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Edwin Denby was the most important and influential American dance critic of this century and was also a poet of distinction. This book presents a sampling of his reviews, essays, and poems, a collection that is an essential resource for students and lovers of dance. ... Read more

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Edwin Denby defines the terms of dancewriting.
Denby's Vocabulary

Frank O'Hara wrote of dancewriter Edwin Denby in his poem 'Edwin's Hand', that he was 'Easy to love, but/difficult to please,he/walks densely as a child/in the midst of spectacular/needs tounderstand.'A glimpse of Denby the man and the myth peek through in a newbook of his prose DANCE WRITINGS AND POETRY, Edited by Robert Cornfield,(Yale University Press, $40 hard, $18 soft).Cornfield notes in anintroductory short-bio, that Denby had a background in art history, music,gymnastics, theater and began his career in the 20s as a dancer.This isthe only book now in print of Denby's influencial dance articles.Foralmost thiry years Denby's eye was deftly focused on the evolution of dance in this century.

Denby's ability as a dance interpreter has adramatic authority, if dated abstractness. His encylopedic knowledge ofthe history and connotations of every type of dance is always evident inhis essays.This spectrum, as presented in the uneven 'Dance Writings',builds as a symposia on the world of dance, invovling complete aspects ofacademic, physical and aesthetic interrogation. And, to credit hisanti-eliteism, his work, even at it most studied, has a conversationallightness.It is obvious that his evaluative powers were distinctive andunique.But you cannot help but wonder why he doesn't employ the economyin his writing that he would expect on the dance stage. Or red flag hisown indulgences of style, something that he was obviously fond of doingwhen critiquing other artists.

Denby's mission was to define the termsof dancewriting and make it vital to the art form.To achieve"disentangling the pretensions of a ballet from it achievements."as he put in the essay 'Dance Criticism'.Often his method of dissectionreads as too accurate and overstated, like that of a sharpshooter killing afaun and mounting it on the hood of his car.Denby himself sites a greatreason for choreographers to be concise in a review of the first mountingof Balanchine's Apollo where he cites lines by Richard Howard on poetry,that advise, "...Always halve the line so that a rest is heard." But frequently fails to apply the tenet himself.

In his time and now, Denby enjoys a reputation as 'the final word' as a dance-theater historian. He was no doubt given broad licence by his editors at hisreviewing postsfor The Times Herald and Modern Music, among other publications. Moretheoretical in approach than descriptive, Denby often veers from dancereporting to his own conceptual impressions and emotional responses.Now,completely detached from the performances, his analysis is comes off asobtuse, sometimes even funny.Take for example a description of MarthaGraham's company in her piece 'Chronicle',Denby writes, "Even herso-called angularity springs partly from a feat that the eye will beconfused unless every muscle is given a definite job.The eye will beconfused.But our bodily sense wouldnot.Our bodily sense needs therebound from a gesture, the variation of hard and soft muscle, of exact andgeneral." Etc. Etc. Etc.I'll attempt to translate- Graham's painedlooks and overwrought extentions detracted from her artistry.Denby getsso carried away with his themes that he can't resist stating the obvious,as in this observation, .."the musician exists not only as aninstrument but also as a person."Deep.

Still, there is no doubtthat Denby is ajournalist with potent instincts. You get the sense thathe is engaging in a broad discussion of dance as a vital human condition. In Brad Gooch's biography ofO'Hara ('City Poet'), he is described as,"soft spoken, reserved and gentlemanly" and "that sittingnext to Denby at the ballet felt like sitting next to a lightningrod."

The poetry section of the book is a curious and frustratinginclusion- intriguing, but decorative.Denby's character peeks through inhis poems, with at times, a diarist's intimacy.In an introductory essaytitled 'The Thrities', Denby describes his process in interpreting paintingacademically and emotionally.He speaks of the immediacy of a canvas andits after-image- the lingering affect.This quality can be said of many ofhis poems.In between frequent casualness, forced imagery and veiledhomoerotica,unexpected clarity and lyrcism appear, particularly in his'Mediterrean Cities' poems, demonstrated hauntingly in the sharp-faceted'Delos'- Glistens a vivid phallus; marsh-born here beforeAt a palm, cleft-suckled, a god he first came Who hurts andheals unlike love, and whom I fear; Will he return here?quickly we pluck dry flowers The sailor blows his conch; Delosdisappears

With all of its faults 'Dance Writing and Poetry' still hasgreat value as a reference for dance students, artists and writers.Readselectively, Denby can render a kinetic reality to the performance andperformers with provocative imagery.And the essays about ballet history, neoclassicism,Nijinski and, most pointedly,the Balanchine revolution,remain invaluable contributions.

