Hart Crane, Edmund Wilson, Langston Hughes, and Susan Sontag. Here too are rare and hard-to-find texts, including several previously unpublished, among them Jerome Robbins’s reflections on the secret of choreography and an inspiring commencement address from Mark Morris.

Brilliant profiles of unforgettable performers—Stuart Hodes on Martha Graham; John Updike on Gene Kelly; Alastair Macaulay on Michael Jackson—join incisive, often deeply personal pieces—Zora Neale Hurston on hoodoo ritual; Arlene Croce on dance in film; Yehuda Hyman on Hasidic dances—to form a one-of-kind reading experience every dance lover will cherish.

A twelve-page color insert presents iconic photographs of key figures from Isadora Duncan to Michael Jackson.

Mindy Aloff, volume editor, has taught dance criticism and history at Barnard College and serves as editor of the Dance Critics Association News and consultant to The George Balanchine Foundation. She is the author of Dance Anecdotes: Stories from the Worlds of Ballet, Broadway, the Ballroom, and Modern Dance (2006) and Hippo in a Tutu: Dancing in Disney Animation (2008) and the editor of Agnes de Mille’s Leaps in the Dark: Art and the World (2011). Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Atlantic, The Nation, The New Republic, and many other periodicals and anthologies.

This special publication features full-cloth case, Smyth-sewn binding, acid-free paper, and a unique design with specifications differing from those of Library of America series titles.

Project support for this volume was provided Brian J. Heidtke and other friends of Library of America.
News & Views

Story of the Week Carolyn Brown, “The VW Years”
April 7, 2020

Interviews “A project of self-transformation”—Benjamin Moser on the life and work of Susan Sontag
September 25, 2019

News Mindy Aloff: George Balanchine, the Shakespeare of dance—and our contemporary
January 8, 2019

Interviews Mindy Aloff: “Most writers . . . are fascinated by dancing”
December 14, 2018

Story of the Week Ruthanna Boris, “I Remember Balanchine”
December 7, 2018
Table of Contents

