General Books

Burlesque and the Art of the Teese/Fetish and the Art of the Teese

Dita Von Teese

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 49 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

On one side, Dita Von Teese shares the beauty of the burlesque world, with bubblegum dreams and show tunes to strip to. Flip over for fantasies in fetish with dramatic costumes and the allure of submission.

Burlesque and the Art of the Teese

"I advocate glamour. Every day. Every minute."

I'm a good dancer and a nice girl, but I'm a great showgirl. I sell, in a word, magic. Burlesque is a world of illusion and dreams and of course, the striptease. Whether I am bathing in my martini glass, riding my sparkling carousel horse, or emerging from my giant gold powder compact, I live out my most glamorous fantasies by bringing nostalgic imagery to life.

Let me show you my world of gorgeous pin-ups, tantalizing stripteases, and femmes fatales. I'll give you a glimpse into my life, but a lady never reveals all.

Fetish and the Art of the Teese

You may have come for the fetish. Or you may just be sneaking a peek at this mysterious and peculiar other side. No matter what you've come for, there is something for you to indulge in.

My world of fetish may not be the one that you would expect. As a burlesque performer, I entice my audience, bringing their minds closer and closer to sex and then -- as good temptress must -- snatching it away. As a fetish star, I apply the same techniques. . . .

An opera-length kid leather glove, a strict wasp waist, an impossibly high patent leather heel, a severely painted red lip. . . . Come with me into my world of decadent fetishism.

Radio City Spectacular: A Photographic History of the Rockettes and Christmas Spectacular

Radio City Entertainment

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Excellent value 4 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

I have the Rockette's Dance through Time, and I would say that, all though it's good, this book is much better. It's a fairly big, glossy, hardcover thing, with a lot of amazing pictures. Though it covers a lot of history, it isn't full of dreary black and white pictures. So I'm basically saying that, despite the low price, the book is quite flashy. If you already have Dance through Time, you'll recognise a lot of the pictures, but the best shots are ones I've never seen before. For any fan of the Rockettes I recommend this highly.

spectacular! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

got it for mom as a gift. we have been to the show. mom was absolutely thrilled.

Ailey Ascending: A Portrait in Motion

Alvin Alley America Dance Theater

Amazon Price: $40.00 List Price: $50.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Chronicle Books Amazon Marketplace: 32 new & used starting at $27.40

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A Masterpiece in Motion 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Ailey Ascending: A Portrait In Motion. My Christmas treat to myself! And I couldn't wait to tear open the package. It didn't take me long to greedily consume award winning photographer, Andrew Eccles book, Ailey Ascending A Portrait in Motion, just released by Chronicle Books. And what a treat it was!

Mr. Eccles lavish book, Ailey Ascending: A Portrait in Motion, is painted poetry in motion. A beautiful treasure trove of take your breath photography of the fine art of dance. A must have book and a must have give-gift for the holiday season.

This beautiful coffee table book; perfect for anyone who appreciates art of photography and dance. You can't go wrong!

Editorial Review:

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Ailey American Dance Theatre, this lavishly illustrated book features 120 original dynamic photos of the dancers, the performances, and ultimately the vision that shapes this groundbreaking company founded by Alvin Ailey. The book features a preface by artistic director, Judith Jamison, and a foreword by writer Anna Deveare Smith.

The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition

Anne Bogart, Tina Landau

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Viewpoints is a technique of improvisation that grew out of the postmodern dance world. It was first articulated by choreographer Mary Overlie, who broke down the two dominant issues performers deal with-space and time-into six categories. Since that time, directors Anne Bogart and Tina Landau have expanded her notions and adapted them for actors to function together spontaneously and intuitively and to generate bold, theatrical work.

The Viewpoints are a set of names given to certain principles of movement through time and space-they constitute a language for talking about what happens on stage. Coupling this with Composition, which is the practice of selecting and arranging the separate components of theatrical language into a cohesive work of art, provides theatre artists with an important new tool for creating and understanding their art form.

