72 books like Ballet

When I began researching Martha Graham’s multifaceted life, I was intrigued to learn that she spent several summers in the 1930s at the Pueblo communities in New Mexico, where she was fascinated by the ceremonial and ritualistic dance elements of their lives. Entire villages of all generations would gather together on feast days at the center of the pueblo to watch the feather - and shell - and evergreen-costumed pageantry unfold, pounding steps on packed earth, cries to the heavens for rain and good harvests, and prayers for a harmonious year ahead. Graham insisted that she would never “copy” these dances – rather, she took the inspiration gathered in her imagination and mindfully infused it into her own pieces. Thus did Jacqueline Shea Murphy become my very first teacher in the roots and ways of indigenous American dance practices.

In 1946, Sir Robert Paul Cohan CBE (26 March 1925 – 13 January 2021) became one of the first male dancers to join Martha Graham’s company – and stayed for twenty-three years. He went on to become the first Artistic Director of the Contemporary Dance Trust in London and Artistic Advisor to the Batsheva Dance Company in Israel. I had the greatly entertaining privilege of interviewing Sir Robert in the Graham studio at their Westbeth home in NYC, where he regaled me with warm and acerbic vignette memories of “Martha,” her rigorous demeanor, her abrupt critiques, her searching analyses of his movement, her extreme demands as a partner – and her dire yet lyrical sensuality. The book is built around interviews skillfully and subtly conducted by Paul Jackson, principal lecturer in Choreography and Dance at the University of Winchester, UK.

In the fall of 2016, Deborah Hay came to the Montclair State University campus, where I was professor of theatre & dance, to stage her new work, "Figure a Sea," performed by the Cullberg Ballet of Sweden and featuring the music composition of Laurie Anderson. During her time in residence at the university, I talked with Deborah at the Kasser Theatre about her life and work. Hay was one of the founders of the postmodern Judson Dance Theatre in NYC in the early 1960s and she has pursued an iconoclastic, independent, headstrong, and mystical path ever since, which is why I loved chatting with her so much. Her appeal as a teacher in the studio with our students was equally shape-shifting and mind-bending. And this book creates the same ambiance in the reader’s head – it is a synthesis of memoir and physicalized ‘auto-body-ography,’ to subvert the term!… show more.

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 same kinaesthetic language, Erdman remembered. There were many late nights when “Martha would call Joe on the phone” with some arcane question about her mythographic pieces in progress – Night Journey and Errand into the Maze. Many of Campbell’s essays in this book were first published in Dance Observer… show more.

The latest in a series featuring an engaging New York City ballerina/amateur sleuth.

On hiatus from Lincoln Center while her ballet company is on tour, Leah goes undercover as a dancer on Broadway to keep her eyes open for clues into who is harassing the show’s leading lady online. It starts simply enough until murder enters the picture.

I loved the quirky backstage energy, the interplay between the colorful cast of characters, and the many absorbing plot twists. It’s easy to applaud as Leah keeps investigating despite mounting personal danger as well as the anxiety it causes in her romance with the appealing detective on the case.

Valeria Luiselli dissects the odd systems and networks of our world’s cities and reveals in their hidden corners and corridors strange and magical identities. Luiselli’s essays further interrogate a city’s relationship to the bodies, cultures, artifacts, and languages that inhabit its spaces. In the essay, “Flying Home,” Luiselli journeys to Mexico City, the place of her birth, and, staring out of her airplane window, considers the city’s layout from this great height. This act of “mapping” according to her extraordinary vantage (suspended in flight), allows for a greater, incantatory meditation on our various perceptions of “home,” and how said perceptions depend as much on the imagination and on ephemeral memories as they do on reality.   

This book! I received this gorgeous black and white photobook as a gift when I was an aspiring dancer myself in the 1970s.

I was obsessed with the story of a young girl cast as Marie in the New York City Ballet’s Nutcracker. The story is told primarily through Krementz’s photos of a young dancer’s life in New York City: ballet classes, auditions, rehearsals, backstage moments, and performances.

This book is one of the most magical and special books of my childhood – which appealed to me as a dancer back then but later heavily influenced my work as a photographer as an adult.

Anton, a former columnist for The Japan Times, grew up in New York City, one of three children raised solely by an African American father. (Her mother was institutionalized due to mental illness.) She studied dance with Martha Graham, modeled for the pages of LOOK magazine at a time when African American models were few and far between, and copy-edited for Joseph Heller. Later, she traveled to Europe where she met Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton when she interviewed to be their house-sitter in Gstaad, fell in love and gave birth in Denmark, then later journeyed overland from Europe to Asia with her childhood friend and future husband, Billy. Any one chapter of her life could have been the basis for an entire book. Anton is an engaging storyteller with an exceptional story -- an unbeatable combination. I highly recommend this memoir to anyone interested in Japan, multicultural families,… show more.

Clive Barker’s 2007 novel is the sort of book that, as soon as you read the first page, you know you’ve found something special.

The narrator is a demon named Jakabok Botch who desperately wants you, the reader, to burn the book you’re reading. Throughout these pleas we learn about Jakabok’s history, beginning with his childhood in Hell, how he was pulled into the human world in the fourteenth century, and his many exploits since.

What really elevates this book from good to great is the first-person narrative. Barker does an exquisite job in giving a wholly original voice to his demon. Barker has described the novel as, “a different kind of scare, very brutal and very intimate,” and he isn’t exaggerating.

Mister B. Gone is a quick read, especially by Barker standards, but one that’s well worth your time and will have you reflecting upon long after you’ve finished… show more.

I love a New England mystery, especially one that includes recipes.

Katherine Hall Page fills the bill with her twenty-six delightful Faith Fairchild mysteries. Faith is a high-end New York City caterer who falls in love and marries a minister from a New England village. Will she be bored? Can love conquer all?

It turns out that this sleepy New England town has murders aplenty, but luckily, Faith is on the scene. I have tried her recipes, and they are wonderful!