Residing in the body.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]The Dancer Within: Intimate Conversations with Great Dancers
By Rose Eichenbaum Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2008. 288 pages, illustrated. $29.95
In this collection of photos with interviews, dancer-choreographer Eiko Otaki says, "The impulse to dance comes from the desire to learn more about something or someone." So, it would seem, does the impulse to take photographs and to write.
Rose Eichenbaum, a former dance teacher, transformed her dreams of performing into a career as a dance photographer. Her photos have appeared in Dance Magazine and other publications, sometimes along with her own interviews with the dancers. Her first major collection, the 2004 Masters of Movement, captured and profiled a group of choreographers. Her new book concentrates on dancers, although the distinction is a tricky one; some of the best interviews spotlight artists who perform their own choreography exclusively.
Eichenbaum, who lives in Southern California, crisscrossed the country between 2004 and 2007, taking the pictures and conducting the conversations that make up The Dancer Within. Half of her 40 subjects are New Yorkers; many of the others live or work on the West Coast. She caught Leslie Caron in Paris (yes, Caron was a dancer first), photographed Fernando Bujones in Florida and New York just before his death in 2005, and touched down in Connecticut, Michigan, Washington State, and Massachusetts.
Slightly more than half her profilees are women. Most of the subjects are white, although the collection includes five African Americans, three Asians, five Latin artists, and the mixed-ancestry dancer Rasta Thomas, who is a technical chameleon. Natalia Makarova welcomed an interview in a Berkeley dressing room. At the same theater her friend Mikhail Baryshnikov permitted Eichenbaum to photograph him but refused to speak with her.
Eleven ballet dancers (including Ethan Stiefel) sat for portraits both verbal and photographic, along with eight whose careers were primarily on the Broadway stage, six modern dancers, six who worked in Hollywood, and five mavericks, among them tap veteran Brenda Bufalino, Irish step dancer Jean Butler, and b-boy Mr. Wiggles.
Eichenbaum connected with Marine Jahan, who served as the "body double" for Jennifer Beals in the 1983 film Flashdance, and with Leonard Crofoot, who wrote and performed a one-man show about Nijinsky, whose body type matched his own. Julio Bocca, who posed bare-chested on a ladder, told Eichenbaum, "I can recognize tango dancers by the way they wear their hats."
The collection is a strange melange of information and emotion, history and advice, feelings and facts. In my favorite interview, Eichenbaum probes for clues to Eiko & Korea's Butoh-inspired genius. "You and Koma could have chosen any number of ways to express your political and social views," she says to Eiko, "and yet you chose the body and movement. Why?"
"I aspired to be a writer," replies Eiko. "Korea aspired to be a revolutionary ... but at that time I had nothing to write ... I didn't feel that I had a voice--or a body for that matter. I needed something to believe in. Many of us from the student activist movement were lost, drinking too much, smoking too much, even turning violent ... Koma and I decided that we should reside in the body for a while. I never expected that we would stay here for 35 years. But the truth is that dance, in a way, saved me."
To earn the appellation "great dancer" you generally have to live a long time, so it's no surprise that most of Eichenbaum's subjects are middle-aged and older. Some--Gemze de Lappe, Marge Champion, Barrie Chase, and Yuriko--are in their 80s. De Lappe, a protegee of Agnes de Mille, began her career working with her on classic musicals in the 1940s. Barrie Chase partnered Fred Astaire in several movies.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Eichenbaum's interviewing style is homey, even naive. She's constantly telling us about the coffee she poured and the muffins she arranged on plates. I'd have preferred a tighter focus on the artists' words. Thankfully, she gets out of the way of Robert La Fosse, who offers an illuminating story of his 20-year struggle with HIV. His meditations on his personality, his mentors, and the difficulties of transitioning out of ballet are insightful and heartbreaking.
What The Dancer Within does, perhaps inadvertently, is provide a spectrum of responses to the moment when the dancing stops, owing to age, injury, illness, or changing fashions in the show-business world. "Most dancers are completely focused on themselves and their careers," comments La Fosse. "Dance was the constant in my life. I could rely on it for unconditional love. But when I went into semiretirement a few years ago, I didn't have that anymore. I realized that in my relationships I was extremely passive. I think it's an inbred character trait with most dancers."
The black-and-white photos vary from intense close-ups of lived-in faces to silhouettes to dramatic full-body poses. There are bare-chested males from several generations. Cynthia Gregory shares her shot with her dog, and Yuriko stands under a Barbara Morgan picture of her mentor and inspiration, Martha Graham.
An exhibit of Eichenbaum's photos, also called The Dancer Within, will tour through 2010 (*see "Moving Pictures," June) or go to http://www.sites.si.edu/exhibitions/exhibits/dancer_within/main.htm.
Elizabeth Zimmer writes about dance from her base in NYC for publications and websites around the world.
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| Title Annotation: | dm recommends; The Dancer Within: Intimate Conversations with Great Dancers |
|---|---|
| Author: | Zimmer, Elizabeth |
| Publication: | Dance Magazine |
| Article Type: | Book review |
| Date: | Aug 1, 2008 |
| Words: | 888 |
| Previous Article: | Dance Magazine Scholarship Guide 2008. |
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