CANR
WORK TITLE: Celestial Bodies
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://laurajacobs.info/
CITY: New York
STATE: NY
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: CANR 216
http://erb.kingdomnow.org/brief-review-the-bird-catcher-by-laura-jacobs-vol-2-29/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Married James Wolcott (a journalist and editor).
EDUCATION:Northwestern University, B.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist and writer. Stagebill, editor-in-chief, 1987-95; New Criterion, dance critic; Vanity Fair, staff writer, beginning 1995, then contributing editor. Riverside Park Bird Sanctuary, co-tender.
MEMBER:Linnaean Society of New York.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including the Atlantic Monthly, New Republic, Chicago Reader, Village Voice, Ballet Review, Modern Review, and Boston Phoenix.
SIDELIGHTS
A contributing editor to Vanity Fair who also writes dance criticism for the New Criterion, Laura Jacobs is knowledgeable about the art and fashion world of New York City, having profiled some of the better-known contemporary American designers, such as Norman Norell, Charles James, Adrian, and Mainbocher. She drew on this background to write her first novel, Women about Town, which tells of two career women trying to balance their work and social lives in the Big Apple. Jacobs has also published a compilation of her dance criticism, the 2005 book Landscape with Moving Figures: A Decade on Dance, and has gone on to write a second novel, The Bird Catcher, once again set in Manhattan.
Women about Town
In Jacobs’s debut title, Women about Town, forty-year-old Iris Biddle is a divorced designer of high-end lamp shades that sell for thousands of dollars, while Lana Burton is thirty-four and writes about dance for a magazine. Jacobs parallels their stories in alternating chapters and has the two characters come together only near the end of her novel.
What could have degenerated into a gossipy, shallow tale of glamorous socialites turns into what Beth Warrell called in Booklist an “insightful look at the lives of today’s career woman.” While a Kirkus Reviews critic did label the novel “superficial,” many other reviewers had much higher praise for Jacobs’s first novel. A Publishers Weekly writer insisted that the author “effectively avoids cliché by treating Iris and Lana with gravity and respect,” and People critic Joyce Cohen felt that Jacobs “writes with intelligence, grace and an utterly female sensibility.”
Landscape with Moving Figures
Jacobs gathers a decade of dance criticism first published in the New Criterion between 1995 and 2004 in her Landscape with Moving Figures. Each of the essays runs about six pages, and together they deal with topics from the effects of ballet positions on a dancer’s legs to the choreography of Frederick Ashton to the career of Anna Pavlova. Antony Tudor, Paul Taylor, Merce Cunningham, Agnes de Mille, George Balanchine, and other notables also make appearances in this collection. Throughout her essays, Jacobs—conservative in her taste in dance—argues for the classical style of dancing, which she contends is threatened by newer forms. Writing for the New York Sun Online, Joy Goodwin summed up the author’s point of view as dance critic: “[Jacobs’s] ideal of the ballet is the castle these essays are determined to defend. Much of the writing keys into that dramatic state of affairs: the kingdom under siege.”
Writing for Dance magazine, Hanna Rubin thought that the essays in Landscape with Moving Figures “offer rich insight into late 20th-century dance, particularly ballet.” Rubin noted: “Jacobs never simply reviews a performance. Each column is a meditation on a familiar element of the dance.” Goodwin also had high praise for the collection, concluding: “Ms. Jacobs is a demanding critic, but she is also a writer of unusual verve. Her provocative collection of essays is both a diary of a turbulent decade in dance and an articulation of her own sharply honed critical perspective.”
The Bird Catcher
Jacobs returned to fiction with her 2009 novel, The Bird Catcher. As with Iris Biddle, who designs expensive lamp shades in Women about Town, The Bird Catcher features a Manhattanite with a peculiarly urban career: Margaret Snow designs windows for Saks. But Margaret is not the consummate urbanite; instead, she is something of a recluse and a lover of nature who has a deep and abiding passion for birding. The reader meets Margaret at age thirty-one, but slowly her back story is revealed. She dropped out of her graduate art course at Columbia, in part because of her advisor, handsome Assyriologist Charles Ashur and her love for him. Charles, like Margaret, is an avid birder, and it is this that initially brings the pair together. She takes the job designing windows at Saks, pouring her artistic impulses into this work, and meanwhile she and Charles take tentative steps toward commitment. Finally, they are married, but their happiness is cut tragically short a few years later when the plane carrying Charles to a birding expedition goes down and he is killed. Soon, Margaret loses her job at Saks, but she finds a sort of salvation in stuffing dead birds and bringing them, and herself, back to a semblance of life.
