Customer Reviews

Fifty Contemporary Choreographers (Routledge Key Guides)

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This may as well be called 50 Random Choreographers. If you were to put a bunch of names in a hat and pull them out at random, you are bound to come up with a Cunningham here and a Forsythe there, but would be bound to miss whole swaths of what are described in Jowitt's introduction as the most important choreographers of the second half of the 20th Century (no Pina Bausch?). (I may be biased, having published on Pina Bausch, but I don't think ranking her work as among the most influential of the 20th century would be a stretch in any consideration Similarly, there is a fair representation of Judson era post-modern dance (Trisha Brown, Steve Paxton, etc.), but no Yvonne Rainer? And anything that might veer too far toward the ballet end of the spectrum is simply ignored. OK, Forsythe is here and Jiri Kylian, but no Chris Wheldon? no Balanchine? Maybe the editors had their reasons for omitting certain people, but they do not adequately explain their strategy. They claim they wanted "to suggest a range (geographical and stylistic) of dance phenomena" from Dance in New York in the 1950s (? that would be Martha Graham, Balanchine, Anna Sokolow, etc., none of whom are included here. Maybe they mean New York in the 1960s), British new dance, French nouvelle danse, "and those areas where dance merges into other forms, such as opera, drama, performance art and installation"(no Sasha Waltz, Meg Stuart, etc.) This book fails on all those accounts.

A selection like this is bound to be incomplete and skewed, there will always be people left out, and so a pointed editorial eye is necessary, and an explanation for the choices that were made vital. If this book told a different story, that would be fine, but in trying to tell the story described in the editor's minimal introduction, they fail. Including an introduction from Deborah Jowitt helps immensely, but her run down of twentieth century dance also shows everything this book lacks. Jowitt describes the influence of earlier Modern Dance and German Expressionism, which is not contained here. She highlights Cunningham's important influence, which is here, but also brings out the influence of German Tanztheater and Butoh, which are sadly lacking from this volume. Disappointing, as a more comprehensive overview of dance and choreographers is needed right now. Many of the entries are fine in and of themselves, but I can't see how I would use this book in a classroom setting with the gaps it entails, and it's not at all useful for personal reference given the necessary rudimentary overviews it provides.

I should note that my review is in response to the 2nd edition of this book. Evidently the first edition covers different artists, and to my mind does a slightly better job of covering some of the basic omissions in the second volume. Maybe the editors felt that after almost 10 years Pina Bausch, Carolyn Carlson, Laura Dean, Douglas Dunn, Eiko and Koma, David Gordon and Kazuo Ohno (all cut from the first volume) were no longer contemporary. A few of those have died, but if that was the cut off, why wasn't that mentioned, and just because they may have died, their work is still very present and influential to the current generation. Merce Cunningham has died, but his work is still included and lauded, as it should be. I just don't understand the rationale for who is left out and who makes the grade.

I am very satisfied with Amazon. I was able to finish my project on time thanks for the prompt delivery of this item.

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Juan