Pencil Dancing

Pencil Dancing offers readers a fresh take on developing creative confidence, overcoming blocks and taming their inner critics. They'll discover fun and effective ways to achieve satisfying creative expression and enrich their daily lives, approaching creativity from the point of view of a "dance" between conscious and unconscious, left and right brain, creator and critic, logic and creativity. The book is divided into fifty short chapters, presented as if an encouraging teacher or coach is standing close at hand. Readers will find prompts, field trip activities, vivid imagery and other methods that allow them to get into a creative mode, and to conquer writer's block and other creative difficulties. * This book is perfect for anyone who wants to be more creative! * Contains concise instruction that's lighthearted and clearly organized * In the tradition of the Artist's Way, Pencil Dancing encourages both creativity and personal growth.

An indispensable resource on Samuel Barber's complete oeuvre-more than 100 published and nearly twice as many unpublished compositions-with an abundance of information on song texts, first performances, genesis of composition, duration, revisions, editions, arrangements, selected discography of historical and contemporary recordings, and detailed description of the hundreds of holograph manuscripts, sketches, drafts, and significant publisher's proofs founded in libraries and private collections throughout the United States. Illuminating quotations drawn from Barber's letters and diaries will be of special interest not only to scholars but conductors, composers, performers, and the general music enthusiast.

When we drew as children, we never worried about making mistakes—we took risks and trusted ourselves, and had fun in the process. But as we become adults, anxiety steps in: “Am I doing this right?” “What is expected of me?” “This is wrong!” And from drawing, we can extrapolate into the rest of our lives. The fear of making a mistake hinders us from being as creative as we could be. Deborah Putnoi’s interactive sketchbook helps us reconnect to that open, nonjudgmental state, which she calls the “drawing mind.” Her bold, lively drawings and encouraging instructions lead you on a process of self-discovery, first reclaiming the freedom to express yourself through drawing and then learning how to take that freedom into the activities of your daily life.

In the City of Lights, at the dawn of a new age, begins an unforgettable story of great love, great art—and the most painful choices of the heart. With this fresh and vibrantly imagined portrait of the Impressionist artist Edgar Degas, readers are transported through the eyes of a young Parisian ballerina to an era of light and movement. An ambitious and enterprising farm girl, Alexandrie joins the prestigious Paris Opera ballet with hopes of securing not only her place in society but her family’s financial future. Her plan is soon derailed, however, when she falls in love with the enigmatic artist whose paintings of the offstage lives of the ballerinas scandalized society and revolutionized the art world. As Alexandrie is drawn deeper into Degas’s art and Paris’s secrets, will she risk everything for her dreams of love and of becoming the ballet’s star dancer?

Describes the history of social dancing in the United States from the complicated early set dances to modern breakdancing and the recent revival of swing, discussing how, why, and with whom Americans have danced.

If you are a dance student and have been searching for a way to remember all those dance steps that you have spent so much time and effort learning, this is the book for you. Michael Yusim is an experienced engineer and computer programmer who has devised a unique and innovative method for recording dance steps. Mariann Cataletto is a current medical system manager, computer programming student, and a former dance teacher. Their combined talents have resulted in the creation of an effective tool for learning and retention so that you never need to experience the frustration of forgetting a dance pattern again. Their graphics library provides a wealth of information on Hustle step combinations. They also provide the opportunity to see these steps performed in video clips on their web site at www.dancestudent.com.

The challenges that young women go through in order to be successful in the world of dance are well known. However, little is known about the experiences of young men who choose to take dance classes in non-professional settings. Dancing Boys is one of the first scholarly works to demystify the largely unknown challenges of adolescent males in dance. Through an ethnographic study of sixty-two adolescent male students, Zihao Li captures the authentic stories and experiences of boys participating in dance classes in a public high school in Toronto. Accompanied by the boys’ artwork and photographs and supported by a documentary-style video, the study explores their motivations for dancing, their reflections on masculinity and gender, and the internal and external factors that impact their decisions to continue to dance professionally or in informal settings. With the author’s reflections on his own journey as a professional dancer woven throughout, Dancing Boys will spark discussion on how and why educators can engage adolescent males in dance.