Primarily intended for the many theatre artists who, in the last several years, have become intrigued with Viewpoints yet have had no single source to refer to in their investigations. It can also be used by anyone with a general interest in collaboration and the creative process, whether in art, business or daily life.

Anne Bogart is Artistic Director of the SITI Company, which she founded with Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki in 1992. She is the recipient of two OBIE Awards and a Bessie Award, and is an associate professor at Columbia University. Her recent works include Alice's Adventures; Bobrauschenbergamerica; Small Lives, Big Dreams; Marathon Dancing; and The Baltimore Waltz.

Tina Landau, noted director and playwright, whose original work includes Space (Time magazine 10 Best), Dream True (with composer Ricky Ian Gordon) and Floyd Collins (with composer Adam Guettel), which received the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Musical, an OBIE Award and seven Drama Desk nominations. She has been an ensemble member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company since 1997.

Conditioning for Dance

Eric Franklin

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Conditioning for Dance improves your technique and performance in all dance forms by strengthening the body’s core while improving your coordination, balance, alignment, and flexibility. The result is more lift without tension, deeper pliés, higher jumps with less effort, tighter turns, and improved extension and turnout.

The innovative, proven techniques in this book will help you execute key movements better as you

·strengthen the muscles you use in dance by performing exercises with elastic resistance bands;
·start and move in proper alignment using imagery;
·improve your balance and release tension through playful exercises with small balls;
·develop leg and torso power that translates to higher jumps and tighter turns; and
·optimize your flexibility through touch, movement awareness, and imagery.

Conditioning for Dance features 102 imagery illustrations paired with dance-specific exercises to help you maximize body–mind conditioning. The book culminates with a 20-minute, full-body barre workout routine designed to help you warm up, condition, and refine your dance technique.

By working the muscles through movements and ranges of motion that approximate the demands of your chosen dance form, you directly enrich your performance capabilities. And as you strengthen the body’s core, stretch to gain just the right amount of flexibility, and incorporate the power of the mind, you unleash your full artistic and physical potential.

Breaking Bounds 2009 Wall Calendar

Lois Greenfield

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Editorial Review:

Arresting images of dancers captured mid-motion celebrate the beauty of modern dance in this perennially popular calendar.

Balanchine 2009 Calendar

Nancy Reynolds

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

It makes Balanchine and NYCB come alive! 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Costas just keeps getting better, even though that doesn't seem possible. I love the calendar and can't imagine having any other. The photography is dazzling--truly inspired. Anyone interested in ballet, in general, and Balanchine, in particular, will love this calendar. The work stands on its own, however, as a stunning work of art. It would appeal to anyone, regardless of their love of ballet and/or Balanchine. The dancers are captured during an actual performance, to preserve it for all time. It's remarkable! It makes a perfect gift to give others or as a treat for yourself.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Ballroom Dancing, DVD Edition (Complete Idiot's Guide to)

Jeffrey Allen

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Total reviews: 29 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Not entirely for dummies 3 out of 5 stars.
3 of 5 people found this review helpful.

I had high hopes when I bought this book. I have never danced before so perhaps that is why after reading it, I did not think this book was entirely for dummies who did not know how to dance. The book had much advice about dancing and the preparatory stages before dancing, but when it came down to the actual explanations of dancing it was difficult for me to follow the sequences especially looking at a book while trying to copy what it said. I felt it focused to much on the wedding day event, which is old news for someone who has been married for a while- perhaps including a section about how to animate a reluctant spouse to dance would have been more appropriate! The book wasn't the main disappointment. It was the DVD. I had hoped for more explicit instruction when viewing the DVD and there was none. He spoke some advice during the clips but did not explain what was going on. It was like watching a performance which although beautiful to behold was still mysterious. Not having had any prior dancing experience but lots of desire to want to teach myself, I suppose I expected too much from this book and it left me naturally let down. Those who have some dancing experience will find this book much more enjoyable and will benefit from it more fully.

Editorial Review:

Ballroom dancing is back! And now anyone can move like a pro. DVD included!

