One of the country's most distinguished and critically acclaimed solo dancers and choreographers debunks the myth that dancers must retire from professional life as performers in their early forties. A performing artist since 1940, Daniel Nagrin initiated his own career as a solo performer in 1957 at the age of forty. With great wisdom and wit, this fiercely passionate veteran gives us an unusual and much-needed book that combines theory, personal philosophy, experience, and knowledge about dancers, dancing, teachers, mentors, and technique with practical information that ranges from nutrition, healers and treatments, sex, meditation, kneepads, and toe grips to the special problems and needs of dancers over fifty.

The completed poetry collection Could I Have This Dance Forever? captures the specific emotions that grip us as human beings, causing the reader to reflect on what is truly important in life and asking them to savor each moment before it slips away. It is written in a format that readers can understand and relate to with a storytelling lyric that draws the reader in. It is at times melancholy but compelling in its narrative, drawing the reader to wonder about similar experiences in their own lives and to feel the entire gamut of emotions. It is evocative and captivating in the depth of the emotions that range from joy and elation to grief and despair. If you appreciate the beauty of language, the power of words, and the emotion that can be conveyed through poetry, this book is for you.

Christina dreams of dancing on air, but reality keeps bringing her down to earth. Her dance teacher thinks Christina should give it up, that Christina will never have the right build for dancing. Christina thinks where there's a will there's a way. If she can only make herself over, she's sure her wishes will come true. Her friends liked the old Christina just fine, and they're worried she's trying too hard to change. Christina is truly more special than anyone can guess, least of all Christina, but it will take a special being to make her see the light.

A chance meeting with a homeless man marks the beginning of enlightening and soul searching conversations with Garnet's Spirit Guide answering all of the probing questions we all want to know about life here as well as the hereafter.

One of the most important works of gay literature, this haunting, brilliant novel is a seriocomic remembrance of things past -- and still poignantly present. It depicts the adventures of Malone, a beautiful young man searching for love amid New York's emerging gay scene. From Manhattan's Everard Baths and after-hours discos to Fire Island's deserted parks and lavish orgies, Malone looks high and low for meaningful companionship. The person he finds is Sutherland, a campy quintessential queen -- and one of the most memorable literary creations of contemporary fiction. Hilarious, witty, and ultimately heartbreaking, Dancer from the Dance is truthful, provocative, outrageous fiction told in a voice as close to laughter as to tears.

"The world outside has burst into the studio," writes the influential dancer, teacher, and choreographer Daniel Nagrin. Many dancers want passionately to confront concrete, difficult subjects. But their formalistic training hasn't prepared them for what they need to say. This book, the first on choreography approached through content rather than structure, is designed with them in mind. Spiced with wit and strong opinions, Choreography and the Specific Image explores, in nineteen far-ranging essays, the art of choreography through the life's work of an important artist. A career of performance, creativity, and teaching spanning five decades, Nagrin reveals the philosophy and strategy of his work with Helen Tamiris, a founder of modern American dance, and of Workgroup, his maverick improvisation company of the 1970s. During an era when many dancers were working with movement as abstraction, Nagrin turned instead toward movement as metaphor, in the belief that dance should be about something. In Choreography and the Specific Image, Nagrin shares with the next generation of dancers just how that turn was accomplished. "It makes no sense to make dances unless you bring news," he writes. "You bring something that a community needs, something from you: a vision, an insight, a question from where you are and what churns you up." In a workbook following the essays, Nagrin lays out a wealth of clear, effective exercises to guide dancers toward such constructive self-discovery. Unlike all other choreography books, Nagrin addresses the concerns of both modern and commercial (show dance) choreographers. "The need to discover the inner life," he maintains, "is what fires the motion."This is Nagrin's third book of a trilogy, following Dance and the Specific Image: Improvisation and The Six Questions: Acting Technique for Dance Performance. Each focuses on a different aspect of dance—improvisation, performance, and choreography—engaging the specific image as a creative tool. Part history, part philosophy, part nuts-and-bolts manual, Choreography and the Specific Image will be an indispensable resource for all those who care passionately about the world of dance, and the world at large.