Lewis Whittington

A necessary book: among the best critics, beautiful poems.
Don't be buffaloed by Times reviewer: Denby's poems are Americantreasures, not "quaint" in any way; they are densely wrought,large scale beyond their compact sonnet formats, piquant. & yes, ascritic, Denby is among the topmost immortals -- meaning he ranks withDiderot, Shaw, Baudelaire. Poems & dance writings both put forthcompanionable, no-nonsense, strict, generous urbane attitude: "Dancecriticism has two different aspects: one is being made drunk for a secondby seeing something happen; the other is expressing lucidly what you sawwhen you were drunk." And: "Actual events are obscure/ Though the observers appear clear." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

hello, I am korean. i met a girl. she is dancer...so....i.
em.. She asking me " I must be find web of Edwin Denby's report! "....... V.SU : o.....k.....a.......y...... ......anybody help me.... ... Read more

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"Dance criticism at its very best."--Library Journal

"Denby is incomparable and irreplaceable."--The New Republic

"Essential for serious balletomanes."--Publishers Weekly

"There are great dance critics, and then there is Edwin Denby, who is in a class by himself."--Mindy Aloff, editor, Dance Anecdotes & Dance Critics Association News

Edwin Denby was the most important and influential American dance critic of the 20th century. His reviews and essays--which he began writing in the late 1930s and continued to write for almost thirty years--were possessed of a voice, vision, and passion as compelling and inspiring as his subject. As dance critic, first for Modern Music and then for the New York Herald Tribune, and as a contributor to numerous magazines and journals (Ballet, Dance Magazine, Mademoiselle, and Evergreen Review among them), Denby permanently changed the way we think and talk about dance.

This volume presents his reviews from Modern Music and the Tribune in chronological order, providing not only a picture of how Denby's dance theories and reviewing methods evolved, but also an informal history of the dance in New York from 1936 through 1945. Some of the reviews glimpse the vanished dancers and dances that were most particularly of their time. In others, Denby returns again and again to the four artists he considered exemplary: Alicia Markova, Alexandra Danilova, Martha Graham, and George Balanchine. It was Balanchine on whom Denby focused after he left the Tribune, and all of his post-Tribune writings on Balanchine and the New York City Ballet are presented here in one section, providing a history of the early artistic development of the company and of Balanchine himself, while also showing Denby's most eloquent and deeply felt writing.

Finally there are his post-1945 reviews, essays, and lectures on such general dance subjects as the phenomenon of a truly good leap, classicism in ballet, and dance criticism itself. Here as elsewhere in the collection, the simple elegance of his writing, its evocative power, and its extraordinary timelessness make it an essential part of our dance literature. ... Read more

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The 'first generation' of New York poets - John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Frank O'Hara, and James Schuyler - was celebrated in Mark Ford's "The New York Poets: An Anthology" (2004). Reviewing it in "The Times", Rachel Campbell-Johnston wrote: 'The reader feels the electricity that fizzles through their lines, frazzling academic conventions, exploding grammatical rules, spitting the bright sparks that smoldered and ignited a new postmodern mindset.' "New York Poets II" celebrates the continuing vitality of that unruly 'school', a school which it is impossible to define precisely; indeed, how the poets elude definition is one way of defining it. Which poets to choose? Which poems to choose in this context? Where are the boundaries to be drawn? The painter and writer Trevor Winkfield, who has worked in New York since the 1960s and knows the scene intimately, joins Mark Ford in the task of mapping and populating this radical sequel to the first anthology. Each of the eleven poets is given between fifteen and twenty pages. The selections are provided with brief introductions to the poets' work. Edwin Denby was born in 1903, Bernadette Mayer in 1948.Linking them is a buried narrative which cannot be explicitly teased out; it entails an uneven exchange between experiment and the emergence of language poetry. The work is various but subtly related in its aspirations and freedoms. ... Read more

