Appreciating Dance • 4th Edition
Appreciating Dance, 4th Edition, is a concise, thorough, and accurate history and current picture of all forms of dance. It gives a brief biography of many of the notable dancers and choreographers who have contributed to each form of dance, and provides, in a nutshell, the information needed to expand the enjoyment of performance. It also details the development of dance from its earliest beginnings, and covers the intersection of dance and religion, social dance, ballet, modern dance, tap, jazz, film and theatrical dance, and contemporary dance. This edition has been revised throughout and includes a new last chapter “Dance in the New Millennium.” Adding to its usefulness are lists of Social Dances of Europe and America, Basic Ballet Terminology, Hollywood Movie Musicals, and Dance Organizations, as well as Suggested Readings and Filmographies.
Contents: 1. Origins and Definitions 2. Dance and Religion 3. Social Dance 4. Bugaku and Ballet: From Royal Courts to Theatrical Dance 5. Modern Dance: New Voices, New Ideas 6. Tap, Jazz, Musical and Film Dance: The American Originals 7. Careers in Dance 8. Dance in the New Millennium	ISBN 9780871273185 160 pages paperbound PBC00043 $29.95

About the Author: Harriet R. Lihs is Associate Professor of Dance at Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas. A graduate of the High School of Performing Arts in New York City, she received a BA and MA from the University of Iowa, and an MFA from Smith College.

Adopted for courses at:
University of North Carolina, Greensboro and Charlotte; University of South Florida;Texas Woman's University; Montclair State University; University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee; Drexel University; Lamar University; Winthrop University; Weber State University; Old Dominion University; Middle Tennessee State University; University of Alberta; El Camino College; Christopher Newport College; Linfield College; Mercyhurst College; De Anza College; Howard College; College of the Canyons; Washington College, Queens College (CUNY), Springfield College; Houston Community College; Cuyahoga Community College; York Regional School District (Canada).

Poetics of Contemporary Dance

by Laurence Louppe

Originally published in France, historian and critic Laurence Louppe’s treatise displays remarkable erudition as it draws from a wide range of dance, literary, artistic, and philosophical sources to analyze poetics in terms of the body, weight, time, flow, breath, style, and composition. The use of unusual vocabulary and often-obscure references will intrigue and challenge readers and broaden their knowledge of contemporary dance thinking from a French perspective.

299 pages, paperback
ISBN 9781852731403
DBL01503 $39.95

The Dynamic Body in Space

Exploring and Developing Rudolf Laban’s Ideas for the 21st Century: Presentations from the Laban International Conference October 2008, At Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, London

Edited by Valerie Preston-Dunlap and Lesley-Anne Sayers

To mark the 50th anniversary of Laban’s death, presenters and delegates from 26 countries gathered to discuss how and where his work is being practiced today, how his ideas are being developed, and how relevant they are to the 21st century. The answers were provided in some 80 presentations, 31 of which have been collected and edited for this volume. The subjects range from: choreography, movement analysis, choreology, the documentation of performing arts, architecture, therapy, and education to the training of the dancer, actor and musical conductor.

266 pages, paperback
ISBN 9781852731380
DBL00407 $39.95

La Fille Mal Gardée

Edited by Ivor Guest

In 1960, when Frederick Ashton choreographed his version of La Fille Mal Gardée, The Dancing Times of London published a collection of articles about the ballet edited by the distinguished historian, Ivor Guest, which has now been reprinted. The 1960 production is discussed by the work’s creators: Ashton himself, the designer Osbert Lancaster, the musical arranger John Lanchberry, and the ballerina Nadia Nerina. Historical perspective is provided by Tamara Karsavina, Winifred Edwards, Ivor Guest, Lillian Moore, and Marina Grut.

103 pages paperback. 28 black and white photos.
ISBN 9781852731342
DBL01097 $21.95

Maria Fay’s Floor Barre

280 Exercises and Enchaînements, 3 Sample Classes,
Over 150 Photographs and Drawings

With an emphasis on breathing as well as body placement, Maria Fay’s Floor Barre draws from other movement systems such as yoga, Pilates, and Alexander Technique. The benefits to dancers are improvements in turn-out, extension, pliability, and stamina. Injured dancers are eased into recovery through these non-weight-bearing exercises, and both pregnant and post-natal dancers are helped.