Foreword by Robert Gottlieb
Introduction by Mindy Aloff

Joan Acocella
800 Yards of Shiny Stuff [Black and Blue]
Patty McBride’s Last Bow
Rattled Bones [Kabuki]
Tutu Much [The Trocks]
Jack Anderson
Idealists, Materialists, and the Thirty-Two Fouettés
W. H. Auden
Ballet’s Present Eden—Example of The Nutcracker
Josephine Baker
The Casino de Paris (and Chiquita)
George Balanchine
Ballet in Films
The Crystal Palace
Letter to Lincoln Kirstein
Some Thoughts on Ballet in America
If I Were President
Whitney Balliett
New York Notes [Baby Laurence]
Clive Barnes
Paul Taylor
Lincoln Barnett
Fred Astaire
Mikhail Baryshnikov
Tribute to Balanchine
Black Elk and John Gneisenau Neihardt
The Horse Dance
Ruthanna Boris
I Remember Balanchine
Carolyn Brown
The VW Years [Radio City Music Hall]
Holly Brubach
A Classic “Beauty”
George Washington Cable
The Dance in Place Congo
Christopher Caines
The Sylph Inside Us [Antony Tudor]
George Catlin
Mandan Village, Upper Missouri
Janet Collins
Léonide Massine
Hart Crane
“To Portapovitch” [Ballets Russes]
Letter to Gorham Munson [Isadora Duncan]
Arlene Croce
Dance in Film
Adagio and Allegro [Suzanne Farrell, Merrill Ashley]
Edwin Denby
Merce Cunningham
The Function of a Technique for Dance
Nancy Dalva
Letter from Manhattan [Paul Taylor, Eiko and Koma]
Agnes de Mille
La Argentina
Rhythm in My Blood [on choreography]
Edwin Denby
Flight of the Dancer
A Briefing in American Ballet
Against Meaning in Ballet
Charles Dickens
Dancing at Five Points
Emily Dickinson
“I cannot dance opon my Toes”
Isadora Duncan
The Dance of the Future
Katherine Dunham
Thesis Turned Broadway
John Durang
The Greatest Dancer in America
Ralph Waldo Emerson
On Fanny Elssler
Barbara Milberg Fisher
Nightmare in Copenhagen [Tanaquil Le Clercq]
George Gelles
Outside Time, Out-of-Date [Watermill]
Nancy Goldner
Symphony in C
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Robert Gottlieb
Free Spirit [Isadora Duncan]
Farrell’s Revival of Don Q
Robert Greskovic
Merce Cunningham as Sculptor
Margaret Case Harriman
Dance Team
Marina Harss
Plainspoken [Mark Morris]
Stuart Hodes
(from) Onstage with Martha Graham
Jennifer Homans
The Universalist [Alonzo King]
Richard Howard
“Famed Dancer Dies of Phosphorus Poisoning” [Loïe Fuller]
Langston Hughes
“Dream Variation”
“Midnight Dancer”
Mister Jazz
Zora Neale Hurston
Hoodoo
Yehuda Hyman
Three Hasidic Dances
Jill Johnston
Lucidly Defined [Judson Dance Theater]
Deborah Jowitt
On Afternoon of a Faun
Two New Ballets at NYCB Glance Backward with Trick Glasses [Benjamin Millepied, Alexei Ratmansky]
Elizabeth Kendall
Ragtime
Allegra Kent
Memories of Madame Karinska
Lincoln Kirstein
The Music Hall, Revues, the Movies
Martha Graham
Popular Style in American Dancing
Balanchine and the Waltz
Anna Kisselgoff
Introduction to Bronislava Nijinska: Early Memoirs
Laura Leivick
Miss Brodie’s Swan [Anna Pavlova]
José Limón
(from) An Unfinished Memoir [Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey]
Alastair Macaulay
His Moves Expressed as Much as His Music [Michael Jackson]
Notice the Feet in That Body of Work
Where Light Replaces Sound, and Movement Offers Comfort [Sara Rudner, Dana Reitz, Jennifer Tipton]
Léonide Massine
(from) My Life in Ballet [The Roxy]
Johnny Mercer
“Arthur Murray Taught Me Dancing in a Hurry”
Mark Morris
Where I Come From
Commencement Speech, Longy School of Music
H. T. (Henry Taylor) Parker
A Dancer Whose Art Is All Her Own [Isadora Duncan]
Miss St. Denis Dances
Manifold Nijinsky
Claudia Roth Pierpont
Balanchine’s Temperaments
Megan Pugh
(from) Introduction: An American Style
Nancy Reynolds
Tribute to Maria Tallchief
Jerome Robbins
On Choreographing
Marcia B. Siegel
Dance Theatre of Harlem’s Nijinska
Prince of Lightness: Merce Cunningham (1919–2009)
Sally R. Sommer
An Appreciation: Gregory Hines
Susan Sontag
On Dance and Dance Writing
Paul Taylor
Black Mountain, Hell’s Kitchen, and Broadway
Walter Terry
Ballet on Ice [Catherine Littlefield]
Fantasia’s Dances
Twyla Tharp
(from) Push Comes to Shove [Jerome Robbins, George Balanchine]
Tobi Tobias
Mining the Past [Trisha Brown]
John Updike
Genial, Kinetic Gene Kelly
Carl Van Vechten
Maud Allan in Greek Dances
The Lindy Hop
Eloquent Alvin Ailey
David Vaughan
(from) Beautifully Dance: Anatole Obukhov
Edmund Wilson
The Finale at The Follies: Dress Rehearsal

Editor’s Note and Acknowledgments
Sources and Permissions
Index
Contributors

Joan Acocella
Jack Anderson
W. H. Auden
Josephine Baker
George Balanchine
Whitney Balliett
Clive Barnes
Lincoln Barnett
Mikhail Baryshnikov
Black Elk and John Gneisenau Neihardt
Ruthanna Boris
Carolyn Brown
Holly Brubach
George Washington Cable
Christopher Caines
George Catlin
Janet Collins
Hart Crane
Arlene Croce
Merce Cunningham
Nancy Dalva
Agnes de Mille
Edwin Denby
Charles Dickens
Emily Dickinson
Isadora Duncan
Katherine Dunham
John Durang
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Barbara Milberg Fisher
George Gelles
Nancy Goldner
Robert Gottlieb
Robert Greskovic
Margaret Case Harriman
Marina Harss
Stuart Hodes
Jennifer Homans
Richard Howard
Langston Hughes
Zora Neale Hurston
Yehuda Hyman
Jill Johnston
Deborah Jowitt
Elizabeth Kendall
Allegra Kent
Lincoln Kirstein
Anna Kisselgoff
Laura Leivick
José Limón
Alastair Macaulay
Léonide Massine
Johnny Mercer
Mark Morris
H. T. (Henry Taylor) Parker
Claudia Roth Pierpont
Megan Pugh
Nancy Reynolds
Jerome Robbins
Marcia B. Siegel
Sally R. Sommer
Susan Sontag
Paul Taylor
Walter Terry
Twyla Tharp
Tobi Tobias
John Updike
Carl Van Vechten
David Vaughan
Edmund Wilson

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