Writing in the Dark, Dancing in the New Yorker

by Croce, Arlene

• ISBN13: 9780813029139
• ISBN10: 0813029139
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-09-26
• Publisher: Univ Pr of Florida

Summary

The best of America's best writer on dance For twenty-five years, Arlene Croce wasThe New Yorker'sdance critic, a post the magazine created expressly for her. Her entertaining, forthright, passionate reviews and essays revealed the logic and history of ballet, modern dance, and their postmodern variants to a generation of theatergoers. This volume contains her most significant and provocative pieces-over a fourth of which never appeared in book form-covering classical ballets, the rise of George Balanchine, the careers of Twyla Tharp, Mark Morris, and Merce Cunningham, and the controversies surrounding many of the twentieth centuryrs"s great dance companies.

Author Biography

From 1973 to 1998, Arlene Croce explored the world of dance for readers of the New Yorker. She is the author of The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book, Afterimages, Sight Lines, and Going to the Dance.

Table of Contents

Writing in the Dark	3	(10)
THE SEVENTIES
Joffrey Jazz	13	(9)
Ailey and Revelations	22	(8)
Cunningham at Westbeth	30	(5)
The Blue Glass Goblet, and After	35	(10)
Royal Jitters	45	(7)
Glimpses of Genius	52	(5)
Makarova's Miracle	57	(5)
The Two Trockaderos	62	(6)
Taylor and Nureyev on Broadway	68	(3)
Blind Fate	71	(5)
Over the Rainbow	76	(5)
New Boy in Town	81	(5)
Back to the Forties	86	(6)
Farrell and Farrellism	92	(6)
Free and More Than Equal	98	(6)
Going in Circles	104	(7)
American Space	111	(4)
It's a Wise Child	115	(4)
Congregations, Criticism, and a Classic	119	(7)
Separate Worlds	126	(8)
An American Giselle	134	(4)
The End of the Line	138	(9)
Momentous	147	(7)
More or Less Terrific	154	(6)
Two by Balanchine	160	(6)
Home to Bournonville	166	(7)
Isadora Alive	173	(3)
Baryshnikov's Nutcracker	176	(6)
Notes on a Natural Man	182	(6)
A Hundred Ways to Make a Dance	188	(5)
White Turning Gray	193	(3)
The Godmother	196	(6)
Prose into Poetry	202	(5)
Adagio and Allegro	207	(3)
Broadway Downbeat	210	(6)
Arts and Sciences and David Gordon	216	(4)
On Video, On Tap	220	(8)
The Spoken Word	228	(5)
Balanchine's Petipa	233	(8)
Repertory Dead and Alive	241	(9)
Nureyev as Nijinsky, Babilee as Babilee	250	(7)
Ballet Alert	257	(4)
Blue and White	261	(8)
Kylian and His Antecedents	269	(7)
Theory and Practice in the Russian Ballet	276	(8)
Trooping the Colors at Covent Garden	284	(13)
THE EIGHTIES
Swing Street Revisited	297	(5)
Doin' the Old Low Down	302	(7)
Le Sacre without Ceremony	309	(5)
Slowly Then the History of Them Comes Out	314	(11)
Heart of Darkness	325	(6)
Sub-Balanchine	331	(3)
Mythology	334	(5)
Harlem's Fokine	339	(4)
Think Punk	343	(5)
A New Old Giselle	348	(6)
Son of Pilobolus	354	(5)
Tehaikovsky	359	(11)
The Royal at Fifty	370	(7)
Connections: Taylor and Tharp	377	(8)
The Return of the Shades	385	(11)
The Kirov Abroad, Stravinsky at Home	396	(14)
Anna Pavlova	410	(7)
Ordinary People	417	(7)
Theatre as Truth	424	(6)
The Legacy	430	(9)
Reflections on Glass	439	(5)
In Your Face: Home Thoughts from Abroad	444	(5)
A Balanchine Triptych	449	(8)
Mark Morris Comes to Town	457	(6)
Tharp's Sinatra	463	(4)
Visualizations	467	(5)
Three Elders	472	(8)
The Search for Cinderella	480	(9)
Life Studies	489	(7)
Bad Smells	496	(6)
``Giselle, ou La Fille des Bayous''	502	(5)
Strangers in the Night	507	(3)
Championship Form	510	(6)
An American in Paris	516	(9)
Double Vision	525	(4)
The Fire This Time	529	(6)
Tango	535	(3)
Hard Facts	538	(8)
The Dreamer of the Dream	546	(8)
Spanish from Spain	554	(5)
Post-Modern Ballets	559	(7)
A Dance to Spring	566	(7)
Risky Business	573	(4)
Zeitgeist	577	(8)
The Bolshoi Bows In	585	(8)
The Last Waltz	593	(5)
Dimming the Lights	598	(12)
Crises	610	(9)
Sun and Shade	619	(6)
Family Secrets	625	(10)
THE NINETIES
Classical Values	635	(12)
Multicultural Theatre	647	(11)
Waking Up The Sleeping Beauty	658	(12)
Agnes and Martha	670	(15)
Miami's Jewels	685	(5)
The Balanchine Show	690	(13)
Behind White Oaks	703	(5)
Discussing the Undiscussable	708	(12)
Our Dancers in the Nineties	720	(12)
On Beauty Bare	732	(15)
Index	747