DANCESCAPE.

* Mark Morris is very much his own man when he creates a dance or when he hires a dancer. Recently, however, he did what so many of today's choreographers have been doing: He took time out from a full schedule to sit for a portrait by California photographer Rose Eichenbaum, as she perseveres in her ambitious project, "Movement Masters, Portraits of Great Choreographers" [see Dancescape, September 1998, page 12]. Mark Morris Dance Group is busy on the East Coast this month, appearing in Naples, Florida (February 2), Tampa (5-6), and Boston (25-28).

Bart Roth

* Al Hirschfeld is so famed for the precise line and bristling texture of his black-and-white caricatures of performers, most often for the New York Times, that other works done over his 70-year career have been slighted. Applause Books has done much to correct this oversight by publishing Hirschfeld on Line, a biographical anthology that brings together the 95-year-old artist's photographs, magazine covers, and special commissions, bolstered by his own comments and others' tributes.

Among the 400 works reproduced, this 1975 lithograph of a Kabuki artist is a particularly vigorous example of how color can reinforce his mastery of form and movement. It also reminds us of Hirschfeld's admiration for such Japanese print masters as Hokusai and Utamaro. And don't look for Nina, the name of his daughter that he has worked into his caricatures since her birth in 1945--it's not there.

Harris Green

* Barbie still looks like the teenage fashion model she was at her debut. But guess what? She's 40! And judging from her latest incarnation as Marzipan Barbie, the third doll in Mattel's Classic Ballet Series, it looks like The Plastic One will never have to fight middle-age spread. Maybe her secret lies in her lifelong devotion to dance, which has outlived some other, flashier occupations, such as rock star and presidential candidate. Barbie's chameleon career is examined with insight in Barbie: Four Decades of Fashion, Fantasy, and Fun, by Marco Tosa, published by Abrams in celebration of the doll's big four-oh. Now, if only she'd learn how to tie her pointe shoe ribbons.

Gary Parks

* Dancers regularly crop up in the painting, prints, wall hangings, and illustrations of New York City artist Janet Restino. The work above could have been a greeting card--or poster or beach towel She has received commissions from, among many others, the Metropolitan Opera Guild for holiday cards and from Gear, Inc., in Atlanta, for T-shirts. Restino is online: [e-mail].

B.R.

* Creative Antics could be the generic name for the work of most of the West Coast jazz and modern dance companies that Paul Antico regularly photographs. Instead, it is the name of Antico's own West Los Angeles firm--with the stress on creative.

His subjects' delight in intricate, high-powered steps can be a severe test of a photographer's timing and marksmanship. Often Antico will capture a blurred image that ably recreates the spirit of the dance. More often, however, as in this glistening studio portrait of Winifred R. Harris and Adrian Young of Harris's L.A.--based company, Between Lines, he vividly catches dance in all its precious, fleeting essence.

H.G.