All I want for Christmas is… Oxford Dance Writers recommends 2016

It is that time of the year again, suddenly Christmas is looming with urgent gift shopping imperatives.  But don’t worry, once again Oxford Dance Writers is here to help with our round up of dance publications reviewed and received this year, from the highly academic and practical to the entertaining memoir and gorgeously illustrated records of companies and dancers; for the dance lovers in your lives, or to add to your own Christmas wish list…  Great thanks once again to all our reviewers!

 

Ballet Body Narratives: Pain, Pleasure and Perfection in Embodied Identity by Angela Pickard – Susie Crow reviews

Angela Pickard roots this thought-provoking study in her own experience of ballet training, opening with a frank and vivid personal account of her absorption as child and teenager into the world of ballet practice, embracing her gradual embodiment as a ballet dancer.   Following a twenty year professional dancing career, now an academic she reflects on the formation of her own identity; the research that generated this book in addition to her own lived experience is a four year longitudinal study of adolescent ballet students as they develop in vocational schools in the north and south of England. Her ethnographic approach combining observation and interview draws largely on the testimonies of 12 young dancers as to their experiences of both pain and pleasure, in her desire to give a voice to their emerging senses of identity between the ages of 10 and 18 years.