Maria Fay, a native of Hungary, was leading dancer and choreographer for the Budapest State Theatre Ballet Company. Moving to England in 1956, she started to teach at the Royal Ballet School, the Royal Academy of Dancing, and opened her own studio. Based upon exercises developed for her own injuries, she invented others while working with injured dancers, eventually producing her floor-barre system to the benefit of the whole dance community. She has taught and coached in 26 internationally-renowned ballet companies, including the Royal Ballet, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, the Royal Swedish Ballet, the Royal Danish Ballet, the Dutch National Ballet. The National Ballet of China, Ballet Rambert, London Festival Ballet, and the National Ballet of Spain.

166 pages, paperback. Over 150 Illustrations.
ISBN 9781852731311
DBL01143 $27.95

Although Maria Fay’s book and DVD can be used independently, they are best used in conjunction with each other. While the word descriptions and illustrations in the book precisely describe in detail all the exercises, the DVD demonstrates the vitally important quality, speed, and dynamics of the dancer’s movements as well as the duration of the various enchaînements.

Click for information on the DVD.

Back In Print As Paperbacks
Publication date: June 2010

The One and Only:
The Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo

By Jack Anderson

This is the story of one of America’s most important ballet companies, founded in 1938 by Sergei J. Denham and Léonide Massine, who choreographed for it Gaîté Parisienne, Seventh Symphony, Saint Francis, and Rouge et Noir. Among other choreographers were George Balanchine, Frederick Ashton, Bronislava Nijinska, Ruth Page, Valerie Bettis, and Agnes de Mille, who choreographed Rodeo. Stars included Alexandra Danilova, Frederic Franklin, Alicia Markova, Mia Slavenska, Tamara Toumanova, André Eglevsky, Leon Danelian, Ruthanna Boris, Maria Tallchief, Alicia Alonso, and Igor Youskevitch .

Jack Anderson has written extensively on ballet and modern dance for The New York Times, Dance Magazine, and Ballet Review, and is the New York correspondent for The Dancing Times of London. For forty years he was co-editor of Dance Chronicle. His books include Ballet & Modern Dance: A Concise History, The American Dance Festival, The Nutcracker, and Art Without Boundaries. He was first introduced to to the Ballet Russe at a performance in his native Milwaukee in 1950.

392 pages, including 32 pages of photographs, paperback
ISBN 9781852731410
DBL01401 $29.95

De Basil’s Ballets Russes

By Kathrine Sorley Walker

Drawn partly from the scattered remnants of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and partly from extraordinary new talent, Colonel Vassili de Basil’s company of dancers, founded in 1932, kept alive the heritage of Russian ballet for a period spanning virtually twenty years, touring in Europe, the USA, Central and South America, and Australasia. It preserved the greatest of the Diaghilev ballets and mounted many new ones, among them major works by Balanchine,Fokine, Massine, Nijinska, and Lichine. It provided a brilliant showcase for established dancers such as Danilova, Woizikovsky, and Massine, and launched the “baby ballerinas” Toumanova, Baronova, and Riabouchinska. The company appeared not only in great capitals but in places where classical dance had rarely if ever been seen before. The story of the de Basil ballet is one of glamour, mystery, and obsessive dedication.

Kathrine Sorley Walker is an eminent British ballet critic and historian. Her reviews have appeared in the London Daily Telegraph and she has contributed to journals such as Dance Chronicle and The Dancing Times. Her other books are Ninette de Valois: Idealist without Illusions, and Cyril W. Beaumont: Dance Writer and Publisher.

368 pages, including 32 pages of photographs, paperback
ISBN 97891852731373
DBL 00403 $29.95

Nutrition for the Dancer

Zerlina Mastin

This British import by a former professional dancer turned nutritionist is a general nutrition book with plenty of sound advice for the dancer or non-dancer. Readers in North America may be puzzled by references to British foods such as plaice, fromage frais, quorn, jelly pot, passata, fruit squash; feel queasy about a recipe for potato and fish pie; and wonder at the need to convert body weight from stones to pounds. Nevertheless, from calculating individual calorie requirements, reducing body fat, performance preparation, nutrition for the young dancer, recovery from injury, this book provides helpful information.

204 pages, paperback, 2009
ISBN 978-1855273-135-9
DBL01320 $27.95

'Mim'
A Personal Memoir of Marie Rambert

Brigitte Kelly

Although the name Rambert is now associated with modern dance, Marie Rambert, the founder of the Rambert Dance Company, was one of the instigators of the flowering of English Ballet in the 1930s. She nurtured and guided a remarkable number of gifted choreographers, notably Frederick Ashton, Antony Tudor, Walter Gore, Norman Morrice and Christopher Bruce. Lively, witty, unpredictable, often outrageous, 'Mim' is about Marie Rambert, the woman, from her upbringing in her native Poland until her death in 1982 at the age of 94.

