Edwin Denby was the most important and influential American dance critic of the 20th century. His reviews and essays which he began writing in the late 1930s and continued to write for almost thirty years were possessed of a voice, vision, and passion as compelling and inspiring as his subject. As dance critic, first for Modern Music and then for the New York Herald Tribune, and as a contributor to numerous magazines and journals (Ballet, Dance Magazine, Mademoiselle, and Evergreen Review among them), Denby permanently changed the way we think and talk about dance. This volume presents his reviews from Modern Music and the Tribune in chronological order, providing not only a picture of how Denby"s dance theories and reviewing methods evolved, but also an informal history of the dance in New York from 1936 through 1945. Some of the reviews glimpse the vanished dancers and dances that were most particularly of their time. In others, Denby returns again and again to the four...