1968 looks like it'll be a pretty good year for Jaynell Lambert. The town's going to pave the dirt road she lives on, her girly-girl sister, Racine, isn't driving her completely crazy, and Grandpap has just moved in with his new emerald green Cadillac convertible. Jaynell and Grandpap have something special. But why won't Grandpap tell her the reason he visits with the dirt-poor Pickens family on the other side of town? When Jaynell finds out Grandpap's secret, the legacy of an old man transforms a family, and a town. "At once gritty and poetic, stark and sentimental . . . a solid page turner. Holt once again displays her remarkable gift."(School Library Journal, starred review)
"What is the secret to boundless energy, vitality and a fearless spirit? Millions across the globe have been inspired by 97-year-old Tao Porchon-Lynch-- WWII French Resistance fighter, model, actress, film producer, wine connoisseur, competitive ballroom dancer, and yoga master. In 2012, she was named "Oldest Yoga Teacher" by Guinness World Records. The twinkle in her eyes and the brightness of her spirit capture you. Her YouTube videos have garnered over two million views. In June 2015, she wowed judges on America's Got Talent dancing with her 26-year-old partner to Pitbull's "Fireball." With Peter Pan-like endless youth, she says, "In my head I'm still in my 20's, and I have no intention of ever growing up." How did she get this way and how can we exude such light? [This] is an inspirational autobiography that shows us what is possible-- that we each can live to our highest potential by inhaling life, exhaling strife and dancing to our own rhythm. Through Tao's reflections, we are given the gift of insights from almost a century of wisdom that can be applied to our modern-day challenges. We learn her "secrets" to vitality while taking a soulful odyssey of love and loss, hope and joy"--Amazon.com.
The breathtaking images in Acts of Light are the result of John Deane's unprecedented access as a promotional photographer for the Martha Graham Dance Company. The first book to comprehensively survey Graham's dances in full color digital photography, it also features personal interviews with this new generation of Graham interpreters, who reflect on their own lives, the meaning each dance has for them personally, and the Graham technique in frank and touching style. Dancers reveal how they approach now-classic works and personalize their interpretations, coming to them with a new sensibility and unique life experiences. The 18 featured works range from the Greek cycle and biblically inspired ballets through abstract studies of tragedy and hope, considerations of loss incurred in wartime, and literary speculations like Deaths and Entrances, a recently revived work on the Bronte sisters. Deane and Cano give special consideration to the beloved American masterwork Graham created in collaboration with composer Aaron Copland--Appalachian Spring.
In this wonderfully festive picture book, Yuval Zommer imagines the Northern Lights' fleeting journey from space to Earth and how they weave a special magic for the animals and people living in the frozen lands below.From tiny specs of dust to gleaming rays in the dark, the Northern Lights travel across the Arctic, uniting every creature in a celebration that reverberates through land and sea.
Dance Production: Design and Technology introduces you to the skills you need to plan, design, and execute the technical aspects of a dance production. While it may not seem that staging a dance production is that different from a play or musical, in reality a dance performance offers up unique intricacies and challenges all its own, from scenery that accommodates choreography, to lighting design that sculpts the body, and costumes that complement movement. This unique book approaches the process of staging a dance production from a balanced perspective, making it an essential resource for dancers and designers alike. Covering a broad range of topics, author Jeromy Hopgood takes the reader through the process of producing dance from start to finish – including pre-production planning (collaboration, production process, personnel, performance spaces), design disciplines (lighting, sound, scenery, costumes, projections), stage management, and more. Bridging the gap between theatrical and dance design, the book includes a quick reference guide for theatrical and dance terminology, useful in giving dancers and designers a common working vocabulary that will ensure productive communication across the different fields.
