Jump to content
This Site Uses Cookies. If You Want to Disable Cookies, Please See Your Browser Documentation. ×

George Balanchine by Arlene Croce


Recommended Posts

32tendu, Afterimages is the book I'd start with -- it is SO smart, it made a huge impressoin on me. you just find yourself in honest touch with a mind that's busily trying to sort out everything that she experiened in hte theater and feel her way back through her memories -- the "afterimages' -- to the experience itself and understand it.......

It was a fantastic thing to be alive when all that was happening, and to have her to read about it, as part of your life, like watching the Beatles go from teeny-boppers to poets and philosophers...

Link to comment

Everyone always recommends starting with "Afterimages" and yet - I've only read "Going to the Dance" and I think it's one of the best critical anthologies I've ever read. So if you can only find "Going to the Dance", that's fine too. As Paul said, Croce is so smart. After reading her, you just want to go to the ballet and experience it for yourself.

Link to comment

It’s true that you can start with any book of Croce’s and profit from it, but Afterimages is, as Paul says, the ideal place to start. It’s also special in that it includes pieces that were written before Croce got the regular gig at The New Yorker, and so many of them are different in form and tone from her later pieces. (I would compare it to Pauline Kael’s first book, “I Lost It At the Movies” although Croce’s title is more elegant.:D)

I like the title, too – it’s especially appropriate for Croce. She is a writer of many gifts, but paramount among these are her powers of description – nobody evokes those “afterimages” better, not even Denby, IMO.

I was a little disappointed with "Writing in the Dark," because it's not a comprehensive collection of her later work -- I missed a review of Farrell's autobiography, and although it wasn't dance related she wrote a very interesting review of the most recent biography of the silent film star Mary Pickford.

Link to comment
I was a little disappointed with "Writing in the Dark," because it's not a comprehensive collection of her later work -- I missed a review of Farrell's autobiography, and although it wasn't dance related she wrote a very interesting review of the most recent biography of the silent film star Mary Pickford.

I have to agree. Also, some of her more controversial articles and rants about NYCB were also omitted, and it's hard to understand her progression in context without them.

Link to comment

Does anyone have an update about the release of this book? I e-mailed the publisher in April and recieved a reply saying the book would be released in May of this year. Of course, that didn't happen. I have to admit I have zero patience waiting for this book to come out! :)

Link to comment

I don't know when Croce's book will appear, but Amazon lists a paperback by one

Marc Raymond Strauss entitled "Dance Criticism of Arlene Croce: Articulating a Vision of Artistry, 1973-1987" due out on the 31st of December. This New Year's Eve I think I'll stay home and read!

Link to comment
I don't know when Croce's book will appear, but Amazon lists a paperback by one 

Marc Raymond Strauss entitled "Dance Criticism of Arlene Croce: Articulating a Vision of Artistry, 1973-1987" due out on the 31st of December. This New Year's Eve I think I'll stay home and read!

The title of this book will make for maximum confusion, sort of like "James Joyce's Ulysses," which was not that at all but a book of criticism by Stuart Gilbert (not to be confused with Gilbert Stuart.) I gather that what we have here is a book of criticism about criticism.
Link to comment

The first one, especially, includes material written for journals other than The New Yorker, that either you can't get electronically or you'd have to pay extra for (a piece for Harper's, for ex.).

Link to comment

canbelto, I have "Going to the Dance" and not "Afterimages". I have found "Going to the Dance" to be indispensable, however I get the impression that Croce was having a better time going to the dance back when she wrote "Afterimages" than by the time she wrote the pieces in "Going to the Dance". :bow:

Edited: Big oops! I got mixed up between the books. I've edited the post.

Link to comment

Ideally you should have both books, but if I had to choose one it would be Afterimages. Much of the material in it was written, as Dale notes, before Croce got her regular berth at The New Yorker, and this has its minuses and pluses. You don’t get the week in week out season coverage, but there is more variety in the material. At this early juncture Croce was doing a certain amount of chest pounding and there are many swipes at her fellow critics, not generally allowed at The New Yorker, which makes for lively reading and you can observe Croce staking out her territory.

