Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1268038 in Books
• Published on: 2002-09-15
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 296 pages

From Library Journal
The defining moment in Bird's life occurred while the 17-year-old Canadian was attending the Cornish School in Seattle. The modern dance choreographer Martha Graham was a guest teacher and invited Bird to return with her to New York City. Bird debuted with the Graham group in Primitive Mysteries in 1931 and stayed with the company until 1937. Recognizing a personal need for independence, Bird extricated herself from Graham's bewitching and dominating presence to pursue a career on Broadway and the concert stage, as well as in the classroom, where she passed along Graham's teachings. She worked with many greats, including George Balanchine, Agnes De Mille, Jose Limon, Doris Humphrey, and Jerome Robbins. The most compelling aspect of Bird's volume is her excellent recall for early Graham teaching and dances. On the whole, however, this recollection reveals Bird, a dancer of considerable talents, to be an inveterate innocent who found herself in all sorts of interesting circumstances with many famous personalities but with few insights to share. Her life offstage is only briefly recounted in the closing pages. This memoir is less autobiography and more Bird's "act of appreciation" to Graham. Recommended for large dance collections.?Joan Stahl, National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
An satisfying dancer's tale of struggle and survival. The incurably innocent, Canadian-born farmer's daughter Bird began studying with Martha Graham in 1930 at Seattle's Cornish School, arriving with no thought that the 12-week stint would change her life. But her nervy, high-spirited memoir, cowritten with her former student Greenberg, recounts how this change took place, offering shrewd glimpses of Graham at a critical early point in her choreographic career, and following Bird herself beyond induction into Graham's modernism in New York and on to the Broadway stage. Bird explains the sources of Graham's unique pedagogy and her working methods when creating dances. Once, for example, Bird was an invited guest when Graham was at work alone, and as she observed, ``Martha did not use music or counts. She used sounds . . . At times she seemed to be keening, as her Irish ancestors might have done long ago. The startling movement patterns that were evolving came not out of those strange sounds, but out of her articulately alive and animated body.'' Bird demonstrated Graham's technique to other dancers at her mentor's urging but was not a favored performer. In 1937, feeling frustrated and exploited by Graham's slave-driving tendencies, she left the Graham entourage--only to find a second career as a dancer in musical theater and a third as a much-respected dance teacher of children (for Balanchine and others) and adults. The memoir concludes, a bit unconvincingly, with Bird's testimonial of eternal admiration for Graham. In a lighthearted mood, Bird remembers how Graham explained sex to her, the neophyte. Her later life was difficult--her first child died in infancy, and her second husband, Paul Villard, was blacklisted. She died, at 84, in 1996. A fascinating glimpse of life inside Graham's charmed circle, and a moving record of one dancer's determined pursuit of a career. (32 b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review
"A rare gift, a performer's reminiscence that situates a career into a wider cultural context." - Stagebill "A fascinating glimpse of life inside Graham's charmed circle, and a moving record of one dancer's determined pursuit of a career." - Kirkus Reviews "No one to date has defined Graham's teaching methods as extensively as Bird....This is an invaluable book for professionals, students, and those who are eager to know about the awesome dimensions of Martha Graham." - Backstage "Bird is a storyteller gifted with vivid powers of observation and a witty and often wicked humor....This 'bird's eye view' of dance, theater, and politics in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s does give a sense of the lay of the land. But it is land populated by some of the most famous stage names of all time, seen here close-up in perceptive and revealing detail....There is as much here for the dance scholar as for those who simply love a good story, a feat that Bird executes with impressive grace." - Jennifer Dunning, dance critic, New York Times "The most interesting inside account of the development of early modern dance I have had the good fortune to read." - Sondra Fraleigh, author of Dance and the Lived Body

Customer Reviews

Well written story of an exquisite dancer-simply beautiful
Dorthy Bird was a gifted dancer, and with Joyce Greenberg's assistance the reader is given extraordinary insight into the world of Martha Graham. Ms. Greenberg captures the exquisite world of modern dance and the life of a beautiful person, Dorothy Bird.. Brian Lamb should interview her on Booknotes.