Dance to the Piper by Agnes Demille

About this Item: Atlantic Monthly Press. Hardcover. Condition: Fair. A readable copy. All pages are intact, and the cover is intact. Pages can include considerable notes-in pen or highlighter-but the notes cannot obscure the text. An ex-library book and may have standard library stamps and/or stickers. The dust jacket is missing. At ThriftBooks, our motto is: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # GB001IONXAGI5N11

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About this Item: Atlantic Monthly Press. Hardcover. Condition: GOOD. Spine creases, wear to binding and pages from reading. May contain limited notes, underlining or highlighting that does affect the text. Possible ex library copy, thatâ ll have the markings and stickers associated from the library. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. Seller Inventory # 3134198022

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About this Item: atlantic monthly, 1952. Hardcover. Condition: Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Fair. 2017. Seller Inventory # 00203128

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About this Item: Atlantic Monthly Press/Little, Brown & Company, 1952. Hardcover. Condition: Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Poor. Book Club Edition. DANCE TO THE PIPER by Agnes Demille, hardcover with dust jacket, Book Club edition, lllustrated with B/W photos, 1952. BOOK CONDITION: good. The text block and illustrations are in fine condition, with no marks, tears, or dog-ears. Not a library book nor remainder. There is no bookplate nor signature of prior owner. Pages are age-tanned. Tight binding. The black cloth boards are in fair-to-good condition (shelf-rubbing along top and bottom edges; spine bumped on top and bottom). The dust jacket is in poor condition (tears and chipping at top and bottom, age-tanning inside, discolored spine which also has a thin spot). 8 ½ x 5 ¾, 256 pages, 13 ounces XX (From the dust jacket) The name of Agnes de Mille, creator of the ballet Rodeo and choreographer of Oklahoma!, Carousel, and other smash hits, is known to millions of Americans. How she won success, not because of, but in a sense despite her great theatrical name, provides the moving story of this fiery, strong-willed, emotional, candid autobiography. Agnes de Mille is the granddaughter of Henry George; her father wrote some of David Belasco's biggest Broadway successes; her uncle is Cecil B. de Mille of Hollywood. The two strains, the great talent for the theater and the crusading zeal of Henry George, are fused in the author of Dance to the Piper. As a child growing up in the early days of Hollywood, it was natural for her to dream of a stage career but her talent was for dancing, and since dancing at that time was a somewhat dubious form of "theater," her parents, particularly her father, had a very different idea for her future. When Agnes was eight she saw Pavlova, and the sight of that great ballerina fixed her ambition for life. Her parents finally permitted her to take ballet lessons at the Kosloff School, but many years of hard trying, disappointment and failure were to pass before she danced her way to international fame with the first truly American ballet, her own Rodeo. Miss de Mille writes with humor, with a swift comprehension of character, and with a fine sense of movement. Her childhood was spent in pioneer Hollywood, and the opening chapters of her autobiography are vivid with descriptions of movie-making in the days of inspired improvisation, and portraits of such early screen personalities as Charlie Chaplin, Geraldine Farrar, her Uncle Cecil and many others. She catches the spirit and the discipline of a dance studio and tells what it means in the way of hard work and heartbreak to be just an ordinary corps de ballet trouper in a ballet company. In fact, the reader will find here the best account anywhere (from the American viewpoint) of the dedicated life of a ballet dancer, so different from the glamorous illusion one sees on the stage. The account of her six years of work in England with Anthony Tudor, and her dancing partner, Hugh Laing, is tumultuous, and full of laughter when she tells of the opposition she had to overcome as the originator of American ballets in the face of the old Russian classical traditions. Her portraits of, and her conversations with, such notables as Danilova, Marie Rambert, Ruth St. Denis, Martha Graham, Irving Thalberg, Gertrude Lawrence, Aaron Copland, Jerome Robbins, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein Il, and many others, are unforgettable. Dance to the Piper is the most illuminating book about the ballet, the dancer and the choreographer in action that we have ever read. It will, we believe, be as enduring a success as Karsavina's Theatre Street or Isadora Duncan's My Life. Seller Inventory # 001058

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