Time and the Dancing Image

Exploring basic changes in theatrical dance from Romantic ballets to the present, Village Voice critic Jowitt (The Dance in Mind) assesses the contributions of Taglioni, Petipa, Duncan, St. Denis, Graham, Humphrey, Cunningham (``the eminence grise of vanguard dance'') and others. Among the areas covered in this major dance study are technique, ideology, philosophy, psychology, the use of emotion, breathing, nudity. Jowitt also examines the personal lives of dancers (their dilemmas, liaisons, ways of dressing); the prevalence of ``oriental'' harem, temple and other exotic themes, forms and styles; the influence of archetypes, myths and Greek dramas on Martha Graham; the impact of Petipa and Ivanov on the ballets of Balanchine. In her ``anxiety to chronicle a notoriously ephemeral art,'' Jowitt avoids the dance critic's pitfall of performing an occasional ``inadvertent disservice,'' even as she delves into the nontechnical, like the attempts of ``modern'' dancers to express the aspirations and struggles of mankind, the cross-fertilization of the arts, especially at New York's Judson Church in the 1960s, and reasons why male dancers are almost always secondary to women. Photos not seen by PW. (July)