Reviewing The Bird Catcher for Bookforum, Yona Zeldis McDonough called it “pitch-perfect.” McDonough further observed that, “without sounding a single wrong note, Jacobs orchestrates her character’s sonata as expansively and dramatically as a symphony whose strains linger on, long after the last page has been turned.” Jeffrey Gantz, writing for the online Boston Phoenix, also commended the work, calling it “a novel of observation, a novel that swoops and soars in its dizzy flights to worlds you never imagined, a novel about catching life on the wing (and occasionally in mid crawl).” On the other hand, a reviewer for Publishers Weekly, while finding The Bird Catcher to be a “charming story about a grieving widow reborn,” also felt that “it’s pock-marked by pretentious dialogue and flat characters.” However, Englewood Review of Books contributor Brittany Sanders had a higher assessment of the novel: “If you can handle meticulous details of eviscerated birds and broken human hearts, The Bird Catcher delivers a memorable, authentic story.” Likewise, Booklist writer Danise Hoover concluded: “Jacobs’ incisive writing captures her characters’ moods, while her graceful descriptions of the birds that inspire her protagonist illuminate the story.”
Celestial Bodies
Jacobs published Celestial Bodies: How to Look at Ballet in 2018. The account explores why ballet has maintained its appeal over the centuries. Jacobs discusses a range of composers and choreographers, depicting how their work has influenced and shaped this art form. Jacobs looks at specific works as well, including Giselle, Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, and The Rite of Spring. Jacobs also covers the technical aspects of ballet, like the classical techniques that are associated with the famous ballet schools and conservatories. She then explores the repertory of ballet companies, which tend to mix both classical and contemporary ballets each season. Jacobs adds a section discussing the notable ballerinas and their defining roles.
A contributor to Kirkus Reviews found that “in her enthusiasm, Jacobs occasionally lets descriptions get away from her … and some sections feel as if they were written for someone with no knowledge of the arts.” However, the same reviewer conceded that Jacobs “ably explains” the technical side of ballet. Writing in the New York Journal of Books, Lew Whittington commented that Jacobs’s “examination has typical Balanchine subtext, but Jacobs quotes Balanchine that in his instruction that ballet simply ‘means what you see.’ And Jacobs elaborates that point to encourage us to let our imagination dance along with the artists.” Whittington reasoned that “as accessible as Jacobs makes this history for general readership, Celestial Bodies is basically for students of dance and avid balletomanes.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, April 15, 2002, Beth Warrell, review of Women about Town, p. 1382; May 15, 2009, Danise Hoover, review of The Bird Catcher, p. 17.
Dance, August, 2007, Hanna Rubin, review of Landscape with Moving Figures: A Decade on Dance, p. 54.
Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2002, review of Women about Town, p. 359; March 1, 2018, review of Celestial Bodies: How to Look at Ballet.
People, July 8, 2002, Joyce Cohen, “Pages,” review of Women about Town, p. 35.
Publishers Weekly, April 22, 2002, review of Women about Town, p. 47; October 10, 2005, review of Beene by Beene, p. 52; April 20, 2009, review of The Bird Catcher, p. 30.
Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), May 18, 2003, review of Women about Town, p. 7.
Washington Post Book World, May 19, 2002, review of Women about Town, p. 4.
ONLINE
Bookforum, http://www.bookforum.com/ (June 12, 2009), Yona Zeldis McDonough, review of The Bird Catcher.
Boston Phoenix, http:/ /thephoenix.com/ (August 5, 2009), Jeffrey Gantz, review of The Bird Catcher.
Englewood Review of Books, http://erb.kingdomnow.org/ (July 24, 2009), Brittany Sanders, review of The Bird Catcher.
Laura Jacobs website, http://laurajacobs.info (July 19, 2018).
New York Journal of Books, https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/ (July 19, 2018), Lew J. Whittington, review of Celestial Bodies.
New York Sun Online, http://www.nysun.com/ (December 26, 2006), Joy Goodwin, review of Landscape with Moving Figures.
Vanity Fair Online, http://www.vanityfair.com/ (August 27, 2010), “Laura Jacobs.”
Laura Jacobs
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Laura Jacobs is a novelist, journalist, and dance critic. The Bird Catcher, her second novel, was published in June 2009, by St. Martin's Press. In July, 2010 Picador released a paperback edition. Her first novel, Women About Town, a Literary Guild selection, was published by Viking Press in 2002, with French and Polish editions, followed by a paperback from Penguin.[1]
Contents [hide]
1
Background and education
2
Career
3
Personal
4
References
5
External links
Background and education[edit]
Laura Jacobs hails from Chicago, Illinois, and holds a B.A. in English Literature from Northwestern University.
