That Still Moment: Poetry and Essays on Dance

About Edwin Denby

The modernist poet dancer and critic Edwin Denby (19031983) was born in Tientsin China and spent his childhood in Shanghai before moving to Vienna and later Detroit. Initially interested in psychoanalysis he attended Harvard and the University of Vienna before studying modern dance at the Hellerau-Laxenburg School in Vienna. He performed as a company dancer for several years returning to the United States in 1936. That same year he wrote Horse Eats Hat in collaboration with Orson Welles an adaptation of the 1851 French comedy The Italian Straw Hat. He then began his career as a dance critic by writing for Modern Music magazine from 1936 to 1942 and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1948 for his scholarship. He is the author of the poetry collections In Public In Private (1948) Mediterranean Cities (1956) Snoring in New York (1974) The Complete Poems (1986) and Dance Writings and Poetry (1998). His writings on dance have appeared in Modern Music the New York Herald Tribune Ballet and Dance Magazine and his books of criticism include Looking at the Dance (1949) and Dancers Buildings and People in the Streets (1965).Cal Revely-Calder is a writer and editor from London. He works on the arts desk at The Telegraph. In 2017 he won the Frieze Writers Prize.