204 pages, 16 pages of photographs, paperbound
ISBN 9781852731274
DBL01226 $21.95

Robert Helpmann:
A Rare  Sense of Theatre

Kathrine Sorley Walker

Sir Robert Helpmann was a consummate man oif the theatre, equally proficient as dancer or actor, in comedy or tragedy, and as a choreographer or director. In this book Kathrine Sorley Walker surveys a career which spanned more than five decades in multiple disciplines. He was a member of the Vic-Wells ballet from 1933 to 1950,partnering Margot Fonteyn in her famous roles. Later he became associated with the Royal Ballet and served as artistic director and choreographer for the Australian Ballet. He is perhaps best known to the general public for his part in The Red Shoes.

The author: Kathrine Sorley Walker is a British ballet critic and historian.

224 pages, 16 pages of photographs, paperbound
ISBN 9781852731335
DBL01720 $21.95

Harald Lander: His Life and Ballets

Erik Aschengreen
(Translated from Danish by Patricia N. McAndrew)

Harald Lander (1905-1971) was the most important figure in the history of the Royal Danish Ballet in the 20th Century. During his 19 years as Artistic Director (1932-1951) he laid the foundations for the worldwide fame which the company gained in the second part of the century. Following a scandal in 1951, Lander left Denmark to become ballet master and choreographer at the Paris Opera Ballet and, for a time, the head of its ballet school.

This biography dispels many of the myths and rumors about this remarkable man, and chronicles his fall from grace and ultimate rehabilitation.

432 pages (including 48 pages of black and white photos)
Hardbound
ISBN 9781852731298
DBL 00725 $60.00

Rolf de Maré
Art Collector, Ballet Director, Museum Curator

Erik Näslund

With a fortune inherited from one of Sweden ’s wealthiest families, Rolf de Maré (1888-1964) was able indulge in a life in the arts as an art collector, a ballet director, and a museum founder. He has often been compared to Diaghilev by creating his own company, the Ballets Suédois, in Paris (1920-1925), which attracted many of the leading painters, poets, and composers of the time such as Cocteau, Leger, Picabia, Satie, and Claudel. His home was a magnet for a cosmopolitan elite from both the art world and Parisian high society in the 1920s. He opened the first dance museum in Paris in 1933 and, after his death, left his impressive art collection to the Paris Opera Museum and to the Stockholm Dance Museum.

The author, Erik Näslund, is the Director of the Stockholm Dance Museum.

616 pages (including over 1,000 illustrations, many in color)
Hardbound
ISBN 978182731281
DBL 01723 $95.00

Beautiful Body, Beautiful Mind
The Power of Positive Imagery:
Over 80 Exercises and a 10-Day Beauty Program

Eric Franklin

Mind-Body expert Eric Franklin emphasizes lifestyle and positive mental attitude rather than surgery, creams or pills, in this guide to staying young through mental stimulation, self-talk, setting of goals, motivation, and relaxation. He takes you on a journey through the body from the face, to joints, bones, muscles, organs, glands, and the nervous system, with specific exercises for rejuvenating each part. The concluding 10-Day Beauty Program provides a selection of different mental and physical techniques designed to produce results that can be seen and felt in only 10 days. Illustrated with 84 drawings and 12 photos.

168 pages paperbound
ISBN 9780871273093

ELY00613 $19.95

New Dance:
Writings on Modern Dance

Doris Humphrey
Selected and Edited by Charles Humphrey Woodford

This collection of essays, lectures and notes reveals the inspiration behind the choreography of modern dance founder Doris Humphrey.The fundamentals of composition: form, content and execution are expressed in her own spirited words, providing an intimate look at the creative process. Notes made before and during the making of forty-one of her dances show how she put her choreographic principles and world view into dance, including some of her best-known masterpieces: Water Study, The Shakers,Two Ecstatic Themes, New Dance, With My Red Fires, Passacaglia in C minor, Day on Earth, Night Spell.