Dance Dance Dance—a follow-up to A Wild Sheep Chase—is a tense, poignant, and often hilarious ride through Murakami’s Japan, a place where everything that is not up for sale is up for grabs. As Murakami’s nameless protagonist searches for a mysteriously vanished girlfriend, he is plunged into a wind tunnel of sexual violence and metaphysical dread. In this propulsive novel, featuring a shabby but oracular Sheep Man, one of the most idiosyncratically brilliant writers at work today fuses together science fiction, the hardboiled thriller, and white-hot satire.
a modern ballet where lovers are ground to hamburger wives are turned into chairs TV sets eat people flowers grow from children's heads God is uncovered -- and re-covered and men are hung by the instrument of their desire Startling, irreverent and provocative, the incomparable creator of poems and fables for children turns his eye and pen upon the social calamities and absurdities of the adult world.
Part hidden history, part love letter to creative innovation, this is the true story of an unlikely friendship between a dancer, Loie Fuller, and a scientist, Marie Curie, brought together by an illuminating discovery. At the turn of the century, Paris was a hotbed of creativity. Technology boomed, delivering to the world electric light, the automobile, and new ways to treat disease, while imagination blossomed, creating Art Nouveau, motion pictures, and modernist literature. A pivotal figure during this time, yet largely forgotten today, Loie Fuller was an American performance artist who became a living symbol of the Art Nouveau movement with her hypnotic dances and stunning theatrical effects. Credited today as the pioneer of modern dance, she was perennially broke, never took no for an answer, spent most of her life with a female partner, and never questioned her drive. She was a visionary, a renegade, and a loyal friend. In the early 1900s, she heard about Marie Curie's discovery of a glowing blue element and dreamed of using it to dazzle audiences on stage. While Loie's dream wouldn't be realized, her connection with Marie and their shared fascination with radium endured. Radiant is the true story of Marie Curie and Loie Fuller, two revolutionary women drawn together at the dawn of a new era by a singular discovery, and the lifelong friendship that grew out of their shared passion for enlightenment.
If you're interested in Plato, you're reading the wrong book. If you're interested in difficult childhoods, sexual misadventures, aesthetics, cultural history, and the reasons that a club sandwich and other meals--including breakfast--have remained in the memory of the present writer, keep reading. --from Feelings Are Facts In this memoir, dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer traces her personal and artistic coming of age. Feelings Are Facts(the title comes from a dictum by Rainer's one-time psychotherapist) uses diary entries, letters, program notes, excerpts from film scripts, snapshots, and film frame enlargements to present a vivid portrait of an extraordinary artist and woman in postwar America. Rainer tells of a California childhood in which she was farmed out by her parents to foster families and orphanages, of sexual and intellectual initiations in San Francisco and Berkeley, and of artistic discoveries and accomplishments in the New York City dance world. Rainer studied with Martha Graham (and heard Graham declare, "when you accept yourself as a woman, you will have turn-out"--that is, achieve proper ballet position) and Merce Cunningham in the late 1950s and early 1960s, cofounded the Judson Dance Theater in 1962 (dancing with Trisha Brown, Steve Paxton, David Gordon, and Lucinda Childs), hobnobbed with New York artists including Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Morris (her lover and partner for several years), and Yoko Ono, and became involved with feminist and anti-war causes in the 1970s and 1980s. Rainer writes about how she constructed her dances--including The Mind Is a Muscleand its famous section, Trio A, as well as the recent After Many a Summer Dies the Swan--and about turning from dance to film and back to dance. And she writes about meeting her longtime partner Martha Gever and discovering the pleasures of domestic life. The mosaic-like construction of Feelings Are Factsrecalls the composition-by-juxtaposition of Rainer's work in film and dance, displaying prismatic variations from what she calls her "reckless past" for our amazement and appreciation.
I Can Make a Water Dance is the first in a planned series of children's dance and science discovery books, that includes photographs of young dancers superimposed on my original paintings of the various stages of water. Dancers magically rise out of the mist, curl like splashes in the river, and sail as trailing clouds. The images demonstrate how the various stages of water move and dancers are part of the action. The dynamic movement words invite young listeners to transform themselves into water and extend their vocabulary. Creating a dance about water immediately becomes understandable. At the end of the book there is a spread of the children dancing with each photo labeled with a movement word used in the body of the book and a parent and teacher guide for creating a dance activity.
