Gendering Bodies/Performing Art: Dance and Literature in Early-Twentieth-Century British Culture by Amy Koritz (review)

Book Reviews wrestled into clearer descriptive lenns. Unfortunately, it also lends her writing a dangerous degree of abstraction and a chiding tone, Plain language might even appeal to those theory-intolerant non-academic artists and audience members whose conversion to her perspective offers the best hope that her thoughtful work will have real-world impact. AMY S. GREEN, JOHN JAY COLLEGE, CUNY AMY KORITZ. Genderillg Bodies/Performing Art: Dance and Literature ;n EarlyTwentieth -Century British Culture. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 1995. Pp. 218. illustrated. $37.50. Amy Koritz's Gendering Bodies/Performing Art is an expanded version of her 1988 dissertation on the same subject. In the introduction she notes that literature has historically been privileged over dance and that feminist and materiali.st examinations of dance history, from 1890 to 1920, could help us to see literature and dance differently. Primarily, Koritz seeks to show that the aesthetic and literary theories that separated the author or creator from the art work further devalued the social and artistic status of the dancer until Diaghilev's Ballets Russes achieved a "prestigious" art status for its dance. At a glance, this stated intention is promising. Dance, perhaps the most ephemeral of the arts, has been Significantly neglected in the study of culture, so any book that champions an interdisciplinary investigation of dance and literature in Edwardian England should be a welcome addition to contemporary scholarship. But Koritz's study is flawed by several internal difficulties and creates more ambiguity t~an understanding . The first problem is the tacit assumption that theories devised by the literary intelligentsia actually mediated the public perception of dance as art. Koritz's argument that aesthetic theory changed the perception of the dancer from artist to "instrument" is based on a notion that the dancers in this period had to suppress their personality in favor of the autonomy and integrity of the art work, the ballet or modem dance piece. To make her case she contrasts the reception of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes with that of modem dancers Isadora Duncan and Maud Allan. Taking a narrow view, Koritz maintains that only Diaghilev's company succeeded in achieving a place among the elite arts, because the impresario improved the standard of technique for the whole company , redefined dance as masculine by giving male choreographers a high profLIe, and subsumed the ballerina into an immutable art work by suppressing her "personality." But, the reviews she cites do attribute personal characteristics to the performers, and as to the integrity of the company and the ballets that Diaghilev first introduced to London, many of the corps members were untrained and the choreography and music were altered to the stars' specifications in order to attract an audience. Koritz has either missed or ignored these facts. Book Reviews 729 Second. Koritz tends to reduce complex distinctions to simple binaries: elite versus low culture, music hall spaces versus traditional theatres, art versus entertainment, for example. Furlhennore, her definitions of these terms occaSionally shift. As she implies in her chapter on music hall, the large theatres included entr'actes and specialty entertainments widely associated with music hall programs (I6). As well, when Karitz categorizes ballets, she generalizes that Michael Fokine's ballets were "narrative," and Leonard Massine's less so; that Nijinsky was a "classical" dancer, and Massine a character dancer. Perusal of Cyril Beaumont's Complete Book ofBallets, which gives both the narrative and the corresponding dance movement of Fokine's and Massine's ballets , would have shown her that Fokine's work included non-narrative work as early as the 1890S and that Massine's ballets depended on complex plots, often based on literary sources. And, widely available books on Diaghilev's company would show that .both Nijinsky and Massine performed an array of so-called classical and character roles. Third, Koritz seems less than conversant with dance criticism of the period and is often unable to evaluate conflicting reviews of the same performance. Consequently, she privileges the readings of dance that coincide with her thesis, even when clearer and more infonned descriptions of the movement and music exist (17-22). She also presents primary source material through secondary sources when the...