PositiveThe Los Angeles Review of BooksFor all of his influence on classical ballet into the present...there is a notable lack of biographical work about Petipa in English ... Meisner’s Marius Petipa does a great deal to fill this lacuna ... In Marius Petipa, she gestures to the various academic works that have preceded hers and, more importantly, eloquently paints a picture of a past that often feels remote, even for those of us whose lives have long been steeped in ballet history and culture ... Meisner discusses choreography and production details with remarkable precision ... Translating a physical, performance-based art form into words is always a challenge, and Meisner tackles it with agility. Her biography is often as compelling as Petipa’s ballets must have been in their day ... That said, the biography’s nonlinear thematic organization can be a bit disorienting. There are, at times, strange chronological jumps in the narrative, and the whole can come to feel like a series of articles rather than a stand-alone book ... Marius Petipa: The Emperor’s Ballet Master is, in many ways, a rich addition to scholarship on Russian ballet ... enjoyable as well as informative.
Marianne Preger-Simon
PositiveThe Los Angeles Review of Books...Preger-Simon’s book captures an entire era of the American avant-garde, reflecting the multimedia approach that the modern dance world embraced ... Dancing with Merce Cunningham has two main strengths as a dance memoir. First, it is an important addition to the body of writings on Cunningham, one of the most important modern choreographers and creative forces of the American avant-garde ... Secondly, the journal-like form and lyrical style of Preger-Simon’s book is simply a pleasure to read; the effect is evocative and nostalgic without veering into the saccharine. Her respect and love for Cunningham is evident on every page, and she takes his status as a genius for granted, but she does not bother to heap further praise on a figure who has long been lauded. Rather, she shows how someone who is now a household name of the dance world came to occupy that position.
