Both a dancer’s autobiography and a firsthand history of American modern dance as it was still inventing itself.

Koner began in ballet, studying with Michel Fokine in the 1920s, then moved through Spanish dance, the cross-cultural experiments of Michio Itō, a long solo career, and eventually into the orbit of Doris Humphrey and José Limón. Her path never quite belonged to one school, making her involvement in modern dance, a reflection of the borrowing, breaking form, travelling, teaching and discovering that went on during that period. There are beautiful passages about touring, rehearsal, collaborators, friendship, love, exhaustion, artistic ambition and the intimacy of making work with other people.

She was also an important early figure in dance for television, and the book carries that wider sense of twentieth-century performance moving between stage, choreography, teaching and new media. Illustrated throughout, it doubles as an archive of a career spanning from the late 1920s until Koner stopped performing in 1972. 

Edition / condition: Duke University Press, Durham, 1989. First edition. Hardcover with dust jacket. Illustrated, including photographic plates. Light shelf wear and rubbing to jacket, with minor edge wear; boards and binding sound. Internally clean and unmarked. Very good condition.