The National Ballet of Canada: A Celebration by Ken Bell, Celia Franca, and: Dance Today in Canada by Andrew Oxenham, Michael Crabb (review)

480 LEITERS IN CANADA 1978 technology to rescue us from one-sidedness. The accusation is unjust, for musicians in that period are still involved as pedagogues, theoreticians, musicologists, essayists, letter-writers, propagandists, creators, and occasionally lovers. Gould can take comfort in the fact that he is a member of an illustrious group of pianists who left the stage for varying reasons: Charles Valentin Morhange-Alkan (1813-88) to pursue composition, Adolphe Hensel! (1814-87) to pursue teaching, Franz Liszt to pursue composition and conducting, and within recent memory Horowitz who needed spiritual renewal. Payzant is apparently oblivious of this lineage. I would prefer to see the statements on art and technology within the context of contemporary developments. To mention creative dialtwiddling without referring to John Cage's Imaginary Landscape 110. 4 from the early 1950S seems negligent. Claims made for the recording industry are extravagant: that commercial enterprise can indeed help stimulate interest in works outside the classic-romantic repertoire but only when musicians and musicologists have first dedicated themselves to the task of unearthing, transcribing, and performing the repertoire. To this reviewer the most striking feature of Gould, and one that does not come across well in the book, is his vigorous iconoclasm. In stressing those values in life and art that have been neglected by us Gould has had a refreshing influence on our cultural life. If he can manage to win over the majority of his musical colleagues and the broader public, then the millenium may be much closer than we think. (PAUL HELMER) Ken Bell and Celia Franca. The National Ballet of Canada: A Celebration University of Toronto Press. 284. $24.95 Andrew Oxenham and Michael Crabb. Dance Today in Canada Simon and Pierre. 228. $34.95 In these transilient times twenty-five consecutive years of practically anything is worth commemorating and I approached The National Ballet ofCanada: A Celebration with lively anticipation. The dust jacket, after all, promises us that the photographs will 'recall the range and splendour of the productions this company has performed.' Once inside the handsome cover, though, Ken Bell, simply by documenting much of the National's repertoire, unwittingly prods us into making all sorts of judgments, and arouses the nagging suspicion that often there was little to celebrate but survival. But, first, how does one go about photographing dance? Dance is movement; photography, stillness. Is it possible to capture even by suggestion what happens before and after the fatal click? Obviously yes, for in the best of the genre, Martha Swope's magnificent Martha Graham: Portrait of the Lady as an Artist (1966), the pages positively seethe with drama; the movement seems suspended, not arrested. In lesser hands, however, the camera tends to congeal time and render space irrelevant, thus robbing dance of both its impulse and environment. Inevitably, then, much dance photography descends to the level of record-keeping, a modern counterpart of those tiresome nineteenthcentury historical paintings. Unfortunately a large portion of Bell's work falls into this category. Of course Swope and Andrew Oxenham in Dance Today in Canada chose to photograph actual performances or rehearsals, and this I feel contributed enormously to their success. Fully two-thirds of Bell's photographs are of the carefully posed 'Hold it' variety. Indeed, Celia Franca in her preface tells how they would 'Shove Judie two inches to the right. Squash everything in so we don't hit the blacks. Now get ready, look lively, lots of expression. DON'T MOVE!' Suitable for the archives, perhaps, but what about dance? What adds to the tedium is that we are treated to a seemingly endless array of Swan Lakes, Giselles, Sylphides, and Coppelias. Now the classics have always formed a large part of the National's repertoire, and when seen in the theatre they can be a wonderful experience, but they do not, alas, render up their charms to anything less than magical photography. Tantalizingly, on the dust jacket Bell demonstrates the sort of atmosphere he is capable of evoking. Inside, however, are all too many Wilis and their sisters, carefully posed, quite badly costumed, and photographed in front of sets painted, I would guess, in mud. All this serves to...