Gifts for the Holidays. - Review - book review

Dance Magazine, Dec, 2000 by Merrill Leigh

Publishers often issue their most attractive "coffee-table" or lap-sized books before the holiday gift-giving season. These elegant tomes are really beautiful all year round.

The Dance by Richard Paul Evans. Illustrations by Jonathan Linton. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. 1999. 30 pages. $16. ISBN: 0-689-82351-7.

Actually, this heartwarming book is for dance enthusiasts of all ages, since it chronicles the growth of a dancer and her father's love and enjoyment of her gifts through the circle of life. Brief, but complete. The illustrations are paintings by Jonathan Linton, from whose enigmatic painting of another father's lost child the book takes its cover and not a little of its inspiration. Richard Paul Evans is also the author of the best-selling Christmas Candle, and all proceeds from The Dance go to the Christmas Box House International, a shelter for abused and neglected children.

Swan Lake retold by Amy Ephron. Photographs by Nancy Ellison. New York: Harry H. Abrams, Inc. 2000. 84 pages. $19.95. ISBN: 0-8109-4192-9.

This was the year that the Bolshoi Ballet toured the U.S. and Nina Ananiashvili, who is a principal at both the Bolshoi Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, danced Odette/Odile for us all. Well, here is an aide-memoire of this season for you and for younger generations. Photographer Nancy Ellison, Ananiashvili, Alexei Fadeyechev and a small cast of stunningly credible characters went to the appropriately atmospheric Kuskovo Palace outside Moscow. Together with Amy Ephron, they have created a book of still photographs that make us believe that a real Swan Lake story could happen--with the right atmosphere, characters and a little magic. It's here in this book.

American Ballet Theatre: A 25-year retrospective by Elizabeth Kaye. Kansas City, MO: Andrews McMeel Publishing. 1999. 129 pages. $39.95. ISBN: 0-7407-0019-7, (also available in paper) 0-7407-0018-9.

Although American Ballet Theatre is really sixty years old (December 1939) the twenty-five years addressed by Elizabeth Kaye cover roughly "the Baryshnikov years," and "the McKenzie era." The forward by Clive Barnes covers most of the formative forty before that to bring the reader up to speed. Kaye is even-handed and largely nonpartisan in her presentation of these decades that have enough innate drama for an afternoon soap opera, and further, show an amazingly evocative array of photographs to keep memories alive long after the dancers and designers leave the stage. Her work has been thorough and the product is entertaining. The book is dedicated to the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who was a staunch patron of ABT and also an editor of fine books such as this.

Tutu by Greg Barrett, photographer. St. Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin. 1999. 160 pages. $34.95. ISBN: 1-86448-083-7.

Distributed in the U.S. by Independent Publishers Group, Chicago, Illinois, Tutu is a photographic record of the entire company of the Australian Ballet in provocative offstage poses on the eve of the Sydney 2000 Olympics. An interesting calling card of familiar faces and bodies if you saw the 1999 U.S. tour of the Aussies or if you happen to hail from "down under." One close-up photo shows a vaccination scar on a biceps, a reminder that even magnificent dancer-bodies are vulnerable. Though the book is tasteful art, those offended by nude photography should avoid this one. Photographer Barrett did not feel it was inappropriate to dedicate the book to "his mum."

Nude Body Nude--photographs by Howard Schatz. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. 2000. 320 pages. $75. ISBN: 0-06-019552-5.

Perhaps it is because Howard Schatz was formerly an ophthalmologist that reviews of his photographic projects--prepared together with his wife, Beverly Ornstein--so often use the word "vision." His photographs appear in museum collections (see dancemagazine.com's Calendar--Exhibitions & Showings) and in fine art books such as this one. Schatz often uses dancers as models because of the patent beauty of their bodies and movements. This book focuses on "the sensual body and the perfectibility of the human form, in and of itself," it says. The textures of skin and muscle are elegant throughout, but it is also plainly titillating. The subjects appear invulnerable except to be disappointed in their search for pleasure. At the price and weight of the hook, it is likely that you will keep it out of reach of youngsters.

Bakst: The Art of Theatre and Dance by Elisabeth Ingles. London: Parkstone Press Ltd. 2000. 184 pages. 171 illustrations. $55. ISBN: 1-85995 499 5.

Although the publicity for this book touts itself as a new biography of ballet designer Leon Bakst, it is so text-light that it could hardly be called that. The book lists no real editor and that may account for the lack of overall focus. The bulk of the text and much of the vivid artwork from various museums establish the period and gang of artists that shared in la vie de boheme at the turn of the twentieth century. Beautifully inclusive with 171 illustrations (many of them neither by nor of Bakst), the book is heavily overdesigned: Instead of letting Bakst's and cohorts' renderings or sets and costumes fill the page and the imagination, there are borders and backgrounds added and added, apparently to establish the book designer's identity. The author at one point states that Serge Diaghilev (regarding his Ballets Russes) could apparently not do without Bakst. One wonders how Nijinsky, Pavlova, Fokine, Rubinstein et al., did so well with costumes they could actually move in. The designs are beautiful drawings, but the costume builders and shoemakers must have had to make many adjustments for a dancer's body.