Word: mazo
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...perhaps more than anything else, it is the account of the details of the dancers' world which makes Mazo's book fascinating. He has faithfully recorded where the Company members live (West 69th Street), where they eat (O'Neal's), what they do in their spare time (movies and crossword puzzles), their pre-performance rituals (a touch on the shoulder and a good-luck wish of "merde"), even the contents of the candy machine in the dancers' lounge. What would otherwise be trivialities accumulate to form a tantalizing mosaic of a way of life which demands the dedication...
...fleetingly on the inside of a closed world, and unabashed in love with it. Unfortunately, enthusiasm can on occasion become condescension, most annoyingly with regard to the female dancers ("she's so sweet you could sip her through a straw"), but such lapses of taste are rare. More often, Mazo brings fragments of the life sharply into focus with his knack for daring imagery ("feet flash out and back like darting fish"), and what could have been either an uncritical catalogue or a collection of gossip succeeds instead in being both thorough and sparkling...
Whatever their problems, the dancers who come to life in the pages of Mazo's book have indisputably "made it." Although Dance As Life is subtitled "A Season With American Ballet Theatre," one of its strengths is its often poignant portrayal of those who couldn't make it, or won't make it, and one who chose not to: the author himself, who gave up a promising dance career to become a writer. It is this which makes Stevens' book unique, and at times intensely personal: "What am I doing in these street clothes ...a civilian and a foreigner, when...
Despite the subtitle, only slightly more than half the book deals with the daily life of ABT, and this section is actually a more superficial treatment of behind-the-scenes life than Mazo's. Stevens' strength is the concise, graceful way he fleshes out the background of a professional dancer's world, the grounds of experience one doesn't see on a daily basis but which are no less a part of each performance than the rehearsals. There is an unusually perceptive discussion of partnering, for instance-presumably the fruit of Stevens' own experience-a vivid and painful account...
...almost impossible to develop involvement in, much less prepare for, any life outside the sealed box of rehearsal hall and stage, and this breeds an almost unbearable amount of tension. The physical and psychological stress-the two are not necessarily distinguishable-can be overwhelming. As one dancer remarks to Mazo, "I doubt that anyone can stay in this place and be healthy...