Writing in the Dark: Dancing in The New Yorker. - Review - book review

Dance Magazine, March, 2001 by Hering Doris

As for Balanchine, sheer quantity tells the story. The index of Writing in the Dark bears seventy-one Balanchine listings. The distant runners-up are Marius Petipa with thirty-six and Jerome Robbins with twenty-eight. But her adoration (I use the word advisedly) of Balanchine is not only concerned with his genius and his incalculable effect on twentieth-century ballet, it also has to do with Croce's conviction that those who are following him "can add nothing to what he has said."

But great art does not only have to do with accrual. There are also new paths, even if it does take time to hack them out.