Birds Eye View: Dancing With Martha Graham And On Broadway [Hardcover]

Dorothy Bird (Author), Joyce Greenberg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 21, 1997

An autobiography of Martha Graham’s protoge who went on to work with every major Broadway choreographer of the 1930s and 40s. It provides invaluable insights into Graham’s teaching while telling anecdotes about working on the Great White Way.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

The defining moment in Bird's life occurred while the 17-year-old Canadian was attending the Cornish School in Seattle. The modern dance choreographer Martha Graham was a guest teacher and invited Bird to return with her to New York City. Bird debuted with the Graham group in Primitive Mysteries in 1931 and stayed with the company until 1937. Recognizing a personal need for independence, Bird extricated herself from Graham's bewitching and dominating presence to pursue a career on Broadway and the concert stage, as well as in the classroom, where she passed along Graham's teachings. She worked with many greats, including George Balanchine, Agnes De Mille, Jose Limon, Doris Humphrey, and Jerome Robbins. The most compelling aspect of Bird's volume is her excellent recall for early Graham teaching and dances. On the whole, however, this recollection reveals Bird, a dancer of considerable talents, to be an inveterate innocent who found herself in all sorts of interesting circumstances with many famous personalities but with few insights to share. Her life offstage is only briefly recounted in the closing pages. This memoir is less autobiography and more Bird's "act of appreciation" to Graham. Recommended for large dance collections.?Joan Stahl, National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

An satisfying dancer's tale of struggle and survival. The incurably innocent, Canadian-born farmer's daughter Bird began studying with Martha Graham in 1930 at Seattle's Cornish School, arriving with no thought that the 12-week stint would change her life. But her nervy, high-spirited memoir, cowritten with her former student Greenberg, recounts how this change took place, offering shrewd glimpses of Graham at a critical early point in her choreographic career, and following Bird herself beyond induction into Graham's modernism in New York and on to the Broadway stage. Bird explains the sources of Graham's unique pedagogy and her working methods when creating dances. Once, for example, Bird was an invited guest when Graham was at work alone, and as she observed, ``Martha did not use music or counts. She used sounds . . . At times she seemed to be keening, as her Irish ancestors might have done long ago. The startling movement patterns that were evolving came not out of those strange sounds, but out of her articulately alive and animated body.'' Bird demonstrated Graham's technique to other dancers at her mentor's urging but was not a favored performer. In 1937, feeling frustrated and exploited by Graham's slave-driving tendencies, she left the Graham entourage--only to find a second career as a dancer in musical theater and a third as a much-respected dance teacher of children (for Balanchine and others) and adults. The memoir concludes, a bit unconvincingly, with Bird's testimonial of eternal admiration for Graham. In a lighthearted mood, Bird remembers how Graham explained sex to her, the neophyte. Her later life was difficult--her first child died in infancy, and her second husband, Paul Villard, was blacklisted. She died, at 84, in 1996. A fascinating glimpse of life inside Graham's charmed circle, and a moving record of one dancer's determined pursuit of a career. (32 b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 296 pages
• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press; 1 edition (August 21, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822939800
• ISBN-13: 978-0822939801
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,387,835 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well written story of an exquisite dancer-simply beautiful, February 8, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Birds Eye View: Dancing With Martha Graham And On Broadway (Hardcover)

Dorthy Bird was a gifted dancer, and with Joyce Greenberg's assistance the reader is given extraordinary insight into the world of Martha Graham. Ms. Greenberg captures the exquisite world of modern dance and the life of a beautiful person, Dorothy Bird.. Brian Lamb should interview her on Booknotes.