144 pages, hardbound, jacketed,
ISBN 978-0-87127-307-9

PBC02237 $24.95

Labanotation for Beginners

Ann Kipling Brown

Labanotation is one of the most widely used systems of dance notation in the world today, and this elementary textbook provides practical instructions for the study of its basic principles. Students using it will examine the elements of movement and notation, and practice dances they have created themselves, as well as learn about dances created by established choreographers.

The principles of the system are presented in a sequence of clear, graded lessons, illustrated with numerous examples and supplemented with practical exercises in reading and writing, with each section of the text presenting logical progressions of exploring and recording movement.

ISBN 9781852731236
84 pages, paperback

DBL02218 $24.95

Rudolf Laban:
An Extraordinary Life

Valerie Preston-Dunlop

Rudolf Laban (1879-1958) was a visionary, a mystic, a lover, a leader, a dancer, an artist, a teacher, and a theorist. This is the story of his extraordinary life, a life intimately bound up with the political, social and cultural upheavals that formed the turbulent backdrop of modern Europe. He witnessed the dissolution of the old order and was caught up in the rise of Nazism from which he was eventually forced to flee to Britain. He made his lasting impact in movement and dance, uncovering the interconnectedness of the body and the psyche, the individual and the group; and he devised a revolutionary method of movement notation that continues its use and influence today. His ideas have generated innovations, not just in dance, but also in acting and performance, in the study of nonverbal communication, in ergonomics, in educational theory and child development, in personality assessment and psychotherapy. This book tells the story of his life of idealism, disillusion and determination.

320 pages, paperbound
ISBN-13 978-1-85273-124-3

DBL02217 $32.00

A Century of Russian Ballet

Roland John Wiley

An exciting, wonderfully researched look onstage and backstage at the Russian Ballet between 1810 and 1910. The story is built on a framework of famous ballets by such celebrated choreographers as Charles Didelot, Filippo Taglioni, Jules Perrot, Arthur Saint-Leon, Marius Petipa and Mikhail Fokine. Onto this framework are placed eyewitness accounts and criticisms, including biographies of choreographers, accounts of life in the imperial theater school, reminiscences of important artists, and reviews of first performances. Each of the ten chapters is introduced with further commentary that draws on press accounts and literature of the time.

Out of the mists of time, this story of the fabled Russian Ballet comes as close as possible to the reality of being a student, dancer and choreographer in its richest period. This is a reprint of a book first published by Oxford University Press in 1990, and long out of print.

464 pages, paperbound,
8 pages of black & white illustrations
ISBN 978-1-85273-120-5

DBL00250 $45.00

The Story of Dai Ailian

Richard Glasstone

An enormously respected and influential figure in China, both for her wide research into Chinese folk dance and her pivotal role in the establishment of ballet in China, the achievements of the teacher and choreographer Dai Ailian are not well known in the west. Here is her story, set in the wide social and historical context it deserves.

Dai was born and spent her childhood in Trinidad, then went to study in England. She journeyed to China were she took part in the resistance to the Japanese invasion, then traveled to the remote Chinese Borderlands, collecting and recording the dances of minority populations. In 1954, Dai was appointed Principal of the Beijing Dance School, a post she held until interrupted by the notorious Cultural Revolution. She was sent to work in the fields (as were many artists) and was “rehabilitated” in 1975. The next year she was made Artistic Adviser to the National Ballet of China, where she devoted the rest of her life to re-establishing the company’s artistic and technical standards.

The author, internationally known dancer and choreographer and Senior Teacher at London’s Royal Ballet School, was asked by Dai Ailian to write this autobiography.

120 pages, paperbound
32 black& white illustrations
ISBN 978-1-85273-118-2

DBL01850 $21.95

The Romantic Ballet in Paris

Ivor Guest

Stars of the romantic ballet, as well as the choreographers, composers, designers, and balletomanes of the time are brought to life in a colorful panorama of this great age of French ballet. The age of romanticism in the first half of the nineteenth century was one of the greatest periods in the history of ballet. In a span of three decades (1820 to 1847) ballet became what it had never been before—a major theater art, gaining new vitality and meaning from the ideas of the romantic movement which rapidly infiltrated each one of its component parts: scenarios, music, décor, choreography and dance style.

The center of the romantic ballet was the Paris Opéra. Its high priest was the poet Théophile Gautier, who wrote the scenarios of Giselle and other ballets. He explained the dual nature of the romantic ballet by contrasting the two rival ballerinas, the spiritual Taglioni and the passionate Elssler.

This definitive study, completely revised and updated, handsomely produced and beautifully illustrated, is based on exhaustive research of the archives of the Paris Opéra and printed and pictorial sources of the time.

