Getting to Know the Dancer Within

Eichenbaum, Rose.
The Dancer Within: Intimate Conversations with Great Dancers
Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2008
In every performance talk-back I’ve witnessed, participated in, or facilitated, any audience of any age wants to know the same things: (1) How old were you when you started to dance? (2) How old are you now? (3) Are any of you [...]

Investigating Technique

Bales, Melanie & Rebecca Nettl-Fiol (eds.)
The Body Eclectic: Evolving Practices in Dance Training
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008
Disclaimer: I firmly believe inquiry into the body to be the most noble of lifetime studies and that the process of learning a physical technique is a brilliant way to get to the heart of your investigations. At [...]

The More You Know, the Better You Can Imagine

Tharp, Twyla
The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life: A Practical Guide
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006
“Memories are slippery, like butter, “ a fifth-grader announced at PS 116 in Manhattan. He was reflecting on Hilary Easton’s dance theater piece, It’s All True. As Lincoln Center Institute teaching artists we are endeavoring to layer [...]

Dance for the Camera

Mitoma, Judy, Elizabeth Zimmer, and Dale Ann Stieber, eds.
Envisioning Dance on Film and Video
New York: Routledge, 2002
This saying made the rounds on the Internet a few years back: ballet dancers defy gravity, jazz dancers make friends with it, and modern dancers dance like they are mad at the floor. It’s a truism I could giggle [...]

Fast Forward–The Art of the Italian Futurists

Apollonio, Umbro
Futurist Manifestos
Boston, Mass. : MFA Publications, 2001
On January 20th I heard our new president, in his inaugural address, speak about achieving our goals “when imagination is joined to common purpose.” I interpret this as meaning that in order to make the choices that the changing world presents to us, in order to move together [...]

Dancing on the Shoulders of Giants

Foulkes, Julia L.
Modern Bodies: Dance and American Modernism from Martha Graham to Alvin Ailey
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002
I am regularly asked what kind of dance I “do.” Without missing a beat, I always say I am a modern dancer. It sounds good, but doesn’t actually define the genre for the average Joe-the-Plumber. [...]