The Dance

The Dance

Summary

A delightful anthology that celebrates in verse the silent poetry of dance and the dancer.
Chinese dagger dances and Hindu festival dances, belly dancers and whirling dervishes, high-school proms and wedding waltzes, tango, tarantella, mambo, flamenco, reels and jigs, disco and ballet - dances of all kinds move through the poems gathered here, as do some of the world's most famous dancers, from Nijinsky and Pavlova to Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire; from Isadora Duncan, George Balanchine and Martha Graham to Baryshnikov and Bojangles. In the work of more than 150 poets - including Shakespeare, Milton, Hafez, Rumi, Li Po, Rilke, Rimbaud, Lorca, Akhmatova, Whitman, Dickinson, Cummings, Eliot and Merrill - we feel and see the grace, the drama, the expressive power, and the sheer joy to be found in dance, around the world and through the ages.

About the author

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more