Books Featured at the Fair

Why Dance Matters

Mindy Aloff

Mindy Aloff, a journalist, an essayist, and a dance critic, analyzes dance as the ultimate expression of human energy and feeling. From her personal anecdotes, her engaging collection of stories about dance from around the world, or her description of the captivating photograph by Helen Levitt of two children dancing, which she sees as one embodiment of the mystery and joy that dancing can evoke, Aloff’s exploration of the aesthetic, social, and spiritual impacts of dance will prove spellbinding.

Aloff takes us on a journey through various forms of dance—rituals, religious observances, storytelling, musical interpretations—to show why dance matters to human beings. Interlaced with personal experiences, this book builds on analysis to reveal the intimate relationship we have with dance—personal, spiritual, soul-searching, medicinal, and entertaining. The ideas speak to both specialist and general readers.

Dance in America

Mindy Aloff

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 Here too are rare and hard-to-find texts, several previously unpublished, among them Jerome Robbins’s reflections on the secret of choreography and an inspiring commencement address from Mark Morris.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.

The Legat Legacy

Mindy Aloff

The Legat Legacy brings back into print two classic works that offer rare insights into the golden age of Russian ballet. The first, Ballet Russe: Memoirs of Nicolas Legat, takes readers into the last three decades of the Imperial Ballet before the 1917 Russian Revolution. Written by Nicolas Legat (1869–1937), one of the great creative geniuses of classical ballet, these memoirs recount Legat’s experiences as principal dancer before he fled to Europe to escape the Russian Civil War. The book is filled with memorable character descriptions and includes some of Legat’s unique, celebrated caricatures.

The second, Heritage of a Ballet Master: Nicolas Legat, is a valuable testament to Legat’s classroom pedagogy. Assembled by Legat student, professional dancer, and prolific author John Gregory (1914–1996) to showcase the four complete classes that Legat wrote out by hand for his student the ballet star André Eglevsky (1917–1977), this book also features several Legat classes remembered by other students. In addition, it contains music for the classes, Legat’s drawings, photographs of him in performance, and other archival material. It includes a brief biography of Legat and fascinating remembrances from his former students, among them Alicia Markova and Léonide Massine, and a forward by Alexandra Danilova. Marked by their variety and musicality, Legat’s teachings are preserved here for future generations of dancers to discover.

Refinding the Rules of Gravity

Anna Antongiorgi

'refinding the rules of gravity' by Anna Antongiorgi is a book full of the magic of moving to New York City. The poems reference Taylor Swift, but also Gertrude Stein. They’re sparks of comedy alongside heartache, and a healthy dose of nostalgia. In and among all of this, the collection is a story about getting back up: a dancer returning to dancing—happy, spunky, silly, devastating, fabulous dancing. This work speaks to the up, as well as the down, and the sometimes sideways motion of twenty-something confusion, conflict, curiosity, and joy.

The Dance of the Dolls

Lucy Ashe

A novel about obsessive love featuring two ballet dancers—identical twin sisters Olivia and Clara Marionetta—with a terrifying climax set in the world of ballet in pre-war London. The Dance of the Dolls tells the story of identical twin ballerinas rehearsing for Coppélia at the recently opened Sadler’s Wells Theatre. Superficially, even their differences are complementary: Olivia aspires to be the perfect ballerina while Clara is rebellious and independent. Clara takes up a relationship with the bohemian and passionate Nathan, a pianist at the theater. Meanwhile, Olivia is unaware that she has cast a spell on another frequent visitor to Sadler’s Wells: Samuel, a bashful apprentice ballet shoemaker who steals into the building as often as he can to watch her dance. But as the sisters rehearse, danger lurks. The story of Coppélia and the dancing doll threatens to become a dark and sinister reality. Olivia becomes jealous of Nathan’s adoration of Clara, while Clara discovers that being adored can feel suffocating. Samuel dreams of being recognized by Olivia and wonders how far he would go to achieve his goal, while Nathan, a musical child prodigy, struggles to adapt to adulthood and begins to blur the lines between reality and his dark fantasy world . . .

