World-class review of ballet and dance.
During her 15 years dancing with American Ballet Theatre, Melanie Hamrick always brought a book to rehearsal. “Sometimes if it wasn’t my cast—and because I’d done “Swan Lake” so many times—I’d try to sneak a book in my lap,” she remembers.
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In her new biography, The Swans of Harlem, journalist Karen Valby is witness to the testimony of five pioneering Black ballerinas intimate with the founding history of Dance Theatre of Harlem.
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In Deborah Jowitt’s new biography of Martha Graham, Errand into the Maze, the iconic dancer and choreographer is made new, and radical, again.
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Thinking of a ballet-world novel, there are certain things that might come to mind: an illicit relationship between a young female dancer and a (usually significantly) older male choreographer, a backstabbing betrayal between dancers who compete for said choreographer’s attention, glass in pointe shoes as revenge . . . You know the drill. All these tropes—and more—are thrown out the window in Chloe Angyal’s debut novel, Pas de Don’t.
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Broadway Bodies is dedicated to “anyone who has ever been told they were too fat, too short, too gay, too disabled, and otherwise too much or not enough to be in a musical.” The book, written by musical theater scholar Ryan Donovan, examines the ways different aspects of identity have historically affected casting on the Great White Way, using shows like A Chorus Line, Dreamgirls, and La Cage aux Folles as case studies to illustrate the issues that arise when bodies are used as an artistic medium.
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In her latest book, Don’t Think, Dear: On Loving and Leaving Ballet author Alice Robb calls New York City Ballet co-founder George Balanchine her “problematic fave.” Especially as the dance world continues to examine many of the darker aspects of the famed choreographer’s influence on ballet culture, this is a sentiment that many of us—myself included—seem to be echoing.
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“Dancing was about learning to disassociate,” the narrator of Lola Lafon’s 2022 novel Reeling informs us early on. “Feet like daggers, wrists like ribbons. Power and languor. Smiling despite persistent pain, smiling despite nausea.” This declaration, only five or so pages in, strikes as piercingly as the daggers Lafon imagines for feet. What in this compulsion towards violence, I wondered, is so imperative when telling a story about dance? Scarcely a narrative arises that is not characterized by gruesome extremes. Black Swan, with its body horror, comes to mind, as does Gelsey Kirkland’s 1986 memoir Dancing on My Grave, infamous...
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Mindy Aloff’s new book Why Dance Matters is part of a series, published by Yale University Press, on why this or that thing should matter to the reader. The series has already taken on such subjects as architecture, translation, poetry, and acting. And as of next January, it will include Aloff’s meditation on the many ways dance enters and alters our lives. At different points in her career, Aloff has been a poet, a dance critic, an essayist, a teacher, the editor of the anthology Dance in America, and the author of Hippo in a Tutu: Dancing in Disney Animation....
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Jennifer Homans, The New Yorker’s dance critic, has written a must-read biography, Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century. While plenty of ink has been spilled about the iconic choreographer, what makes Homans’s work distinct is her ability to get inside his head and capture his spiritual and personal life in graceful, poetic prose. Reading this monumental work felt like a full-bodied experience.
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Meg Howrey’s engaging new novel, They’re Going to Love You—her fourth—immerses readers in the ballet world. As a former ballerina, this is a place with which Howrey is intimately familiar. The plot revolves around a 40-something choreographer/erstwhile dancer, Carlisle, and her estranged father and his partner, James, both of whom are also in the dance world.
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Meg Howrey isn’t interested in clichés. The professional dancer turned novelist’s approach to writing, especially when it comes to portraying ballet, is rooted in authenticity, nuance, and honesty. Her latest book, They’re Going To Love You, set to be released on November 15, 2022, is filled with these qualities.
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To many dancers, Balanchine is a figure so imbued with history, he’s almost not real. He lives on through his 465 works, which we study in dance history classes, watch onstage, and—if we’re lucky—learn ourselves. He’s almost been stripped of humanity, raised up to such a high status that it’s easy to forget that he—in his own words—“pulled the toilet chain for the same reason you do.” Toni Bentley, and her latest book, Serenade, are here to remind us.
PlusWatching Matthew Bourne's reworked version of the “star-cross'd lovers,” I was briefly reminded of Veronica, played by Winona Ryder, in the dark 1988 comedy by Daniel Waters and Michael Lehmann, Heathers, and her line, “my teen angst bullshit has a body count.” Yes, this is the darker side of Bourne's repertoire,...
PlusThe choreographer Alexei Ratmansky reflects on the war in Ukraine, the connection between geopolitics and ballet, and joining the house of Balanchine.
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Beneath blue California skies, manicured trees, and the occasional hum of an overhead airplane, Tamara Rojo took the Frost Amphitheater stage at Stanford University to introduce herself as the new artistic director of San Francisco Ballet.
PlusAfter a week of the well-balanced meal that is “Jewels”—the nutritive, potentially tedious, leafy greens of “Emeralds,” the gamy, carnivorous “Rubies,” and the decadent, shiny white mountains of meringue in “Diamonds”—the New York City Ballet continued its 75th Anniversary All-Balanchine Fall Season with rather more dyspeptic fare.
PlusAn “Ajiaco” is a type of soup common to Colombia, Cuba, and Peru that combines a variety of different vegetables, spices, and meats.
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