Dance to the Piper

Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle

In the introduction a comment about de Mille is repeated, that she is a better writer than she is a choreographer. I thought that was an insult until I read the book. She is an excellent writer! I am not a judge of choreography, so can't say anything to that, but her words often show a sense of movement and rhythm that is a joy to encounter, given the plodding and inelegant prose one so often encounters these days. Language is a bodily art too, she reminds us.

The book is a sort of a hodgepodge, which she says she scribbled in odd moments while taking care of small children and handed over to her publishers as a mass of material in a shopping bag. Bits about her early life and dancing career are interspersed with backstage views of the creation of works like Rodeo and Oklahoma! and portraits of notable figures like Martha Graham, Antony Tudor, and Marie Rambert.

I think it's likely that as a dancer she was not as great as these, and that she was kept afloat so long as a struggling young artist only by her family's money and influence (she was the niece of Cecil B. De Mille). There is too much in the book about these early concerts, which become boring to read about since one cannot actually see the dancing. But there are other moments that absolutely shine and give wings to the words in a remarkable way.