I wonder if we'll ever see the Balanchine book. It sounds as if there's something wrong.

Link to comment

i rem. once arlene croce's musing aloud - maybe after a brooklyn paper interviewed her about various aspects of her career - about the differences of 'tone' etc. she found operating in her writing, when doing for her own magazine - the quarterly BALLET REVIEW - and when writing for regular publications, such as the weeky New Yorker, she said she felt compelled to say just about everything she was thinking on a given subject when she was writing for BR b/c she might not have the opportunity again - once she went to the NYer, where she had a 'beat,' she said she knew she would have further chances to address the subject and thus could hold off expressing additional points until some future opportunity.

some of her classic BALLET REVIEW pieces are in AFTERIMAGES.

i'm not sure she ever collected her initial, witty and brilliant essay for BALLET REVIEW: "Sylvia, Susan and God"!

as follows:

Croce, Arlene.

Sylvia, Susan and God.

Ballet review. Brooklyn, N. Y. v 1 no 1, [1965] p [1]-11

Notes :A review of the 1965 dance season.

Link to comment

For me, "Going to the Dance" (1982) is twice as valuable as "Afterimages" (1977). The latter has 21 index citations for Farrell, Suzanne, while the former has 42. In addition, the jacket photo, by Martha Swope, was of Suzanne in Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2. But don't forget "Sight Lines" (1987). That has 43 index citations for Farrell.

Link to comment
For me, "Going to the Dance" (1982) is twice as valuable as "Afterimages" (1977). The latter has 21 index citations for Farrell, Suzanne, while the former has 42. In addition, the jacket photo, by Martha Swope, was of Suzanne in Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2. But don't forget "Sight Lines" (1987). That has 43 index citations for Farrell.

I understand Farrell Fan, but Afterimages has the great essay "Farrell and Farrellism" and several others detailing Farrell's return to NYCB. Frankly, a cherish all four books. And I cross my fingers that we will eventually get the Croce Balanchine book someday.

Link to comment

I got all three books -- "Afterimages," "Going to the Dance," and "Sight and Sound." Now along with "Writing in the Dark," I have all four Croce books, save the one she wrote about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. I think of the four volumes, "Writing in the Dark" is my least favorite. I'm puzzled as to why so many great pieces that she wrote that were included in the earlier anthologies were left out, including her lovely, understated obituary to George Balanchine. Ironically "Writing in the Dark" has her two most famous pieces, "Dimming the Lights" and "Discussing the Undiscussable." But they happen to be my least favorite Croce pieces actually.

But really, I'm grateful I have all four volumes, because even when I disagree with her she is fascinating and articulate.

Link to comment
I got all three books -- "Afterimages," "Going to the Dance," and "Sight and Sound." Now along with "Writing in the Dark," I have all four Croce books [ ... ]
Me too, thanks to the references on this thread. I found the first 3 books on Amazon (click above), each available from a different seller.

I'm immersed in another project right now, so don't have time to read these volmes from cover to cover. But it's fun to dip into each, looking for performances I attended (or could only read about at the time), favorite dancers, etc.

I especially like Afterimages; what a rich time for dance the mid 60s and the 70s were! I'm grateful to have lived through those years and for the relatively low ticket prices that made it possible to see so much. As for the many performances one inevitably missed (at least those of us who had a life in the real world), there was Croce every week in The New Yorker telling us about what she saw and what she thought about it.

Link to comment

What I love about Croce is that she can be so surprising. She gives a balanced, thoughtful, and spirited defense of Mayerling, of all ballets. And then she drops a line like this in the middle of a mostly laudatory review of her beloved NYCB: "Has there been a worse-dressed ballet company in the history of the world?"

Link to comment
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...