The best of America’s best writer on dance
For twenty-five years, Arlene Croce was The New Yorker’s dance critic, a post the magazine created expressly for her. Her entertaining, forthright, passionate reviews and essays revealed the logic and history of ballet, modern dance, and their postmodern variants to a generation of theatergoers. This volume contains her most significant and provocative pieces—over a fourth of which never appeared in book form—covering classical ballets, the rise of George Balanchine, the careers of Twyla Tharp, Mark Morris, and Merce Cunningham, and the controversies surrounding many of the twentieth century’s great dance companies.
"Croce is the Jane Austen of dance criticism . . . in breadth as well as in intensity the best dance critic around."—The New York Times Book Review “This substantial collection will stand as an essential guide to the dance of a demanding and exciting era.”—Booklist “A treasure trove for dance lovers.”—Publishers Weekly
Arlene Croce (1934-2024) explored the world of dance for readers of the New Yorker from 1973 to 1998. She is the author of The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book, Afterimages, Sight Lines, and Going to the Dance.
