Dance
For many years Whistlestop Bookshop has been a strong supporter of the Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet, from its original genius-dreamer Marcia Dale Weary to the dazzling and dynamic institution that it is today. Cumberland County is now home to several studios of dance, and we welcome and support all of them. I particularly admire dance for a counter-intuitive reality: it is a bookish art even as it abstracts beauty and grace from physics and human movement. Great writing about dance surrounded it from the beginning, great photography is drawn to it, and artwork for both adults and children celebrates it. We welcome dancers throughout the year, we welcome their brave and heroic families, and we welcome the opportunity to stock wonderful books about the art.
My Life: the restored edition
My Life: the restored edition
A remarkable account of a wildly artistic life, finally restored to its unexpurgated form, with a revealing new introduction by Joan Acocella.
The visionary choreographer and dancer Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) not only revolutionized dance in the twentieth century but blazed a path for other visionaries who would follow in her wake. While many biographies have explored Duncan’s crucial role as one of the founders of modern dance, no other book has proved as critical—as both historical record and vivid evocation of a riveting life—as her autobiography. From her early enchantment with classical music and poetry to her great successes abroad, to her sensational love affairs and headline-grabbing personal tragedies, Duncan’s story is a dramatic one. My Life still stands alone as “a great document, revealing the truth of her life as she understood it, without reticence or apology or compromise” (New York Herald Tribune). Now, in this fully restored edition, with its risqué recollections and fervent idealism, My Life can be appreciated by a new generation.