The Dance Experience: Readings in Dance Appreciation - Softcover

In 'The Dance Experience,' Myron Nadel and Constance Nadel Miller, educators and professional performers, bring together past and contemporary thought on a wide variety of dance subjects and problems, providing a broad-based view of this discipline that will stimulate layman, student, and professional alike.

Dance as a performing art is highlighted by the writings of Calvin Tomkins on Merce Cunningham; Bernard Taper on the choreography of George Balanchine; Nora Kaye on the new American breed of ballerina; Martha Graham on the art, life and philosophy of the performing artist; and Walter Sorell and Bertram Jessup on dance criticism.

Susanne Langer and critic-historian Selma Jeanne Cohen discuss dance philosophy, and the relationship of dance to other arts receives attention from Jose Limon and Antony Tudor (music), Emily Genauer (modern painting), and Helen Tamiris and Carol Egan (theater, with particular reference to Jerzy Grotowski's Polish Mime Theater). The writing of one of history's first dance critics, Jean Georges Noverre, on the state of ballet in the 18th century is contrasted with contemporary views on organizational problems facing present-day dance companies. The creative nature of the choreographic process is examined on several levels, and other selections clarify similarities and differences among modern and folk dance, ballet, the Dance of the Absurd, and experimental forms such as the 'new new dance.'

Finally, participation in dance as an educative process is treated by the well-known dance educator Margaret H'Doubler and others, and practical problems (including careers in dance, as well as the development of a viable dance script, or notation) are presented from a number of viewpoints.