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Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Olga Maynard, Lyndon Wainwright, Adam Darius, John Mueller, Edwin Denby, Peter Brinson, Elsie Ivancich Dunin, Selma Jeanne Cohen, Arlene Croce, Richard Buckle, Mabel Todd, Albert. Excerpt:Adam Darius: Göteborg, Sweden, 1961. Photo: Atelier Jonason Adam Darius (born 10 May 1930) is an American dancer, mime artist , writer and choreographer. As a performer, he has appeared in over 80 countries across six continents. As a writer, he has published 13 books and written 21 plays. In a program devoted to his career, the BBC World Service described him as "one of the most exceptional talents of the 20th century". Adam Darius currently lives in Helsinki , Finland. Biography Adam Darius was born in Manhattan , New York City, into a family of Turkish and Russian ancestry. Ballet career Adam Darius: as Christ, with Kazimir Kolesnik, Cuba, 1984. Photo: Prensa Latina Adam Darius received his ballet and contemporary dance training from, among others, Anatole Oboukhov, George Goncharov, Olga Preobrajenska and José Limón . As an actor, Adam Darius studied with Raikin Ben-Ari of the Moscow Habimah Theatre, Academy Award winning actress Shelley Winters and Herbert Berghof . He went on to dance in a dozen ballet companies including Britain's International Ballet, Canada's Royal Winnipeg Ballet , Brazil's Rio de Janeiro Ballet and Denmark's Scandinavian Ballet. He has also been choreographer of the Israel National Opera and then director of his own company, the Israeli Ballet. He choreographed ballets for American prima ballerinas Cynthia Gregory and Melissa Hayden and, for opera star Plácido Domingo , he choreographed four operas. Adam Darius's panoramic gallery of tragic and comic roles has ranged from the vagabond in the Irish film Stigmata to that of Puck, which he acted in Shakespearean Swedi... ... Read more

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Chapters: Edwin Denby, Clive Barnes, Jack Anderson, Joan Acocella, Arlene Croce, John Rockwell, Deborah Jowitt, Robert Gottlieb, John J. O'connor, Jennifer Dunning. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 41. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Edwin Orr Denby (February 4, 1903 July 12, 1983) was one of the most important and influential American dance critics of the 20th century, as well as a poet and novelist. His dance reviews and essays were collected in Looking at the Dance (1949, reprinted 1968), Dancers, Buildings, and People in the Streets (1965) and Dance Writings (1986). His works of poetry include In Public, In Private (1948), Mediterranean Cities (1956), Snoring in New York (1974), Collected Poems (1975) and The Complete Poems (1986). His English translation of Lao Tze's Tao Teh Ching from a German edition was published as Edwin's Tao in 1993. Denby's only novel, Mrs. Ws Last Sandwich (also released as Scream in a Cave) was published in 1972. The son of Charles Denby, Jr. and Martha Dalzell Orr, Edwin was born in Tientsin, China in 1903, where Charles had been appointed as Chief foreign advisor to Yuan Shikai a year earlier. Edwin's grandfather, Charles Harvey Denby, who had served as United States Ambassador to China for an unprecedented 13 years, died when Edwin was one. Edwin spent his childhood first in Shanghai, then in Vienna, where his father served as consul general from 1909-1915, before coming to the United States in 1916. He was educated at Hotchkiss, and attended Harvard but failed to graduate. He also attended classes at the University of Vienna, before obtaining a diploma in gymnastics (with specialty in modern dance) at the Hellerau-Laxenburg school in Vienna in 1928. He performed for several years, notably with the State Theater of Darmstadt. Looking for someone t...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=678471 ... Read more

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Chapters: American Dance Critics, John Martin, Edwin Denby, Clive Barnes, Anna Kisselgoff, Jack Anderson, Joan Acocella, Arlene Croce, Sunil Kothari, John Rockwell, Deborah Jowitt, Ann Barzel, Robert Gottlieb, John J. O'connor, Maude Lloyd, Jennifer Dunning. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 61. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: John Martin (June 2, 1893 - May 19, 1985) became Americas first major dance critic in 1927. Focusing his efforts on propelling the modern dance movement, he greatly influenced the careers of dancers such as Martha Graham. Within his life he wrote several books on the modern dance and received numerous awards for his work. John Martins life leading up to his career may have led him to the success he later attained. Martin was born June, 2 1893 in Louisville, Kentucky and was immediately influenced by his mothers love of musical theatre. After his education at the Louisville Male High School, he held several jobs as actor, publicist, and editor in Louisville and New York. During World War I, he served in the Aviation Section of the Army Signal Corps, after which he returned to theatre working with the Chicago Little Theatre where he met his wife Hettie Louise Mick. They married in 1918. He also served as director and press agent for many different theatre projects. Over the years, Martin developed an interest in the actor/director/drama teacher Konstantin Stanislavskys system which expressed the dramatic impulses that arise within Many have claimed that Stanislavskys ideas influenced Martins interest in modern dance because it displays this quality. As a dance critic, Martin fought many preconceived ideas within the newly created genre of writing to become one of the most influential writers in dance history. Before there were actual designated dance critics,...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=17159900 ... Read more

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Beautiful young American Rosamond Rivers came to the exotic Spanish island of Mallorca in search of the fabulous diamonds that were her lost legacy. What she found was a proud and handsome aristocrat whose passion soon was matched by her own...a shadowy enemy whose evil strained everything and whose murderous agents seemed everywhere...and an underground world of violence and intrigue where nothing was quite what it seemed and wehre innocence fell prey to the closing jaws of terror.... ... Read more