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    Inside the Dancer’s Art
    Inside the Dancer’s Art
    Inside the Dancer’s Art
    Ebook284 pages49 minutes

    Inside the Dancer’s Art

    By Rose Eichenbaum

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    About this ebook

    In this gorgeous book, the acclaimed photographer Rose Eichenbaum captures the spirit, beauty, and commitment of dancers along with the dancers' own words of wisdom and guidance. More than 250 color and black and white photographs are paired with inspirational quotes from legendary and emerging dancers, including Bill T. Jones, Katherine Dunham, Ann Reinking, Mark Morris, Pina Bausch, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Gregory Hines, Mitzi Gaynor, Desmond Richardson, Rennie Harris, Paul Taylor, Ohad Naharin, Tiler Peck, and many more. Here, words and images explore creativity, art making, the communicative power of the human body, the challenges of balancing everyday life with the physical and practical demands of the dancer's art, and more. In these intimate portraits, Eichenbaum reveals and celebrates the world of the dancer. Sensual and mesmerizing, these images will entrance dancer and non-dancer alike—as well as anyone who loves fine photography—with their powerful depiction of the human body.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWesleyan University Press
    Release dateJun 13, 2017
    ISBN9780819577016
    Inside the Dancer’s Art
    Author

    Rose Eichenbaum

    Rose Eichenbaum is an award-winning photographer, author of six books and a respected educator. Her photography has graced more than thirty national magazine covers, and has been the subject of numerous exhibitions, including a three-year national tour hosted by the Smithsonian Institution. Eichenbaum directs the Art of Photographing Dance Workshop at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival and serves as documentary photographer for USC's Glorya Kaufman School of Dance.

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      Book preview

      Inside the Dancer’s Art - Rose Eichenbaum

      Inside the Dancer’s Art

      Inside the Dancer’s Art

      ROSE EICHENBAUM

      Foreword by LAR LUBOVITCH

      Edited by ARON HIRT-MANHEIMER

      WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS Middletown, Connecticut

      Wesleyan University Press

      Middletown CT 06459

      www.wesleyan.edu/wespress

      Text and images 2017 © Rose Eichenbaum

      All rights reserved

      Manufactured in China

      Typeset in Utopia and Aller by Tseng Information Systems, Inc.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Eichenbaum, Rose, photographer. | Hirt-Manheimer, Aron, 1948– editor.

      Title: Inside the dancer’s art / Rose Eichenbaum ; foreword by Lar Lubovitch ; edited by Aron Hirt-Manheimer.

      Description: Middletown, Conn. : Wesleyan University Press, 2017.

      Identifiers: LCCN 2016038497 (print) | LCCN 2016058292 (ebook) | ISBN 9780819577009 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780819577016 (ebook)

      Subjects: LCSH: Dancers—United States—Portraits. | Dancers—United States—Quotations.

      Classification: LCC GV1785.A1 E525 2017 (print) | LCC GV1785.A1 (ebook) | DDC 792.80922 [B]—dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016038497

      5   4   3   2   1

      Front cover photo: Anna Karnes from State Street Ballet by Rose Eichenbaum

      Back cover photo: Jason Samuels Smith by Rose Eichenbaum

      Contents

      Foreword  vii

      Introduction  ix

      Inside the Dancer’s Art  1

      Acknowledgments  205

      About the Artists and Photos  207

      Foreword

      Pictures, like dancers, do not speak in words. They call upon one’s intuition rather than one’s intellect, enriching our ability to see and to understand through seeing. Martha Graham used to tell a story of her father’s admonition to her as a child that words can lie, but he would know the truth by her movements. Whether apocryphal or not, the point is clear: there is a higher knowing than words can provide. All visual artists know this; in fact they can’t help it.

      Rose’s pictures of dancers reveal the most touching thing there is to know about them—their humanity. Her keen view takes us past the pretty lines and the illusions of ease and beauty (though that is there as well) as her photos guide our eyes to intuit a more intimate knowledge of the subject, a view of something more vulnerable than hard bodies and perfect arabesques. If you are her subject, as I have been several times, steady your nerves, relax, and give up the pretense. You will be revealed. Her psychologically inclined eye through her camera seeks to show who you are, like it or not.

      Lar Lubovitch

      Introduction

      The legendary choreographer Martha Graham described those who possess an irrepressible inner force to move, stretch, run, and jump as being doomed to dance. I have met many dancers who fit that description.

      After a thirty-year performance career, Nancy Colahan told me, I am, and always will be a dancer. Every cell in my body is primed to be so. Michele Simmons, an Alvin Ailey dancer who was later sidelined by multiple sclerosis and confined to a wheelchair, insisted to the end of her life, My identity as a dancer will never, ever, ever, ever be taken from me. It’s who I am.

      In the words of Desmond Richardson, one of the greatest dancers of his generation, I define dance as life—using your life experience to express yourself through your art. Top-rated national competitive break-dancer, Trinity (Nicole Whitaker) put it simply, Dance means everything. I’d die without it.

      Performance is how these individuals express who they are at the core. Tap dancer Jason Samuels Smith told me, I am my most honest when I’m dancing. No one can own my thoughts, or my actions, or tell me how to feel.

      Spanish dancer Carmela Greco, daughter of the late flamenco star, José Greco, described dance as therapeutic: Before every performance I feel a huge emotional weight—the weight of my life. But once I begin to move, the weight lightens and lifts away.

      The dancer’s art requires dedication, discipline, and sacrifice. Russian-trained ballerina Natalia Makarova explained how she had to tame her body in her quest to reach the top. One must work the body like a racehorse. Rein her in and bring her under control. When she rebels, you must conquer her, become her master to bring body and mind into harmony.

      I asked former Broadway dancer and ballet choreographer Eliot Feld, What is the payoff for all the sacrifices you’ve made for your art? He replied, I’ve learned that it’s unreasonable to expect rewards simply because you have given everything to make your dances. It’s a one-way street. The dances that you make owe you nothing. You owe them everything!

      Film star Shirley MacLaine, who performed on Broadway in Bob Fosse’s The Pajama Game, described dancers as artistic soldiers who will do anything they’re asked. The dancer’s job is to entertain, engage, and uplift an audience—and with that comes the responsibility to deliver one’s best performance.

      Carmen de Lavallade, who for decades has mesmerized audiences with her beauty and talent, confessed, You spend your entire life trying to elevate an audience to another level. You also spend your entire life afraid you might not. As Tony Award winner Chita Rivera put it, All I’ve ever wanted was to touch that one person out there in the dark.

      And yet, for all the training, long hours and, in most cases, low pay, dancers rarely know how much their performances truly affect an audience. Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater star Matthew Rushing explained, Even though you receive applause, you usually don’t know how your dancing affects people. But when someone comes up to you after a performance with tears in their eyes and says, ‘You touched my spirit, you touched my soul,’ that’s when you know you’ve made a difference.

      New York City Ballet’s principal dancer Tiler Peck pondered, "What do I look like when I’m

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