An Instinct for Success: Arnold Spohr and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet.

An Instinct for Success: Arnold Spohr and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet BY MICHAEL CRABB. TORONTO, CANADA: DANCE COLLECTION DANSE PRESS/ES. 2002. 288 PAGES, ILLUST. $26.95. ISBN 0-929003-45-4.

A Memoir BY GRANT STRATE. TORONTO, CANADA: DANCE COLLECTION DANSE PRESS/ES. 2002. 255 PAGES, PAPER, ILLUST. $18.75. ISBN 0-929003-52-7.

Beyond the Dance: A Ballerina's Life BY CHIN HON GOH, WITH GARY FAGAN. PLATTSBURGH, NEW YORK: TUNDRA BOOKS. 2002. 152 PAGES, ILLUST. $15.95. ISBN 088776-596-3.

IF DANCE IS WELL IN CANADA, publishing about dance in Canada is even healthier. For that felicitous state, much credit is due Lawrence and Miriam Adams, the founders of the bilingual house Dance Collection Danse. Lawrence Adams, a distinctive dancer in his time (and brother of David Adams, Canada's first star danseur) died in February 2003, leaving behind an impressive catalog and a grieving dance community. Would that the United States chronicled its own dance heritage in print with such thoroughness.

Crabb's meticulously documented survey of Spohr's career in An Instinct for Success: Arnold Spohr and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet is representative of the Adams's projects. The book aims to complement more official histories of the Manitoba company by Max Wyman and Christopher Dafoe. The author concentrates on Spohr's thirty-year artistic directorship of Canada's well-traveled and most unpredictable ballet organization. In Spohr's time, the Royal Winnipeg (the "Royal" was granted by the young Elizabeth II in 1953, as her first royal charter) rose from a local troupe to a company that attracted to the chill prairie such diverse choreographers as Agnes de Mille, John Neumeier, Brian Macdonald, Oscar Araiz, Ruthanna Boris, Rudi van Dantzig, and Norbert Vesak. In Evelyn Hart, Spohr nurtured an international superstar whose devotion to Winnipeg, in the face of more lucrative offers, is simply inspiring.

In Crabb's narrative, Spohr, who retired in 1988, seems to have had the most unexceptionable of private lives and dedicated virtually every waking hour to the RWB. The issues faced by Spohr afford much insight into the growing pains of ballet in Winnipeg and throughout Canada. Despite a lifelong financial supporter (Kathleen Richardson), meddle-some boards constantly plagued the impractical Spohr, and the favoritism evinced by the Canada Council toward The National Ballet of Canada makes the reader question the artistic price tag of federal support. In time, the RWB established its place in the scheme--as the loyal opposition--among Canadian companies, a place where innovation was not merely welcome but expected.

STRATE'S CRISPLY PENNED Memoir traces the same period. An Albertan trained for the law, he was a charter member of The National Ballet of Canada in 1951, organized the National Choreographic Seminars, retired to become the founding director of the dance department at Toronto's York University, the first of its kind in Canada, and later headed the Centre for the Arts at British Columbia's Simon Fraser University. Famous names dot the pages--George Balanchine, John Cranko, Antony Tudor, Erik Bruhn, Glenn Gould--but Strate concerns himselfless with personalities than with issues.

He ponders the place of abstraction in ballet and spends much ink discussing the conflicts of the Dance in Canada Association (an advocacy organization), the Canadian Association of Professional Dance Organizations, and the Canada Council, principally over encouraging the growth of regionalism in dance. Strate wastes few words assailing the council's belief in centralization. One feels the acquired wisdom of a lifetime has been distilled here.

Fortunately, Strate delivers it all with candor and wit. A portrait of Tudor's classes at The Juilliard School in New York is revealing, and you must admire a stylist who describes a hallowed pedagogical institution thus: "It seemed that everyone studying at The Royal Ballet School, including the men, was striving to look like a 16-year-old virgin."

CHAN HON GOH has targeted her illuminating quasi-memoir for younger readers, leading one to suspect that Canadian-educated adolescents are far more literate than their American cousins. Born in Beijing, raised in Vancouver, trained by her father, Goh is a principal with The National Ballet of Canada, guests regularly with the Suzanne Farrell Ballet, and runs a firm that sells ballet shoes.

She did not reach this point without a healthy share of personal drama. Goh and her mother followed her father to Vancouver, where he had set up the Goh Ballet Academy. The cultural estrangement of the immigrant, the thrill of meeting Mikhail Baryshnikov, the anxiety of the first ballet competition, the struggle with anorexia nervosa--they are all amply covered here.

The impression one takes away is that of a determined young artist who has confronted a few personal demons before scaling the heights. Goh and Fagan take nothing for granted. They discuss the reason for daily class, what food to stock in a dressing room, and how a dancer physically prepares for a performance. That's all for everybody. Fans of Goh's dancing in particular will find much to relish in the generous selection of black-and-white photographs.

Associate Editor Allan Ulrich was the dance critic of the San Francisco Examiner for twenty years, and of the San Francisco Chronicle for sixteen months. He also writes for VoiceofDance.com.