The Ecstasy of Being

By Joseph Campbell,

Book cover of The Ecstasy of Being: Mythology and Dance

Book description

Joseph Campbell’s collected writings on dance and art, edited and introduced by Nancy Allison, CMA, the founder of Jean Erdman Dance, and including Campbell’s unpublished manuscript “Mythology and Form in the Performing and Visual Arts,” the book he was working on when he died.

Dance was one of mythologist Joseph…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

1 author picked The Ecstasy of Being as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I am sure many of you already know this visionary philosopher from his ground-breaking The Hero With a Thousand Faces. You may not be aware that Campbell was married to Jean Erdman, one of Martha Graham’s principal dancers in the ‘30s and ‘40s. Campbell’s initiations to modern dance came at Sarah Lawrence College when witnessing Erdman as Graham’s student; and then at Bennington, where Erdman performed with Graham’s company. His own learned background in the archetypal ethos of C.G. Jung made Campbell a prime candidate for Graham’s deeply-digging, Nietzschean/ecstatic archaic/abstract movement vocabulary. The choreographer and the professor spoke the…

From Neil's list on dance and dancing.

If you love The Ecstasy of Being...

Ad

Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest by Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route up…

Want books like The Ecstasy of Being?

Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like The Ecstasy of Being.

Browse books like The Ecstasy of Being

Book cover of The People Have Never Stopped Dancing: Native American Modern Dance Histories
Book cover of The Last Guru: Robert Cohan's Life in Dance, from Martha Graham to London Contemporary Dance Company
Book cover of My Body, the Buddhist

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,900

readers submitted
so far, will you?

Ad

📚 If you like The Ecstasy of Being, you might also like...

Book cover of I Am Taurus

I Am Taurus by Stephen Palmer,

The constellation we know as Taurus goes all the way back to cave paintings of aurochs at Lascaux. This book traces the story of the bull in the sky, a journey through the history of what has become known as the sacred bull.

Each of the sections is written from…

Book cover of Taiwanese-Language Cinema: Rediscovered and Reconsidered

Taiwanese-Language Cinema by Ming-Yeh Rawnsley (editor),

This is the first anthology in English about a long-neglected but now rediscovered cinema phenomenon in Taiwan, Taiwanese-language cinema (a.k.a. Taiyupian).

Taiyupian was a substantial commercial film industry that produced over 1,000 films between the 1950s–1970s in Taiwan. Once the industry declined, they were quickly forgotten for many years…

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in dancing, philosophy, and mythology?

Dancing 37 books
Philosophy 1,813 books
Mythology 860 books