The following is a selection of books from the Joan Jacobson Dance Collection with annotations from Joan Jacobson.
The Modern Dance by John Martin
This is the first book written about American modern dance. The author, John Martin, was the New York Times critic who 'discovered' the art form in New York theaters and introduced readers to it in the world's most famous newspaper, therefore giving legitimacy to modern dancers of the early 20th century in a way no other writer could.
The copy of the book in this collection is a first edition, published in 1933 and purchased at the Goodwill Bookstore on North Charles Street in downtown Baltimore in the 1970’s for 25 cents.
The art form was so new when Martin wrote this book, he felt compelled to explain it in the most elementary terms in his introduction:
"The dance has only recently begun to be recognized as a major art and there is still considerable confusion about it . . . There is no literature, to speak of, in English on the subject except that which deals with the older forms no longer in general use by the progressive artists, and the only source of enlightenment has been the actual performances of the dancers themselves."
The collection also includes his second book, America Dancing, published in 1936.
Marius Petipa by D.I. Leshkov, adopted from the Russian; edited by Cyril Beaumont
This little biography of Petipa, the great Russian choreographer of Don Quixote, La Bayadere, Raymonda, Sleeping Beauty and many other classical ballets is a wonderful example of the fine writing and editing by Cyril Beaumont, a prolific English dance writer in the early 20thcentury . (There are several other small biographies by Beaumont in this collection, including ones about Anna Pavlova and Margot Fonteyn when they were young dancers in London.)
Today, all adoptions of Petipa ballets set since the 19th century (many with music by Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky), are descendants of his originals. For more than a century he has been considered the father of Russian ballet, unmatched for his legacy. But this book notes that wasn’t always the case during his time. He got a "lukewarm reception" in 1890 at the premier of La Belle au Bois Dormant (Sleeping Beauty) that was a great disappointment to Tchaikovsky, who had composed the score and sat through rehearsals in great anticipation. This little volume also gives insight into the working relationship between composer and choreographer, describing Tchaikovsky becoming "fired with enthusiasm” at the idea of composing Sleeping Beauty, as he “asked Petipa to map out the number of dances required, the number of bars, time and style of music…"
Anna Pavlova, Her Life and Art by Keith Money
This is one of the most comprehensive biographies of the great Russian ballerina, Anna Pavlova, not just for its text, but for its many rare photos. Pavlolva, like many Russian dancers, left her native country as the Russian revolution was raging. Many of her dance compatriots became part of the legendary Ballet Russe, but Pavlova eventually struck out on her own, featuring herself as a soloist in her own ballet company that traveled the world, inspiring thousands who had never before seen professional dance in a theater. As this book details in words and photographs, her most famous role was in the brief ballet to music by Camille Saint Saens, called The Swan or The Dying Swan. It was originally created for a charity performance for poor mothers and newborn babies while Pavlova was still in Russia at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg. It was choreographed by Michel Fokine and debuted on Dec. 22, 1907. The ballet, for its time, was quite novel, as it did not tell a specific story – as all ballets did at the time. It simply showed Pavlova dressed as a beautiful swan, dancing sadly until its last breath.
As Fokine choreographed the work, writes the author, “He was aiming to suggest the gliding of a swan in water, and to this end he gave Pavlova an almost unbroken serious of bourrees, leaving her arms to express the future efforts of the creature whose wing beats could no longer carry it clear of the lake’s surface.”
Martha Graham Sixteen Dances in Photographs by Barbara Morgan
This book of powerful photographs of Graham’s enduring modern dances was published in 1941 when she was at the peak of her artistic career. They show the inventiveness and depth of her modern dance vernacular – as well as the photographer’s keen understanding of her subject moving in space with unrelenting energy and raw emotion. As photographer Morgan writes in her introduction, “The inner core of Martha’s art is her deep understanding of both the universal and the timeless; the uniquely individual and the common denominator of us all: the joys and sorrows, the hopes and fears, and the creative potentials of life.”
In Letter to the World, for example, Morgan brings Graham to life in her dance to poetry of Emily Dickenson. And the photographs of Graham in her dance depicting grief, called Lamentation, shows every shadow of sorrow in the folds of stretchy costume (expertly lit by the photographer), that consumes the dancer.
