COWBOYS AT THE BALLET

A high-stepping tribute to a young dancer who hit her stride not onstage but at a rodeo.

Though she did become a renowned choreographer—and much more besides—the path that young Agnes de Mille takes from dance-obsessed childhood to breakthrough success in this gracefully illustrated account is neither straight nor easy. Invariably posed in a balletic stance or leap, her slender figure whirls across the pages from California to New York to London, studying for years ways to incorporate “a bit of ballet, / a fragment of folk, / a morsel of modern” into her own personal style of expression. Her fortunes change at last when, bouncing back from a Broadway flop, she spins memories of a visit to Colorado into a ballet titled Rodeo, about a “plucky, misfit cowgirl— / a bit like Agnes herself.” Urbinati ends with the curtain drawing back on opening night; Bobrow goes on in an afterword to fill in the details of that 1942 premiere (22 curtain calls!) and to analyze how, in her “long and illustrious” life, de Mille’s distinct sensibility “captured not only the spirit of a cowgirl but the heart of a nation.” That she worked with both  Black and white dancers in the 1930s goes unmentioned by the author, but Urbinati picks up on it, and the dancers’ sense of movement—everyone looks ready to burst into action—strongly reflects the narrative’s buoyant, irresistible energy.

En pointe for any lovers of dance or its history.