Dance to the Piper

Boston: An Atlantic Monthly Press Book - Little, Brown and Company BOOK: Corners, Spine Bumped; Light Shelf Rub to Boards; Edges Lightly Soiled; Slight Yellowing Due to Age. DUST JACKET: Repaired; Lightly Creased; Lightly Chipped; Slight Yellowing Due to Age; In Archival Quality Jacket Cover. CONTENTS: Foreword 1 New York 2 Early Hollywood 3 The Industry 4 "Do Something!" 5 The Brothers 6 Pavlova 7 The Kosloff School 8 Ballet and Sex 9 The Swan 10 Adolescence 11 Decision 12 Tryouts 13 The Profession 14 Local Girl 15 Martha Graham 16 Flying Colors 17 Paris - Brussels - London 18 Marie Rambert 19 Antony Tudor and Hugh Laing 20 American Dancer in London 21 American Dancer Comes Home 22 Hooray for What 23 Second Start 24 Russian Ballet 25 Rodeo 26 The Contribution 27 Beautiful Morning. SYNOPSIS: The name of Agnes de Mille, creator of the ballet Rodeo and choreographer of Oklahoma!, Carousel, and other smash hits, is known to millions of Americans. How she won success, not because of, but in a sense despite her great theatrical name, provides the moving story of this fiery, strong-willed, emotional, candid autobiography. Agnes de Mille is the granddaughter of Henry George; her father wrote some of David Belasco's biggest Broadway successes; her uncle is Cecil B. de Mille of Hollywood. The two strains, the great talent for the theater and the crusading zeal of Henry George, are fused in the author of Dance to the Piper. As a child growing up in the early days of Hollywood, it was natural for her to dream of a stage career but her talent was for dancing, and since dancing at that time was a somewhat dubious form of "theater," her parents, particularly her father, had a very different idea for her future. When Agnes was eight she saw Pavlova, and the sight of that great ballerina fixed her ambition for life. Her parents finally permitted her to take ballet lessons at the Kosloff School, but many years of hard trying, disappointment and failure were to pass before she danced her way to international fame with the first truly American ballet, her own Rodeo. Miss de Mille writes with humor, with a swift comprehension of character, and with a fine sense of movement. Her childhood was spent in pioneer Hollywood, and the opening chapters of her autobiography are vivid with descriptions of movie-making in the days of inspired improvisation, and portraits of such early screen personalities as Charlie Chaplin, Geraldine Farrar, her Uncle Cecil and many others. She catches the spirit and the discipline of a dance studio and tells what it means in the way of hard work and heartbreak to be just an ordinary corps de ballet trouper in a ballet company. In fact, the reader will find here the best account anywhere (from the American viewpoint) of the dedicated life of a ballet dancer, so different from the glamorous illusion one sees on the stage. The account of her six years of work in England with Anthony Tudor, and her dancing partner, Hugh Laing, is tumultuous, and full of laughter when she tells of the opposition she had to overcome as the originator of American ballets in the face of the old Russian classical traditions. Her portraits of, and her conversations with, such notables as Danilova, Marie Rambert, Ruth St. Denis, Martha Graham, Irving Thalberg, Gertrude Lawrence, Aaron Copland, Jerome Robbins, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, and many others, are unforgettable. Dance to the Piper is the most illuminating book about the ballet, the dancer and the choreographer in action that we have ever read. It will, we believe, be as enduring a success as Karsavina's Theatre Street or Isadora Duncan's My Life.. Book Club (BCE/BOMC). Hard Cover. Very Good/Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.