Dance Today: Studies-Notes-Portraits

An essential volume in the history of dance and its critical literature

The French dance criticism of the Russian émigré André Levinson (1887–1933) set a new standard for the genre by regaling readers with a heady mix of formalist acumen, historical erudition, and aesthetic theory. Dance Today, first published in 1929, is Levinson’s most important book. An eloquent chronicle of dance performance in Paris from 1923 to 1928, it covers not just ballet, the mainstay of his critical vision, but the full array of the city’s offerings, from variety show numbers, “orientalist” programs, and “interpretive” modern dance to presentations of the rich indigenous traditions of Spain, Indonesia, and Southeast Asia.

Levinson’s celebrated pages on Anna Pavlova, Isadora Duncan, Josephine Baker, and La Argentina are here, together with his often-acerbic assessments of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, the Ballets Suédois, and German modern dance, then dominated by Rudolf Laban and Mary Wigman. This translation, the first unabridged edition in any language since 1929, includes a substantial introduction reframing Levinson’s French career, annotations that identify obscure works and clarify his many recondite allusions, and, as an appendix, the first English rendering of his pioneering essay on Mallarmé’s dance writing, which greatly influenced his critical thinking.