The Sleeping Beauties

Lucy Ashe

Late spring 1945, London: The war in Europe is over. But for Briar Woods, a dancer at Sadler’s Wells Ballet, the past resurfaces and she must come face to face with the truth. It feels as though her war has only just begun. Since 1939, Rosamund Caradon had taken in many children from Britain’s bombarded cities, sheltering them in her Devonshire manor. Now, with Germany’s surrender, she is en route to London to return the last evacuees, accompanied by her dance-obsessed daughter Jasmine. Rosamund vows to protect Jasmine from any peril, but a chance meeting with a Sadler’s Wells dancer changes everything. When the beautiful, elusive Briar Woods bursts into Rosamund’s train carriage, it’s clear her sights are set on the captivated Jasmine. As Briar sets out to charm them both, Rosamund cannot shake the eerie feeling this accidental encounter isn’t what it seems. While Briar may be far away from the pointe shoes and greasepaint of The Sleeping Beauty ballet rehearsals, her performance for Rosamund might just be her most successful yet. A dance that could turn deadly . . .

I Can Make a Water Dance

Karen Diaz Ensanian

I Can Make a Water Dance is a beautiful journey of art and poetry that takes children through the water cycle to create dance. The goal of I Can Make a Water Dance was to create a book that helps children make connections with the natural world and see themselves as part of it. The journey of the book follows the path of the water cycle from evaporation, condensation, precipitation and collection. Throughout the book, dancer images are paired with a question that sets readers on the path to creating their own water dances. By observing images of water and translating them into their own bodies, children begin to make dance. Dancers magically rise out of the mist, curl like splashes in the river, and sail as trailing clouds. The images and dynamic movement words demonstrate how the various stages of water move and dancers are part of the action. Young listeners learn how to transform themselves into water actions and develop their movement and science vocabulary.

The Dancing Light

Karen Diaz Ensanian

The Dancing Light is the second in a series of books created to facilitate dance making with children. The book exposes them to beautiful visual art, photos of diverse dancers demonstrating science concepts through their movement, and poetic verse and action words that help them understand LIGHT. By embodying this information, the student makes deep connections in their body, mind, to the world, and to the nature of light. This is an opportunity to learn by way of movement. Internalizing the information and imagery, students will gain a greater understanding of light and possibilities for creativity. Throughout the book there are questions that provide opportunities for children to find their own unique ways of moving. The journey of the book follows the path of light: light found in nature, light that is man-made, the way light moves through reflection and refraction, its importance for plant life, and finally what happens when light is blocked. Each of the thirteen original paintings by the author combined with the photos of dancers can also be used as a tool for creating dance lessons in the classroom that enrich the study of LIGHT. Paintings set the stage for the creation of dances with different light concepts such as sunlight, bioluminescence, shadows, electricity, lightning, reflection, refraction, and more. ‘Tips for Parents and Teachers’ in the back of the book offer a simple set of suggestions for structuring a dance. Everyone can find inspiration in the dance of light.

Aerial Dance: A Guide to Dance with Rope and Harness

Jenefer Davies

Aerial Dance: A Guide to Dance with Rope and Harness provides an introduction for the beginning aerialist. It covers rigging, equipment, advice on optimal conditioning, and a step-by-step guide to technique, including anatomical references, space and time considerations, and elements of force when working with and against gravity. Specific movements and choreography are framed anatomically and together reflect the pattern and order of an aerial technique class. Challenges inherent to this type of dancing are discussed, as well as wellness instruction and methods of altering these techniques for intermediate and advanced dancing. A companion website hosts video that corresponds with the technique and phrasing in the book.

The Art of Dance Composition: Writing the Body

Jenefer Davies

The Art of Dance Composition: Writing the Body is an introduction to modern dance composition, providing clear and structured approaches to designing and defining movement that demystify the creative process. The book introduces the concepts of creating authentic movement, processes for gathering and ordering compositional elements, and the ways in which theme, story, and design relate to bodies moving through space. It approaches the practice of composition from many avenues, including the use of digital tools such as video and video editing software, digital mapping, and motion capture, and through improvisation, sourced gestures, and inspiration from visual art, found objects, and chance methodology. Flowcharts that organize and provide a framework for making dance are included, equipping readers with a clear roadmap for creating their own work. Filled with practical advice, this book is suitable for all aspiring choreographers. This book includes access to performance videos that demonstrate the concepts illustrated in the book. To access the videos, visit www.daviesanddancers.com/links-to-writing-the-body.

The Simonson Legacy

Jeanne Donohue

After five years of biographical research, she published her first book in 2024, The Simonson Legacy, a 242-page coffee table biography of dance innovator Lynn Simonson. The Legacy follows the evolution of the Simonson Technique and the community of teachers and dancers that have shaped the dance world for many decades nationally, internationally, and in the heart of NYC. Artwork by Carol Prud'homme Davis. Graphic design by Christine Ruhnke. Foreward by Cynthia Pratt.

