Tuesday, August 18, 2009

A classic book on a classy team

This article was too good not to share, although its connection to books is a little weak. Still, it does review a couple of new books, and refers back to Arlene Croce's masterpiece. And it gives us a chance to relive in print, for a moment, the glory of Fred and Ginger.

New York Times; Only in the 1960s did the Astaire-Rogers duets first receive serious critical attention as great choreography. In 1965 Arlene Croce, who until then had been best known as a film critic, founded Ballet Review magazine (which flourishes still), and one of her two remarkable contributions to the first issue was the essay “Notes on La Belle, La Perfectly Swell, Romance.” (It was republished in 2008 in Robert Gottlieb’s “Reading Dance” anthology.) In 1972 Ms. Croce followed this with one of the best-loved works in dance literature, “The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book.” In prose that perfectly rises to the thrill of these classics, she herself produced a classic... More.

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