I'm currently looking for some good dance reading. Not so much autobiographies/biographies of dance figures, but books which discuss critical analysis of dance, choreography, dance and society etc...

I have "Choreography Observed" by Jack Anderson and "The Intimate Act of Choreography" as well. Has anyone read that new collection of dance articles from the New Yorker?

Incidently, I have a recommendation of my own... "The Subversive Imagination" Edited by Carol Becker... although not related specifically to dance it is a collection of essays regarding the social responsibility of artists. Very interesting read.
thanks,
Dorian

Off the top of my head, and I know I'll think of four more as soon as I send this:

Dance Writings and Poetry by Edwin Denby

Dancing Women; Female Bodies on Stage by S. Barnes

Balanchine's Tchaikovsky by S. Volkov

These are favourites....

The collection of Arlene Croce's essays for The New Yorker ("Writing in the Dark, Dancing in the New Yorker") is must reading. Uncannily astute big-picture analysis woven into uncannily deft description.

"Time and the Dancing Image" (I think that's the title) by Deborah Jowitt takes an interesting historical view.

[ 08-01-2001: Message edited by: Alla ]

Walter Sorrell's "Dance in Its Time" is a wonderful book, I think. More "dance and society" (through history, starting with the Middle Ages) than critical analysis. It was a shock to me when I first read it, because it talks about DANCING and not dancers.

There is a book called "What is Dance? Readings in Theory and Criticism," edited by Roger Copeland and Marshall Cohen, that contains both theoretical articles on dance and pieces of practical criticism by Arlene Croce and others. I found it useful.