Corner

Douglas Dunn

Documentation of A dance by Douglas Dunn

Slow Dancing is Easy

Ara Fitzgerald

From Why Did Sarah Bernhardt Sleep in a Coffin? to The Invisible Circus of the Present Tense, Slow Dancing Is Easy blends humor and pathos in a genre fluid collection of short pieces that resonate with memoir, observations and fantasy chronicling one woman’s adventures over decades. Originally created for dance/theater stage performance, the works make an exuberant leap from stage to page. Written by Ara Fitzgerald, designed by Ola DeKorne, illustrated by the author’s whimsical line drawings and Peter Cunningham’s colorful photographs, Slow Dancing Is Easy is playful and inventive as it touches on love and loss in daily life and the search for resilience when confronted with today’s challenges. It is intended dance/theater, poetry aficionados, performers seeking solo material, and the adventurous general reader.

Moving Through Life: Essential Lessons of Dance

Naomi Goldberg Haas with Mikhaela Mahony

Moving Through Life traces the journey of influential dancer, teacher and choreographer Naomi Goldberg Haas, sharing her lifelong love of movement, her experiences with chronic health conditions, and accessible exercises for dancers pf all ages and abilities, Goldberg Haas encourages readers to integrate dance into their lives and to move with awareness creativity and joy.

La Nijinska: Choreographer of the Modern

Lynn Garafola

"La Nijinska: Choreographer of the Modern" is the first book-length study of ballet's premier female choreographer, Bronislava Nijinska. Overshadowed by her brother Vaslav Nijinsky, Nijinska was an architect of twentieth-century neoclassicism who created her greatest work under the transformative power of the Russian Revolution and the influence of its avant-garde. Many of her ballets probed gender boundaries even as her life reveals the sexism pervasive in the ballet world of her time and the barriers that women choreographers still confront. With a career that unfolded in Paris, St. Petersburg, Kyiv, Buenos Aires, New York, and Los Angeles (where she died), "La Nijinska" offers a wide-ranging history of twentieth-century ballet through the lens -- and words -- of a remarkable woman artist.

Silenced By the Weight of the Matriarchal Crown

Dicki Johnson Macy

The author, a Dance Therapist, utilizes Isadora Duncan theories and techniques as foundational in her trauma work with women and girls. The body is the vehicle for reclaiming lost voice. The book traces her adolescent coming of age and the restrictions that society placed upon her female identity development. Dance is woven through the memoir component but highlighted as a vehicle for positive identity development in the work that she developed for teen girls (later in the book).There is a chapter on the repression placed upon women, nature, and dance by the patriarchy.

Choreographing the Curriculum

Wendy Jones

Choreographing the Curriculum is an essential guide for dance educators. It is intended to transform traditional curriculum design into a collaborative, creative, and impactful experience. This workbook emphasizes the choreographic process, helping both new and experienced teachers build comprehensive dance programs that foster student engagement, creativity, and self-expression. With step-by-step planning tools, inspirational stories, and practical exercises, author Wendy Jones uses her over twenty years of experience in dance education to offer a fresh approach to bridging curriculum with choreography. From foundational lesson planning to exploring movement and collaboration, Choreographing the Curriculum is more than a workbook—it’s a tool kit for cultivating a thriving classroom environment where students and teachers create meaningful, inspiring dances together. Inside, you’ll discover -practical frameworks for unit and lesson planning aligned with dance-making goals -strategies to integrate movement research, choreography, and cultural history -tools for crafting performances that reflect both student voices and curriculum standards -real-life insights from the author’s teaching journey, guiding educators to balance creative ambition with classroom realities Ideal for dance teachers at any level, this workbook equips you to build a program that supports students’ artistic development and leaves them empowered to express themselves. Let Choreographing the Curriculum help you bring artistry, structure, and joy to every dance class.

