The Dancer Within: Intimate Conversations with Great Dancers

by Rose Eichenbaum, Aron Hirt-Manheimer (Editor)

Intimate portraits of some of the most beloved dancers in America

The Dancer Within is a collection of photographic portraits and short essays based on confessional interviews with forty dancers and entertainers, many of them world-famous. Well-known on the concert stage, on Broadway, in Hollywood musicals, and on television, the personalities featured in this book speak with extraordinary candor about all stages of the dancer's life―from their first dance class to their signature performances and their days of reflection on the artist's life. The Dancer Within reveals how these artists triumphed, but also how they overcame adversity, including self-doubt, injuries, and aging. Most of all, this book is about the courage, commitment, love, and passion of these performers in their quest for artistic excellence. The reader will quickly realize that "the dancer within" is a metaphor of the human spirit.

264 pages, Hardcover

First published June 30, 2008

Reviews

[Rachel Swords · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're a dancer or love dancing, you will love this book! Some of the greatest names in the world of dance (Jean Butler for Irish, Cynthia Gregory for ballet, Liza Minelli, Joel Grey for musical theatre, to name a FEW) are profiled within these pages, and the result is a compilation of how dance can be loved, admired, celebrated, and continuously studied. Each dancer's conversation is fairly short, plus there's no specific order in which the interviews are laid out, so you can easily skip around in your reading (I did). Plus, the interviews are written in such a way that you feel like you're there in the room with Rose Eichenbaum, listening to some of the greats espouse words of wisdom. Whenever I get the chance (and extra money), I'm so buying this book.

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here's the thing: The interviews feel a little weird when you start the book, as if they were massaged into a more coherent format. But as the book goes on, you really do start to learn something about dancing professionally and the broad range of motivation and history that leads someone to that place. It was a great time in my life to read this book, and I appreciate immensely that Rose was able to capture some crucial dance history, since it all seems to slide right through our fingers.

[Saleena Longmuir · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Dancer Within is a series of interviews that the author did with a wide range of dancers. It was interesting, though I wasn't enthralled that the author put themselves into the book so much, it made it seem like the book was more about them struggling to figure out their own life, using these people for their advice....rather than an overview of what dancing means to dancers. I hope to find THAT book, this one wasn't it.