The Book of the Dance by Arnold Genthe
This is one of the earliest books of dance photographs, published in 1916.
Genthe wrote modestly in his forward that the book “is meant to be just a picture book, permanently recording something of the fugitive charm or rhythmic motion, significant gesture and brilliant color which the dance has once more brought into our lives.”
In an introduction by poet Sheamas O’Sheel, he writes of Isadora Duncan, the most famous modern dancer photographed in the book. Describing his attendance at a Duncan performance, O’ Sheel describes “the manifold meaning and implications of the dance: its ecstasies, inspirations, and healing beneficences and its possibly unimaginable importance to the modern dance world.” What follows is an extraordinary collection of early photos of Duncan, the dancers in her company and other modern dance pioneers, including Maud Allan, Loie Fuller, Irma Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, as well as ballet dancers Anna Pavlova and Lydia Lopokova.
Cynthia Gregory and Ivan Nagy: In a Rehearsal Room, with photographs by Susan Cook and Text by Robin Woodard
Here is one of several books published in the 1970’s that showed the behind-the-scenes stories of dancers, choreographers and their work in rehearsal. This particular book showcases Gregory, a great American dancer of her time who was often partnered by Nagy, a popular classical partner. Both danced for the American Ballet Theatre in classical ballets like Swan Lake and in modern ballets, such as In a Rehearsal Room made into a film by David Hahn. The photos include some politically incorrect ones that might never make it in such a book today: Nagy seen openly smoking a cigarette during rehearsal.
Nijinsky Dancing, Text and commentary by Lincoln Kirstein
This elegant and rich book of the dance life in words and photos was authored by Lincoln Kirstein, the intellectual and founder of the New York City Ballet with choreographer George Balanchine. Nijinksy, known as a young genius, had an artistic career cut short by mental illness. This book and several others in the collection about him, catalogue his great accomplishments as a virtuosic dancer and a forward-thinking choreographer. The photos include some from his sexually provocative choreography and performance in L’Apre-Midi d’un Faune (Afternoon of a Faun) to music by Claude Debussy that nearly caused a riot for its final “masturbatory gesture.” Kirstein describes this dance: “Aesthetically, Faune presented a new dialectic of contracts: movement against music, static action against symphonic turbulence, extreme angularity of decoration against luscious curvature.” No wonder it caused such a stir when it debuted in 1912.
Bronislava Nijinska, a Dancer’s Legacy by Nancy Van Norman Baer
Bronislava Nijinska was much less known than her famous brother, Vaslav Nijinsky, but she was no less inventive in her choreography, which tossed out the structures of classical ballet to present a much more grounded, flat footed, primitive dance with a seriousness that was a precursor to the American modern dancers who would follow her. This illustrated book chronicles her career as both dancer and choreographer, along with costumes and set designs of the time. It also includes her own choreographic drawings and rehearsal photos, some rarely seen in other books. For further reading, the collection includes a much longer memoir of Nijinska’s early life, written with her daughter.
Diaghilev Observed by Critics in England and the United States 1911-1929. By Nesta McDonald
This ‘bear of a book,’ traces some of the best moments of the career of the Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev, an artistic visionary with a knack for spotting talent, who transformed ballet during the early 20th century, largely with a group of Russian expatriates. The book shows how he brought together an unprecedented collection of artists willing to push the boundaries of classical ballet, music and set design. Diaghilev’s company included dancers Tamara Karsavina and Vaslav Nijinsky, painter Pablo Picasso, composers Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, Sergei Prokofiev and Igor Stravinsky. The book reprints and quotes from hundreds of published reviews of Ballet Russe performances, as well as photographs and other illustrations.
The Times of London critic, on seeing the 1913 premier of the primitive and jarring Le Sacre du Printempts, ( The Rite of Spring) wrote: “We go back to the beginning of the world, when men were just ceasing to be animals and were coming into their heritage as human beings.”
