What the Eye Hears: A History of Tap Dancing
Book Information
- Publisher
- Farrar Straus & Giroux
- Published
- 2015-11-17
- Pages
- 612 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 16.13 x 4.71 x 23.57 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780865479531
- ISBN-10
- 0865479534
- Price
- 2799 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Arts & Photography/Performing Arts/Dance/Tap
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Nonfiction Magisterial, revelatory, and-most suitably-entertaining, What the Eye Hears offers an authoritative account of the great American art of tap dancing. Brian Seibert, a dance critic for The New York Times , begins by exploring tap's origins as a hybrid of the jig and clog dancing from the British Isles and dances brought from Africa by slaves. He tracks tap's transfer to the stage through blackface minstrelsy and charts its growth as a cousin to jazz in the vaudeville circuits and nightclubs of the early twentieth century. Seibert chronicles tap's spread to ubiquity on Broadway and in Hollywood, analyzes its decline after World War II, and celebrates its rediscovery and reinvention by new generations of American and international performers. In the process, we discover how the history of tap dancing is central to any meaningful account of American popular culture. This is a story with a huge cast of characters, from Master Juba (it was probably a performance of his in a Five Points cellar that Charles Dickens described in American Notes for General Circulation ) through Bill Robinson and Shirley Temple, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and Gene Kelly and Paul Draper to Gregory Hines and Savion Glover. Seibert traces the stylistic development of tap through individual practitioners, vividly depicting dancers both well remembered and now obscure. And he illuminates the cultural exchange between blacks and whites over centuries, the interplay of imitation and theft, as well as the moving story of African-Americans in show business, wielding enormous influence as they grapple with the pain and pride of a complicated legacy. What the Eye Hears teaches us to see and hear the entire history of tap in its every step.
Brian Seibert is a dance critic for The New York Times and a contributor to The New Yorker . Born and raised in Los Angeles, he lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter. What the Eye Hears is his first book.
Reviews
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As described. Was gift for a friend who was delighted.
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Complete history
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I am only half way through this book and I'd thought I'd take a break and write a short review. What the Eye Hears is an astonishing work of scholarship and even better a remarkably entertaining read. More importantly it's a timely piece of scholarship that brings perspective to not only the art of tap, but to how oppressed people blend their cultures through the language of art...in this case tap dancing. On one level Seibert is telling us the untold story of America, a theme I did not expect to find in a book about tap dancing. This book isn't a fog of facts so don't be put off by its length. It's a good read, full of humor, joy and triumph. This is one book I'll read twice.
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Gut.
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This book is a masterful history of tap. He weaves together so much: the roots of dances from slavery in America, Irish clubbing, early Blackface minstrel shows, actual Black minstrel shows and a whole array of dancers. He focuses on the art of Henri Cole, the Nicolas brothers, Fred Astaire, Eleanor Powell, Gregory Hines and Savion Glover and many, many others. Seibert is a dance critic for the New York Times and "What the Eye Hears" reflects that fact. Astaire and Rogers remain at the pinnacle. Gene Kelly not so much. He seems taken back by Glover, greatness mixed with - at times - a bad attitude. He lauds what is available on YouTube, as I sit back and watch perfection -- Astaire and Powell tapping to Cole Potter's "Begin the Beguine." For anyone who loves dance, this book is an essential. One other plus: the photographs are amazing.