In addition to the step-by-step photos, footwork illustrations, and instruction covering all the common ballroom dances, this new edition of the bestselling Complete Idiot’s Guide® to Ballroom Dancing includes a 90-minute instructional DVD featuring award-winning dancer and dance instructor Jeff Allen. It corresponds with the text seamlessly, giving readers the next best thing to one-on-one instruction, at a fraction of the cost.
• The #1 selling ballroom dancing book
• Includes a fantastic, new instructional DVD and hundreds of illustrations and instructions
• Allen is a renowned, award-winning ballroom-dance teacher

Reading Dance: A Gathering of Memoirs, Reportage, Criticism, Profiles, Interviews, and Some Uncategorizable Extras

Robert Gottlieb

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Robert Gottlieb’s immense sampling of the dance literature–by far the largest such project ever attempted–is both inclusive, to the extent that inclusivity is possible when dealing with so vast a field, and personal: the result of decades of reading.

It limits itself of material within the experience of today’s general readers, avoiding, for instance, academic historical writing and treatises on technique, its earliest subjects are those nineteenth-century works and choreographers that still resonate with dance lovers today: Giselle, The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake; Bournonville and Petipa. And, as Gottlieb writes in his introduction, “The twentieth century focuses to a large extent on the achievements and personalities that dominated it–from Pavlova and Nijinsky and Diaghilev to Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham, from Ashton and Balanchine and Robbins to Merce Cunningham and Paul Taylor and Twyla Tharp, from Fonteyn and Farrell and Gelsey Kirkland (“the Judy Garland of Ballet”) to Nureyev and Baryshnikov and Astaire–as well as the critical and reportorial voices, past and present, that carry the most conviction.”

In structuring his anthology, Gottlieb explains, he has “tried to help the reader along by arranging its two hundred-plus entries into a coherent groups.” Apart from the sections on major personalities and important critics, there are sections devoted to interviews (Tamara Toumanova, Antoinette Sibley, Mark Morris); profiles (Lincoln Kirstein, Bob Fosse, Olga Spessivtseva); teachers; accounts of the birth of important works from Petrouchka to Apollo to Push Comes to Shove; and the movies (from Arlene Croce and Alastair Macauley on Fred Astaire to director Michael Powell on the making of The Red Shoes). Here are the voices of Cecil Beaton and Irene Castle, Ninette de Valois and Bronislava Nijinska, Maya Plisetskaya and Allegra Kent, Serge Lifar and José Limón, Alicia Markova and Natalia Makarova, Ruth St. Denis and Michel Fokine, Susan Sontag and Jean Renoir. Plus a group of obscure, even eccentric extras, including an account of Pavlova going shopping in London and recipes from Tanaquil LeClerq’s cookbook.”

With its huge range of content accompanied by the anthologist’s incisive running commentary, Reading Dance will be a source of pleasure and instruction for anyone who loves dance.

Dynamic Alignment Through Imagery

Eric N. Franklin

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Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Destined to become a classic text and reference, Dynamic Alignment Through Imagery shows you how to use imaging techniques to improve posture and alignment and release excess tension. The book`s 195 illustrations will help you visualize the images and exercises and show you how to use them in a variety of contexts.

Part I of Dynamic Alignment Through Imagery discusses the origins and uses of imagery and includes 36 exercises that demonstrate dynamic alignment in practice. You`ll explore the importance of posture and dynamic alignment and discover how to use imagery to affect body movement.

Part II explains the biomechanical and anatomical principles behind complex imagery and illustrates 52 exercises to bring these principles to life. You`ll learn how to use basic physics to create a strong yet fluid balance in your muscles and joints.

Part III provides 250 anatomical imagery exercises to help you fine-tune alignments and increase body awareness. The exercises focus on different regions of the body--the pelvis, hips, knees, lower legs, spine, shoulders, arms, hands, head, and neck--as well as on breathing. You can select specific images to address individual needs or follow the sequence presented in the book.

And Part IV provides 23 holistic exercises to sculpt and improve alignment in various positions--standing, supine, and sitting. These exercises will help you establish a body image that facilitates dynamic alignment and releases excess tension.

By practicing the techniques described in Dynamic Alignment Through Imagery, you`ll tap into the power of imagery and create better movement.