Teaching and Learning Dance Through Meaningful Gestures

Anabella Lenzu

Teaching and Learning Dance Through Meaningful Gestures explores how technique is a philosophy and a theory, and how the body is an instrument for expression. Teaching in three languages - Spanish, English, and Italian —has had a profound effect on me: I have found clear explanations, metaphors, and stories that communicate my approach to training. I have written this book to foster dialogue and community between the three cultures that I have been a part of, to share the knowledge and experience I've gained over the past 35 years, and to advocate for thoughtful dance training. This book will serve current and future dancers and teachers as they continue to train and explore the professional world of dance. It is my hope that my experiences can guide young dancers as they embark on their own journeys. Lenzu has written for various dance and arts magazines and in 2013 published her first book, Unveiling Motion and Emotion, which contains writings in Spanish and English on the importance of dance, community, choreography, and dance pedagogy.

Unveiling Motion and Emotion/ Revelando Movimiento y Emoción

Anabella Lenzu

Exploring the importance of dance, community, choreography and dance pedagogy, Argentinean Choreographer Anabella Lenzu celebrates 20 years of teaching dance in a book of her writings in Spanish and English. Having opened her own dance school at 18, Lenzu recounts her experiences teaching in South America, Europe, and the US, as well as publishing an arts magazine and creating repertory for her dance company. Lenzu's eloquent prose reveals reflections of a life devoted to dance performance and education. Photography by Todd Carroll fully documents the performances and provides a glimpse into the creative process. This book is an inspiration to dancers and teachers alike, and the first of its kind as a bilingual text on dance pedagogy.

Modern Women: 21st Century Dance

Julie Lemberger

Championing living women dance artists- a coloring book that is creative, meditative and educational.

The Bennington School of the Dance

Elizabeth McPherson

The story of this groundbreaking summer dance program is told through the voices of staff, faculty, and students. Administrative director Mary Josephine Shelly’s previously unpublished writings form a key summary of eight of the nine summer sessions. The Bennington School of the Dance held classes from 1934 through 1942 at Bennington College in Vermont, with one summer spent at Mills College in California. Its effects were far-reaching in the development and dissemination of modern dance as an original American art form. The school produced unique choreographic works by teachers in residence: Martha Graham, Hanya Holm, Doris Humphrey, and Charles Weidman. Leading choreographers of the later 20th century such as Merce Cunningham, Anna Halprin, José Limón, Alwin Nikolais and Anna Sokolow participated at the school. The largest portion of students were high school and college level teachers who would spread modern dance across the country and abroad.

Milestones in Dance in the USA

Elizabeth McPherson

Embracing dramatic similarities, glaring disjunctions, and striking innovations, this book explores the history and context of dance on the land we know today as the United States of America. Designed for weekly use in dance history courses, it traces dance in the USA as it broke traditional forms, crossed genres, provoked social and political change, and drove cultural exchange and collision. The authors put a particular focus on those whose voices have been silenced, unacknowledged, and/or uncredited – exploring racial prejudice and injustice, intersectional feminism, protest movements, and economic conditions, as well as demonstrating how socio-political issues and movements affect and are affected by dance. In looking at concert dance, vernacular dance, ritual dance, and the convergence of these forms, the chapters acknowledge the richness of dance in today’s USA and the strong foundations on which it stands.

Physical Listening: A dancer's interspecies journey

JoAnna Mendl Shaw

This book describes the choreographic journey of the Equus Projects and simultaneously explores the intersection between sensing and thinking. Each chapter of the book follows the devising of a performance project, offers essays on lessons learned during that creation process and detailed somatic exercises that emerged during that phase of research. On her journey into the world of horses and equine training, Shaw began to fully realize that her dancer’s skill sets reached far beyond plies, pirouettes, performing and making dances. Beyond athleticism and artistry, the dancer’s movement intelligence and physical listening skills can powerfully inform our mode of communication, our ability to listen with curiosity and compassion and our ability to make nuanced and informed movement decisions.

Don't Sit Down, Reflections on Life and Work

Martha Myers,

Selected memoirs compiled and edited by Ara Fitzgerald and Stuart Pimsler

In Don’t Sit Down, Martha Myers speaks to us from the heart about the journey of her life unfolding as a celebrated dance creator and educator, tv personality, activist, wife and mother. For those of you among the many people inspired by her, this book will be a welcome opportunity to hear Martha in her particular and personal voice. Those of you meeting her for the first time should know that she is among a select group of visionaries who helped scatter the seeds of American dance.

