Browse by Subject: Dance and Music

Please note that while you may order forthcoming books at any time, they will not be available for shipment until shortly before publication date

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Vaganova Today: The Preservation of Pedagogical Tradition

In this absorbing volume, Catherine Pawlick traces Vaganova's story from her early years as a ballet student in tsarist Russia to her career as a dancer with the Mariinsky (Kirov) Ballet to her work as a pedagogue and choreographer. Pawlick then goes beyond biography to address Vaganova's legacy today, offering the first-ever English translations of primary source materials and intriguing interviews with pedagogues and dancers from the Academy and the Mariinsky Ballet, including some who studied with Vaganova herself.

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Rooted Jazz Dance: Africanist Aesthetics and Equity in the Twenty-First Century

Decolonizing contemporary jazz dance practice, this book examines the state of jazz dance theory, pedagogy, and choreography in the twenty-first century, recovering and affirming the lifeblood of jazz in Africanist aesthetics and Black American culture.

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A Punkhouse in the Deep South: The Oral History of 309

Told in personal interviews, this is the collective story of a punk community in an unlikely town and region, a hub of radical counterculture that drew artists and musicians from throughout the conservative South and earned national renown.

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Balanchine's Apprentice: From Hollywood to New York and Back

Dancer and choreographer John Clifford offers a highly personal look inside the day-to-day operations of the New York City Ballet and its creative mastermind, George Balanchine.

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Dancing Past the Light: The Life of Tanaquil Le Clercq

This book cinematically illuminates the glamorous and moving life story of Tanaquil Le Clercq, one of the most celebrated ballerinas of the twentieth century.

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Todd Bolender, Janet Reed, and the Making of American Ballet

This book explores the lives and careers of Todd Bolender and Janet Reed, two unsung trailblazers who were pivotal to the development of ballet in America over the course of the twentieth century.

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Situated Narratives and Sacred Dance: Performing the Entangled Histories of Cuba and West Africa

Through a revolutionary ethnographic approach that foregrounds storytelling and performance, this book explores shared ritual traditions between the Anlo-Ewe people of West Africa and their descendants, the Arará of Cuba, who were brought to the island in the Atlantic slave trade.

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Being a Ballerina: The Power and Perfection of a Dancing Life

Inspiring, revealing, and deeply relatable, Being a Ballerina is a firsthand look at the realities of life as a professional ballet dancer, showing what it takes to live a life dedicated to the perfection of the art form.

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Onstage with Martha Graham

In his portrait of Martha Graham, who was the center of his dancing world, Hodes recounts conversations, revelations, bouts of temper and creativity, the daily ritual of deeply physical dancing, and the never-ending search for artistic validity. Direct, often humorous, and always authentic, Hodes shares his delight in dance as both hard work and a fantastic adventure.

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Finding Balanchine's Lost Ballets: Exploring the Early Choreography of a Master

In the first book to focus exclusively on George Balanchine’s early Russian ballets, most of which have been lost to history, Elizabeth Kattner offers new insights into the artistic evolution of a legend through her reconstruction of his first group ballet, Funeral March.