ISBN 978-1-85273-119-9
DBL01725 $82.00

The Cecchetti Legacy
An Analysis and Description of the Cecchetti Method of Classical Ballet

Ann Hutchinson Guest and Toby Bennett

The Cecchetti Legacy provides a more detailed account of the Cecchetti Method, one of the great classical methods of teaching ballet, than has yet been published. Both word descriptions and Labanotation are used to describe style and technique (body integration, dynamics and space, the use of the head and torso, the use of the arms and the use of the leg and foot) and the enchainements (barre work, port de bras, center practice, adage, center pirouettes, allegro, des pas sur les pointes, steps for men, tours en diagonale and tours round the room). For those teachers and students who cannot read Labanotation there is much in the written text that will both supplement and clarify a great deal of what is already available in the Cecchetti manuals, although an ability to read Labanotation would be very helpful in using this book.

This complete Labanotation score, drawing on wide sources of information, as well as exploring more detailed descriptions of movement texture and timing (those “extras” that give the style its character and exceed mere word instruction), will enable future dance students and scholars to access an even more comprehensive account of Enrico Cecchetti’s legacy.

Bibliography, index, guide to weekly exercises, illustrated
378 pages, paperbound, 8-1/4" x 11-1/2"
ISBN 978-1-85273-122-9
DBL00199 $65.00

Dancing the Black Question
The Phoenix Dance Company Phenomenon

Christy Adair

A dynamic cultural history of the internationally celebrated Phoenix Dance Company, unique in several ways: its members were in their teens when they formed the company in 1981, they gained recognition very early in their careers through an established television arts program in 1984, they were skillful performers but had not received formal training, they were based in the north of England at a time when most dance centered in London (and New York), and they were black British men who had known each other since childhood, coming from a tight-knit African-Caribbean community.

As children, they “learned a lot from London Contemporary Dance Theatre and watched videos of Twyla Tharp, Netherlands Dance Company, Dance Theatre of Harlem and the Alvin Ailey Company.”

This complex narrative, played out through gender, ethnicity and class, places Phoenix as a significant artistic force in contemporary dance. One of the paradoxes it faced was the expectation by funding bodies, critics and audiences that it represent “the black community.” Such expectations posed a challenge for each successive artistic director. This provocative story investigates institutional racism on the part of arts policy makers, funders and critics.

339 pages, paperbound, 6" x 9"
ISBN 978-1-85273-116-8
DBL00402 $45.00

Stravinsky Dances
Re-Visions Across a Century

Stephanie Jordan

Stephanie Jordan’s ground-breaking survey and close examination of a range of Stravinsky dances—some familiar, others less so—sheds new, unexpected light upon a renowned composer of ballet music. This book is essential reading for scholars and students in the fields of dance, music and interdisciplinary studies.

615 pages, paperbound
ISBN 978-1-85273-125-0
DBL01835 $110.00

Pointe Shoes, Tips and Tricks
for Choosing, Tuning, Care

Angela Reinhardt

Over 280 color illustrations show how to modify shoes step by step, using scissors, needle and thread, hot water and elastic, to adapt pointe shoes perfectly for all types of foot and all types of floor surfaces, and to help them last as long as possible. Also contains valuable suggestions for foot fitness. Over 100 tips and tricks for personal pointe shoe tuning, for both beginners and professionals.

109 pages, paperbound
ISBN 978-1-85273-115-1
DBL01505 $21.95

The Struggle with the Angel
A Poetics of Lloyd Newson’s Strange Fish

Janet Adshead-Lansdale

From the book: “Theoretically and methodologically, this text offers a contribution to the development of interpretive theory in the arts and to the analysis of performance practices.

Topical, conceptual, and methological problems are explored through an extended analysis of Strange Fish (1992) by Lloyd Newson and the DV8 Physical Theatre (UK)

...I ask how it comments on and reconstructs ‘the story’ of Christ. It uses well-known moments and images from the story of his life and draws on the morality found in biblical tales.

...In ironic contrast, it challenges Christian views of morality at a time of discomfort for the Church. Evidence emerges of explicit homosexuality, of child abuse, and the fathering of illegitimate children. This evidence invites the view that theological attacks on different forms of sexuality are mendacious and dishonest.”

268 pages, paperbound, 6" x 9"
ISBN 978-1-85273-117-5
DBL02216 $44.95