Contemporary Dance, (1978) edited by Anne Livet
An Anthology of lectures, interviews and essays with many of the most important contemporary American choreographers, scholars and critics
Here is a book of the period when modern dance choreographers challenged the art form’s boundaries to the extreme: Trisha Brown stationed dancers on several New York City rooftops and called it art. One of her dances was entitled Man Walking Down the Side of a Building which shows a dancer climbing down seven stories. In another work, the dancer wears a movie projector on her back.
The book also chronicles modern dancer Twyla Tharp, who crossed the once-forbidden boundary between modern dance and ballet to create dances for some of the world’s greatest ballet dancers, including superstar Mikhail Baryshnikov, pictured here in his prime.
Laura Dean is also shown here, famous for her “circle dance” choreography. Her dance fans paid good money to watch her company turn in circles for an entire evening.
And of course there is Merce Cunningham, the father of contemporary dance, who invented choreography, not to go with music, but to go on a parallel track to sounds composed by his partner John Cage with his altered or “prepared piano” that sometimes resembled traditional music, but usually sounded like a cat being strangled by piano wire.
The Dance Photography of Carl Van Vechten
Selected and with an introduction by Paul Padgette
Carl Van Vechten’s talent, in addition to being a fine writer and gifted photographer, was being in the right place at the right time. As the assistant music critic for the New York Times he was ‘relegated’ to watch the emerging dance coming out of Diaghelev’s Ballet Russe in Europe. His published reviews turned out to be invaluable to historians decades later.
This book of his photos includes portraits of an array of artists, from American singer Cab Calloway and singer-dancer John W. Bubbles (who created the role of Sportin’ Life in Porgy and Bess), to Agnes de Mille, the Broadway and ballet choreographer who put puzzled dancers in cowboy boots and hats during the 1940’s. Also featured is Alicia Markova (whose real name was Lillian Alice Marks) the first British-born ballet dancer of note.
The introduction to this book chronicles Van Vechten’s career and mentions that in 1910, the day Anna Pavlova debuted at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, Van Vechten interviewed her for the New York Times, producing the first interview given in America by the legendary Russian ballerina. Once again, Van Vechten was in the right place at the right time.
Dancers on a Plane
Cage, Cunningham Johns
Here are some of the best photographs of choreographer Merce Cunningham and his dancers, as well as the scenic designs by artist Jasper Johns, set in a time when experimentation in dance, music and design were the overriding theme of the day. It includes the joyous photos of Cunningham in his heyday, dancing in “Antic Meet,” from 1958 in which he performed with a cane-back chair attached to his back.
“In Cage’s mature music a performer is not an ‘interpreter,’ someone trying to convey what someone else wants to say; he is a co-composer, sharing the decisions on what to say.” wrote David Sylvester, one of the contributors.
The Royal Ballet, First Fifty Years by Alexander Bland
This exhaustive book of photos, historic details, a comprehensive list of the company’s repertory, dates back to the beginning of English Ballet when dancers like Anton Dolin, Alicia Markova (Lillian Alice Marks was her real name) and Robert Helpmann (who choreographed and performed in the 1948 film The Red Shoes) were reason enough for English theatergoers to indulge in the ballet. The book moves on in the decades, chronicling the years of England’s greatest ballerina, Morgot Fonteyn and her partnership with Russian dancer Rudolph Nureyev. Those years were also blessed by the rich choreography by Frederick Ashton and later Kenneth MacMillan.
Days with Ulanova by Albert E. Kahn
A Unique Pictorial Portrait of the Great Russian Ballerina
Galina Ulanova was a “Soviet’ ballerina, who rose to the highest ranks of the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow while staying behind the iron curtain, rather than defecting to the West, like so many other ballet dancers during the Soviet years. Because she stayed in the Soviet Union, American audiences only saw her perform on the rare occasions the Bolshoi toured the U.S, making this book all the more valuable for its rarely-seen portraits of the dancer. It includes 300 photographs of Ulanova as a child, a performer, a teacher and a coach to young dancers replacing her on the stage after her retirement. The author traveled four times to the Soviet Union from 1959 to 1961 to work on the book, taking thousands of photographs of his favorite dancer.