Pugh gracefully dances the fine line between critic and fan.
In her debut, a scholar and freelance critic transforms some key people and events into artful coat trees on which to hang the history of American popular dance.
Pugh is offering not a detailed, comprehensive history but a focused, intentionally limited account. Some readers may quibble with her choices—why chapters on Agnes de Mille and Michael Jackson and not Bob Fosse and Gene Kelly?—but as the text unfurls, most readers will be satisfied (Fosse does get significant mention in Jackson’s chapter). The author opens with a startling moment: the 1939 arrest of Bill “Bojangles” Robinson in Times Square for loitering while contemplating a neon sign of himself, and Robinson’s influence, as well as the influences of numerous other black dancers, glides through the text. Others meriting considerable attention include Fred Astaire and Paul Taylor, but Pugh is careful to include myriad other important figures, including Hermes Pan (who worked with Astaire) and Cholly Atkins (whose work Jackson studied closely). Some will find surprises here, as well. With his wife, Henry Ford wrote a manual for square dancers (Good Morning, 1926), and Michael Jackson learned the moonwalk from others, practicing for years before he presented it to the public. Although Pugh’s scholarship is considerable, she is writing not for a scholarly but for a general audience. Readers won’t get lost in any forest of arcane vocabulary or be confused by charts and diagrams. Her intent, instead, is to show dance’s sort of mockingbird origins: moves come from earlier moves and moments—evolution, not intelligent design. At times, the author has a dancer’s grace in the flow of her prose. She calls a piece by Paul Taylor “an exercise in delicious contrarianism.” Her tone is relentlessly positive, however, with seldom a discouraging word.
Pugh gracefully dances the fine line between critic and fan.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-300-20131-4
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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