Standing in Space

Mary Overlie

Mary Overlie created the Six Viewpoints as an answer to the question "What are dance and theater made of?" She sought out a technical language to discuss the artistic forms similar to that of the specific language used to describe painting. What followed was the development of a comprehensive language that simultaneously uncovered a philosophical depth to performance when deconstructed. The seed of the entire work of The Six Viewpoints is found in the simple act of standing in space. From this perspective the artist is invited to read and be educated by the lexicon of daily experience. The information of space, the experience of time, the familiarity of shapes, the qualities and rules of kinetics in movement, the ways of logics, that stories are formed and the states of being and emotional exchanges that constitute the process of communication between living creature. These are the six materials named in The Six Viewpoints that constitute basic deconstructed theater. Working directly with these materials the artist begins to learn of performance through the essential languages as an independent intelligence. The Six Viewpoints has achieved a unique position in the world of theater and performance philosophy; it maintains the quiet and infectious ability to represent itself without the author. Overlie joins those who have worked to elevate theater. Her leveling of the creative hierarchy by focusing on the materials has conceptually and practically infected the performance worlds of both theater and dance.

Dance History(s): Imagination as A Form of Study

Annie-B Parson and Thomas F. De Frantz

Dance History(s): Imagination as a Form of Study interrogates the history of dance from the embodied and poetic perspectives of choreographers. Authored by twelve diverse American dance artists in the form of twelve small booklets, it approaches and celebrates dance history as a subjective, artistic inquiry. Written by working choreographers, it reimagines and radicalizes our understanding of dance throughout human history. Simultaneously, the project is dedicated to the power of an artist-centric view of history itself, thus placing the history of dance back into the body, where it began. Here, history occurs in vertical layers of time and space, moving dance history into the street, the football field, the yard, the screen, the memory, the womb, the sky, and the future. Dance History(s): Imagination as a Form of Study enlarges and complicates the history of dance; it interprets history as unfixed, limitless, and prismatic. Edited by Annie-B Parson and Thomas DeFrantz.

The Choreography of Everyday Life

Annie-B Parson

A renowned choreographer explores the dance of everyday life and reveals that art-making is as natural as walking down the street. In this sparkling, innovative, fully-illustrated work, world-renowned choreographer Annie-B Parson translates the components of dance—time, proximity, space, motion and tone— into text. As we follow Parson through her days—at home, reading, and on her walks down the street—and in and out of conversations on everything from Homer’s Odyssey to feminist art to social protest, she helps us see how everyday movement creates the wider world. Dance, it turns out, is everything and everywhere. With the insight and verve of a soloist, Parson shows us how art-making is a part of our everyday lives and our political life as we move, together and apart, through space.

The Grand Union: Accidental Anarchists of Downtown Dance, 1970-1976

Wendy Perron

Focusing on the downtown improvisation collective that grew out of Yvonne Rainer's work.

Through the Eyes of a Dancer; Selected Writings

Wendy Perron

Selected writings over 40 years

The Daily Mirror 1976-2022

Wendy Perron

It's a time-travel flip book with photos from 1976 and 2022

Nourishing Dance: An Essential Guide on Nutrition, Body Image, and Eating Disorders

Monika Saigal

Nourishing Dance: An Essential Guide on Nutrition, Body Image, and Eating Disorders is written with an insider’s understanding of the unique needs and pressures of the dance world and the expertise of an eating disorder specialist, dietitian, clinician, and educator. This much-needed resource provides research-based, practical approaches to help dancers fuel optimally, nourish a peaceful relationship with food, and nurture more positive and resilient body image. Under-fueling, body dissatisfaction, eating disorders, and disordered eating are far too common among dancers. Despite the prevalence of these issues in dancers across genres, and their negative impacts on dancers’ physical and mental health and performance, they have not been adequately addressed in the dance community. Improving dancers’ health and well-being is necessary for both dancers and the art form to thrive, and everyone involved in the training and care of dancers can play an important role in this mission. Nourishing Dance provides essential information on nutrition, body image, and eating disorder prevention to help parents, teachers, staff, choreographers, leadership, athletic trainers, coaches, and healthcare professionals contribute to making the dance world a healthier and safer place for dancers.

Dancing with Georges Perec: Embodying Oulipo

Leslie Satin

Dancing with Georges Perec is an interdisciplinary exploration of the relationship of dance to the life and work of the remarkable Parisian-Jewish writer, Georges Perec (1936-1982). The book addresses art-making parallels of dance, writing (especially Oulipo, the Workshop for Potential Literature), and other fields, as well as their sociocultural and personal contexts. These include Perec's childhood loss of his parents in the Holocaust and the repercussions of that loss in the significance of the body, everydayness, space, and attention permeating his work. Dancing, framed as a performative autobiographical enactment of the author's relationship to Perec, offers Satin's dancerly experience of reading his work.

