Fancy Footwork
From a history of contemporary dance to Twyla Tharp’s ruminations on “creative DNA,” there’s a bonanza of new books for dance lovers. By Laura Shapiro for New York Metro


Looking over some of my favorite dance books this year, I’m struck by the fact that most of them aren’t really about dance. That is, dance is where these writers start thinking, but it’s not where they end up; in one way or another, they’re all writing about life. The exception is No Fixed Points: Dance in the Twentieth Century (Yale University Press; $50), a narrative account of Western dancing and choreography in the last century by Nancy Reynolds and Malcolm McCormick. Their incredible journey starts with Loie Fuller (whose New York debut in 1891 was a piece about a woman imperiled by a medical quack—won’t somebody please reconstruct this?) and ends with Billy Elliot, but though it’s encyclopedic in size and scope, this is a book to read, not just to consult.

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