Career[edit]
Jacobs has been a staff writer at Vanity Fair since 1995 where she has written award-winning pieces on design, fashion, and the performing arts. She has profiled the mid-century American designers Norman Norell, Charles James, Adrian, and Mainbocher, and has made a specialty of writing about iconic American women, including Emily Post, Gypsy Rose Lee, Lilly Pulitzer, Suzy Parker and Julia Child.
Jacobs began writing dance criticism in Chicago at the Chicago Reader. She has written about dance for The Atlantic Monthly, and held dance critic posts at The Boston Phoenix and The New Leader. Since 1994, Jacobs has been the dance critic at The New Criterion. In 2006 a collection of her New Criterion essays was published by Dance & Movement Press: Landscape with Moving Figures, A Decade on Dance. She also contributes to Ballet Review and Opera News.
From 1987 to 1995, Jacobs was the editor in chief of Stagebill, the national performing arts program magazine whose constituents included Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, Chicago Theater, and orchestras and opera companies around the country. During the late nineties, Jacobs wrote fashion criticism for both Modern Review and The New Republic. She collaborated with the incomparable fashion designer Geoffrey Beene on Beauty and the Beene (Abrams Books, 1999) and edited his last book, Beene by Beene (The Vendome Press, 2005).[2]
Personal[edit]
She is a member of The Linnaean Society of New York, and a co-tender in the Riverside Park Bird Sanctuary. She is married to the writer James Wolcott, and lives on New York’s Upper West Side.
Laura Jacobs is a novelist, journalist, and dance critic. The Bird Catcher, her second novel, was published by St. Martin’s Press in 2009, and in paperback from Picador in 2010. Her first novel, Women About Town, a Literary Guild selection, was published by Viking in 2002, with French and Polish editions, followed by a paperback from Penguin.
Jacobs has been a staff writer at Vanity Fair magazine since 1995, where she has written award-winning pieces on design, fashion, and the performing arts. She has profiled the mid-century American designers Norman Norell, Charles James, Adrian, and Mainbocher, and has also made a specialty of iconic American women, including Emily Post, Gypsy Rose Lee, Suzy Parker, Julia Child, and Grace Kelly.
Jacobs began writing dance criticism in Chicago at the Chicago Reader. She has held dance critic posts at The Boston Phoenix, The New Leader, and also wrote a column about dance for The Atlantic Monthly. Since 1994, Jacobs has been the dance critic at The New Criterion. In 2006 a collection of her New Criterion essays was published by Dance & Movement Press: Landscape with Moving Figures, A Decade on Dance. That same year Francis Mason, the distinguished editor of Ballet Review, wrote, “Laura Jacobs of The New Criterion is our best dance critic.”
From 1987 to 1995, Jacobs was the editor in chief of Stagebill, the national performing arts program magazine whose constituents included Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, Chicago theater, and orchestras and opera companies around the country. During the late 1990s, Jacobs wrote fashion criticism for both The Modern Review and The New Republic. She collaborated with the incomparable fashion designer Geoffrey Beene on Beauty and the Beene (Abrams, 1999) and edited his last book, Beene by Beene (The Vendome Press, 2005). Jacobs also wrote the text for The Art of Haute Couture (Abbeville, 1995).
Jacobs hails from Chicago, Illinois, and holds a B.A. in English Literature from Northwestern University. She is married to the writer James Wolcott, and lives on New York’s upper west side.
Laura Jacobs is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and the dance critic for the New Criterion, where she has been since 1994. Dubbed "our best dance critic" by the editor of Ballet Review, Jacobs has also written about dance for the Atlantic, Chicago Reader, and London Review of Books. She lives in New York City.
Jacobs, Laura: CELESTIAL BODIES
Kirkus Reviews. (Mar. 1, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Jacobs, Laura CELESTIAL BODIES Basic (Adult Nonfiction) $27.00 5, 8 ISBN: 978-0-465-09847-7
Ballet is a pleasure to watch, but some of its subtleties may be lost on the average viewer. Here, a dance critic tries to explain them.
"The greatest ballets reward endless looking," writes longtime New Criterion dance critic Jacobs (Landscape with Moving Figures: A Decade on Dance, 2006, etc.) in this attempt to clarify ballet's techniques. She covers all the basic movements and accoutrements, from the five basic positions to the "mysterious magnetism" of pointe shoes to the various types of arabesque, the position she calls the "logo for classical dance." The author also introduces seminal works of ballet, among them Giselle, with its themes of "privilege [and] the blase abuses committed by those of class and landed wealth"; Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, and The Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky, "ballet's greatest composer"; and the game-changing, Nijinsky-choreographed The Rite of Spring, which sparked an infamous riot at its premiere, features Stravinsky's "mesmerizingly brutal" music and was "an epic rejection of everything its audience held dear." In her enthusiasm, Jacobs occasionally lets descriptions get away from her--e.g., "allegro is spring warblers singing in the canopy, or bats pinging and winging at dusk. There is something of the souffle about allegro--it should always be rising"--and some sections feel as if they were written for someone with no knowledge of the arts. One wonders how many readers will need a definition of a synopsis or that Leo Tolstoy was a "literary giant." Still, the author ably explains the technical aspects of ballet, as when she explains that turnout's "symmetrical torque in the hips engages energy and concentrates it" and in her beautiful description of pas de deux: "a form of close-up, the theatrical equivalent of the camera's lavish gaze."