Dance We Do

Ntozake Shange

In her first posthumous work, the revered poet crafts a personal history of Black dance and captures the careers of legendary dancers along with her own rhythmic beginnings. Many learned of Ntozake Shange’s ability to blend movement with words when her acclaimed choreopoem for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf made its way to Broadway in 1976, eventually winning an Obie Award the following year. But before she found fame as a writer, poet, performer, dancer, and storyteller, she was an untrained student who found her footing in others’ classrooms. Dance We Do is a tribute to those who taught her and her passion for rhythm, movement, and dance. After 20 years of research, writing, and devotion, Ntozake Shange tells her history of Black dance through a series of portraits of the dancers who trained her, moved with her, and inspired her to share the power of the Black body with her audience. Shange celebrates and honors the contributions of the often unrecognized pioneers who continued the path Katherine Dunham paved through the twentieth century. Dance We Do features a stunning photo insert along with personal interviews with Mickey Davidson, Halifu Osumare, Camille Brown, and Dianne McIntyre. In what is now one of her final works, Ntozake Shange welcomes the reader into the world she loved best.

The Martha Graham Dance Company: House of the Pelvic Truth

Blakeley White-McGuire

What is the legacy of Martha Graham and why does it endure? How and why did the philosophy and subsequent canon of Martha Graham flood out into an artistic diaspora that is still a wellspring of inspiration for contemporary artists? How do dancers that have never studied with, or worked under, Martha Graham maintain her vision? All of these questions, and many more, are considered in this fascinating book, authored by one of the Martha Graham Company's ex-principal dancers, which illuminates the ongoing significance of the Martha Graham Dance Company almost 100 years after it was founded. Through doing so, we are offered a study of the history of the Martha Graham Dance Company - the longest-standing modern dance company in America, its international diaspora and the current generation of dancers taking up the mantel. Drawing on extensive interviews conducted for the book, the company's story is told through the experiences, inspirations, motivations and words of performers from Graham's iconic artistic lineage.

Thinking with the Dancing Brain: Embodying Neuroscience

Sandra Cerny Minton & Rima Faber

Thinking with the Dancing Brain examines the mind in action as it orchestrates skilled movement and how it understands the kinesthetic, symbolic language of dance. As seasoned dancers and dance educators, Sandra Minton and Rima Faber approach brain function from inside the body as embodiment of thought. Their neurological research about the thought processes in learning and performing dance encompasses a vision of dance as creative art, communication, education, and life. This book seeks to inform neuroscientists, educators, and dancers about the complex interdependence of brain localities and the networking of human neurology through an integration of physiology, cognition, and the art of dance.

Merce Cunningham Redux

James Klosty

James Klosty's Merce Cunningham was the first book ever published about Cunningham. It appeared in 1975 and was republished in 1986. Now, for the 100th anniversary of Cunningham's birth, it is reincarnated for a twenty-first-century audience in duotone printing, redesignedand completely reimagined with an additional 140pages of photographs, many published never before.

In the years since their passing, the historical importance of the partnership of John Cage and Merce Cunningham has grown to the point where no consideration of avant-garde art, music, and dance in America makes sense if Cunningham and Cage are not posited, serene and smiling, at the wellspring of its inspiration. This is true not only in America but around the globe as well.

Art does not exist in a vacuum and neither did Cunningham and Cage. Painters such as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, and Robert Morris, and composers such as Earle Brown, Christian Wolff, Morton Feldman, David Tudor, and Pauline Oliveros joined the endeavor. Jasper Johns slyly lured Marcel Duchamp into allowing his iconic Large Glass to be used as decor for a Cunningham dance. Cunningham repeatedly invited Erik Satie (without Satie's permission) into his musical family. This seemingly haphazard association of innovative artists served as the nearest thing America could offer in counterbalance to Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes.

