Books About Dance

[kyriacarlisle]

I need to do some catching up on dance and dance history (the classic "librarian two books ahead of likely reference questions" approach). I'm especially interested in ballet and modern, though if there's a magnificent book about another dance form, I'm very glad to know about that, too.

Much though I loved them as a child, I'm not really looking for books like A Very Young Dancer or Life at the Royal Ballet School (although if you happen to be looking for a graphic novel about ballet, try Siena Cherson Siegel & Mark Siegel, To Dance). I'm also not so very interested in hagiography - in my usual field, I'd think of this as the ten zillion coffee table books about Maria Callas. On the other hand, if the photographs are simply too revelatory to pass up....

I'm reading Apollo's Angels now. I've already read Dance to the Piper, Winter Season, Off Balance, and Behind the Scenes at the Boston Ballet.

Comments

[ar]

Tap! by Rusty E. Frank is an enjoyable oral history of the dance form from 1900 to 1955. Each section gives you some background on the person being interviewed, and then it's just a bunch of Jane Withers or Ann Miller or whoever talking about their experiences. I bought the book for the sections on Donald O'Connor and Peggy Ryan, which are worth it just in themselves, but the whole thing is a really interesting look at the ways show business and dance intersected at the time.

[anne]

Seconded.

[kyriacarlisle]

Thank you! We have so many people working on film and musical theatre, that I'll bet this will be really useful.

And it'll give me an excuse to haul out the Top Hat DVD again.