"They're doing choreography," Danny Kaye sang in White Christmas. As Jacobs demonstrates, however, ballet is so much more.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Jacobs, Laura: CELESTIAL BODIES." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A528959790/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=42e29208. Accessed 11 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A528959790
Celestial Bodies: How to Look at Ballet
Author(s):
Laura Jacobs
Release Date:
May 8, 2018
Publisher/Imprint:
Basic Books
Pages:
272
Buy on Amazon
Reviewed by:
Lew Whittington
Laura Jacobs’ Celestial Bodies: How to Look at Dance delves into the lasting appeal of classical ballets like Giselle, La Sylphide, Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, and, of course, The Nutcracker. It is part ballet primer and a lively insider peek into the technical aspects and the enduring magic of the dance world.
Jacobs makes the great point that classical techniques taught in ballet schools and conservatoires maintain artistic standards that are constantly evolved and refined through new generations of dancers. Most major ballet companies mix contemporary repertory, but on any given year, rely on the enduring appeal of the classical ballets to pay their bills.
Jacobs brings us into the creative, even poetic, realms of the dance and also, in concrete terms examines the origins and mechanics of ballet from its history in the court of Louis XIV, to the development of the pointe shoe and its transformational powers as the “wings” of a ballerina. The pointe shoe that was the tool that changed the art form. Women previously danced in raised heels, which prevented any possibility of ballone or the vocabulary of what would be balletic artistry for the ballerina.
Jacobs deftly analyzes George Balanchine’s Serenade, the first ballet he made as a Russian émigré choreographer in America who would define the American postmodern aesthetic, while preserving Russian classicist vocabulary.
Her examination has typical Balanchine subtext, but Jacobs quotes Balanchine that in his instruction that ballet simply “means what you see.” And Jacobs elaborates that point to encourage us to let our imagination dance along with the artists. Not to be caught up in any literal meaning, even when it is a story ballet or even when there is an expressed intent of the choreographer, but to view dance as bodies moving in space.
And, of course, everyone understands what they are seeing when Anna Pavlova, Maria Tallchief, Margot Fonteyn, Gesley Kirkland, and Susanne Farrell, among other prima ballerinas, are dancing these classical roles, as Jacobs articulates what they bring specifically to them. Jacobs weighs in on male stars including Vaslav Nijinsky, Rudolf Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and current stars Angel Corella, David Hallberg, and Ethan Stiefel.
Meanwhile, there is the music of ballet. Her chapter on Tchaikovsky is an exploration in the music-choreographic interplay through his collaborations with master choreographers Marius Petipa/Lev Ivanov—Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, and The Nutcracker.
Jacobs’ finale is her eloquent bow to the achievement of the courage, conviction, and individual artistry of the ballerina who embodies ballet history and puts her imprimatur on it. If “ballet is woman,” as Balanchine was quoted as saying, she writes of the powerful subtext of a woman on pointe, articulating in dance the creative mind of a classical choreographer.
Even though the book focuses on ballet classicism and history, Jacobs’ incisive commentary on neoclassic and contemporary dance is equally instructive; consider Nijinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps, that seismic leap into modernist movement. Jacobs touches on other visionaries 20th century dance including Martha Graham, Agnes De Mille, and Isadora Duncan. The world’s premiere dance companies required dancers to be much more versatile in postmodern genres on top of being superb classical technicians. They are also required to be at their physical peak to meet the demands of a generation of innovative choreographers.
That is Jacobs’ core thesis about how audience members should approach it. But on equal ground is her dissection and examination about choreographic intent, the interpretive artistry of a dancer, and the cultural significance of the most revered and enduring ballets in the world.
As accessible as Jacobs makes this history for general readership, Celestial Bodies is basically for students of dance and avid balletomanes. Jacobs is a Vanity Fair staff writer, editor in chief of Playbill, novelist, and longtime arts journalist.
Lew J. Whittington writes about the arts and gay culture for several publications including Philadelphia Dance Journal, Dance International, CultureVulture, and Huffington Post. His book reviews and author interviews have appeared in The Advocate, EdgeMedia, and the Philadelphia Inquirer.