Dancing Black, Dancing White: Rock 'n' Roll, Race, and Youth Culture of the 1950s and Early 1960s

Julie Malnig

Dancing Black, Dancing White . . . explores the highly popular phenomenon of the televised teen dance program. These teen shows were incubators of new styles of social and popular dance and both reflected and shaped social issues of the day. Often referred to as "dance parties," the televised teen dance shows helped cultivate a nascent youth culture in the post-World War II era. The youth culture depicted on the shows, however, was primarily white. Black teenagers certainly had a youth culture of their own, but the injustice was glaring--Black culture and expressivity was not always in evident display on the airwaves as television of the era, like the nation at large, was deeply segregated and appealed to what it perceived as a primarily white, homogenous audience. The crux of the study, then, is twofold: to explore how social and popular dance styles were created and disseminated within the new and burgeoning technology of television and to investigate how the shows both reflected and re-affirmed the racial politics and attitudes of the time.

The Still Point

Betti Franceschi

24 graphite drawings of dancers’ torsos.

Ageless Dancers

Betti Franceschi

Photographs of 40 important dancers ages 61 to 102, with bios, interviews and an essay by George Negroponte.

Ready Set Dance

Once Upon A Dance (Teacher Terrel and Ballerina Korona)

Meet Quinn Hops and Bella Beak—the most adorable duo to ever don ballet gear! Their hearts flutter with anticipation—it’s their very first dance class!

Will wobbly toes lead to whimsy, wiggles or woes?

Ready Set Dance: Getting Ready for My First Dance Class, where every misstep is a giggle. (Ages 3-6)

Choreographing Your Dance Career

Janaea Rose Lyn

From defining dreams to crafting strategies, Choreographing Your Dance Career is a unique and comprehensive resource for dancers, choreographers, directors, and educators in any genre or career stage. Written from the perspective of an experienced mentor, Janaea Rose Lyn guides you through the intricacies and challenges of personal and professional development. The overall focus is holistic, balancing career advice with approaches for enhanced physical and mental well-being. Artwork by Laura Higgins Palmer celebrates the spirit of dance. Practical, encouraging, and engaging, this handbook blends information, examples, and exercises with stories from the author’s life, providing the tools and guidance necessary for choreographing the career that only you can dance!

Broadway, Balanchine, and Beyond

Bettijane Sills with Elizabeth McPherson

In this memoir of a roller-coaster career on the New York stage, former actor and dancer Bettijane Sills offers a highly personal look at the art and practice of George Balanchine, one of ballet’s greatest choreographers, and the inner workings of his world-renowned company during its golden years. Sills recounts her years as a child actor in television and on Broadway, a career choice largely driven by her mother, and describes her transition into pursuing her true passion: dance. She was a student in Balanchine’s School of American Ballet throughout her childhood and teen years, until her dream was achieved. She was invited to join New York City Ballet in 1961 as a member of the corps de ballet and worked her way up to the level of soloist. Winningly honest and intimate, Sills lets readers peek behind the curtains to see a world that most people have never experienced firsthand. She tells stories of taking classes with Balanchine, dancing in the original casts of some of his most iconic productions, working with a number of the company’s most famous dancers, and participating in the company’s first Soviet Union tour during the Cold War and Cuban Missile Crisis. She walks us through her years in New York City Ballet first as a member of the corps de ballet, then a soloist dancing some principal roles, finally as one of the “older” dancers teaching her roles to newcomers while being encouraged to retire. She reveals the unglamorous parts of tour life, jealousy among company members, and Balanchine’s complex relationships with women. She talks about Balanchine’s insistence on thinness in his dancers and her own struggles with dieting. Her fluctuations in weight influenced her roles and Balanchine’s support for her—a cycle that contributed to the end of her dancing career. Now a professor of dance who has educated hundreds of students on Balanchine’s style and legacy, Sills reflects on the highs and lows of a career indelibly influenced by fear of failure and fear of success—by the bright lights of theater and the man who shaped American ballet.

The Choreography of Care

Stuart Pimsler

In these unprecedented times of stress and strain for healthcare providers across the globe, "The Choreography of Care" provides a helpful guide and insights to care for the caregiver.
This new book by Stuart Pimsler chronicles how the work of Pimsler and artistic co-director Suzanne Costello continues to respond to the needs of caregivers in professional settings and in homes.
It discusses strategies for bringing creative expression to the professional caregivers’ workplace, as well as the impact art has made on the healing community. These pages speak to the importance of keeping caregivers healthy by offering ideas for their self-care and wellness.
Included are specific movement, theater, writing, visual art, and vocal exercises, and directed improvisations for invigorating the practices of healers. Similarly, artists of all disciplines will learn about touchstone issues and techniques for collaborating with the healthcare community.

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American Dance Guild