Choreography Observed
- Author: Anderson, Jack
In a series of sharply perceived essays that served originally as dance reviews, Anderson comments astutely on the art of choreography. This is not only a useful way to organize a book of dance...
Choreography Observed
- Author: Anderson, Jack
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In a series of sharply perceived essays that served originally as dance reviews, Anderson comments astutely on the art of choreography. This is not only a useful way to organize a book of dance...
About
For over twenty years Jack Anderson has been writing about dance performances. His essays and reviews have appeared in daily newspapers, specialist monthlies, and critical quarterlies. For the last ten years he has been a dance critic for the New York Times.
In Choreography Observed, Jack Anderson has selected writings that focus most directly on choreographers and choreography in order to illuminate the delights and problems of dance and to reveal the nature of this nonverbal but intensely expressive art form.
His essays and reviews deal with individual choreographers from Bournonville, Petipa, and Fokine to Balanchine, Paul Taylor, Meredith Monk, and Pina Bausch; individual works are also discussed in detail, such as Nijinsky's Afternoon of a Faun,Antony Tudor's Pillar of Fire, Alvin Ailey's Flowers, and Kei Takei's Light. Other pieces focus on the Baroque dance revival, contemporary multimedia dance theatre, choreography for men, the complex relationship between ballet and modern dance, and how—and how not—to revive the classics.
No other book—especially no other selection from the work of a single critic—has dealt with choreography in such an original and focused way. Anderson brings his trained eye and wide experience in the arts to bear on dance while stressing the primacy of the choreographer as auteur. By refusing to get bogged down in highly technical terminology, he makes his insights available to a wide range of readers interested in expanding their understanding of this ever more popular art form.
Contents
- Introduction and Acknowledgments
- One
- Thinking about Choreography
- Confessions of a Choreography-Watcher
- Will Choreography Ever Be Respected as an Art Form?
- Idealists, Materialists, and the Thirty-Two Fouettes
- Why Doesn't the Prince Stay to Watch Aurora Dance?
- Two
- Out of the Past
- The World of Eighteenth-Century Dance Comes Back to Life
- Staging the Classics Is Not So Simple as It Seems
- The Great World and the Small: Refletions on the Bournonville Festival
- Fokine The Undervalued Revolutionary
- Legends in the Flesh
- Joffrey Brings Back Its Faune
- Massine's Parade
- Nijinska's Les Noces
- Annabelle Gamson as Isadora
- When Ballroom Dances Take to the Stage
- Three
- Some Contemporary Masters
- The Glorious Unpredictability of George Balanchine
- By Any Name, It's Still an Imperial Ballet
- Balanchine's Schumann
- The View from the House Opposite: Some Aspects of Tudor
- Party Manners and Fredrick Ashton
- A Month in the Country
- Robbins's New Ballet May Mean Many Things
- Some Personal Grumbles about Martha Graham
- A Heady Season
- Dances about Everything and Dances about Some Things
- Moments Called Now
- Four
- Ballet Makers
- Grigorovich and the Bolshoi
- Talking to Myself about Eliot Feld
- Neumeier in Hamburg
- Kylian and Netherlands Dance Theatre
- Five
- The Ever-Modern
- Paul Taylor: Surface and Substance
- Taylor's Rites
- Ailey's Flowers
- Judson Revivals: A Festival Benefit
- Yvonne Rainer: The Puritan as Hedonist
- Steve Paxton's Improvisations
- The Changing Faces of Twyla Tharp
- Trisha Brown's Minimalism
- New Dances That Made Audiences Think
- Patterns and Spinning Are Only Part of It
- How Not to Get Trapped in a Choreographic Rut
- Some of Her Choreographic Brainchildren Are Real Brats
- Dana Reitz Performs
- Six
- Images in Action
- Parades and Changes
- Initiations and Transformations
- Monk's Inimitable Images
- Lazarus, a Multimedia Event
- Phoebe Neville's Enigmas
- Three Views of Orpheus
- Plotless Dance-Drama That Deals in Emotions
- Pina Bausch's Hippo
- Kei Takei
- Eiko and Koma Control Time
- How Avant-Garde Works Resemble Romantic Classics
- Seven
- Problems and Prospects
- Classics Comics
- The Rise of the Male Ensemble
- Is Ballet Diluting Modern Dance?
- Balanchine's Choreographic Influence: Pluses and Minuses
- New Is Not Always Better
- An Essay on Dance Criticism
- Index
Awards and reviews
In a series of sharply perceived essays that served originally as dance reviews, Anderson comments astutely on the art of choreography. This is not only a useful way to organize a book of dance criticism, it is also fascinating. Here a critic obviously passionate about the creation of dance as well as the execution of the art form arranges his dance criticism over the years by types of choreography....Anderson is clearly interested in the psychological and historical aspects of successful choreography but, beyond that, is sometimes mesmerized by the beauty of the dance. These essays, like good dancing, do not date and should be read by anyone interested in the performing arts
