May O'Donnell: Modern Dance Pioneer.

May O'Donnell: Modern Dance Pioneer By Marian Horosko. Foreword by Jennifer Dunning. University Press of Florida, 2005, 136 pages. Illustrated. $21. www.upf.com

The essence of May O'Donnell's long career (she died in 2004 at the age of 97,) was not so much her own choreography as the roles she performed in the Martha Graham repertoire. She was a calming influence. During moments of anguish or indecision in works like Herodiade, Cave of the Heart, or Dark Meadow, she could quell the storm simply by being watchfully still.

In her appreciation of O'Donnell and in the secondary details about the dancer's husband, composer Ray Green, who created most of the scores for her works, Marian Horosko devotes generous space to O'Donnell's company. She identifies O'Donnell as a pioneering choreographer in the neo-classical genre (there is a chronology of her works), with her best work, Suspension, termed a masterpiece. Yet the company never became a potent moving force in American dance. It is O'Donnell the Graham dancer whom one vividly remembers.

In structuring her account, Horosko relies principally on interviews with her subject. Missing are some of the vital facts that grow from independent research. We do, however, learn that O'Donnell, born in Sacramento, divided her career between the east and west coasts. In the early years, she and Jose Limon toured as a duo. What a handsome pair they must have been.

With Gertrude Shurr, O'Donnell founded a New York school that helped to launch more than one generation of outstanding dancers, among them Robert Joffrey, Gerald Arpino, Norman Walker, Bill Louther, Jonathan Watts, and Ben Vereen. As Horosko describes the curriculum, it becomes clear that the two women were complementary in their pedagogical styles, with O'Donnell providing the inspiration.

The book seems to have been produced quite rapidly. It is sprinkled with typographical errors like "Ahlff" for "Alf" (Fe Alf, a dancer of the 1930s), "Mary Jane Wells" for "Mary Ann Wells," Punch and Judy for Punch and the Judy. There is no index. One comes away from May O'Donnell: Modern Dance Pioneer grateful that she has been viewed with so much warmth, yet wishing for more rigorous detail.