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Foreword

Audacity sometimes springs from purity of purpose, and the result can be stunning. The Dancer Within, like Rose’s earlier study of the art form, Masters of Movement, owes its existence to her quest to reawaken the long-slumbering dancer within herself.

Rose found her calling in dance as a teenager after reading Isadora Duncan’s autobiography My Life. In the early 1970s, Rose studied dance at the Reuben Academy in Jerusalem and later earned a master’s degree in dance ethnology at UCLA. Marriage and motherhood followed, thwarting her ambitions. Thirty years of teaching dance did little to quell her quiet longing for performance—the real thing. But at forty-four, an age when most dancers are hanging up their dance shoes, could Rose enter that lost world?

Her portal was the lens of a camera. Rose discovered her talent for photography as a young mother seeking to record the stages of her children’s lives. She would later study with Leigh Weiner, one of the original Life magazine photographers, with master teacher Bobbi Lane, and others. In 1987 she published her first photos in the award-winning children’s book, The Number on My Grandfather’s Arm. Her debut dance photograph appeared in a 1995 edition of L.A. Dance and Fitness, a magazine aimed at dancers looking for commercial work on the West Coast. Five years later her photos were appearing on the covers of leading national dance magazines.

As a practical matter, Rose learned that she could get more of her photos published if they illustrated articles, and so began her writing career, which included a column in Dance magazine called “Faces in Dance.” The stage was now set for her first major work, Masters of Movement, a six-year project she initiated in 1998 comprising interviews and photographic portraits of America’s great choreographers. Her goal was to discover the creative thread that defines and drives these artists. With camera in hand, she talked her way into the studios, hotel rooms, and homes of many of the most celebrated figures in the world of dance—from the concert stage and Broadway to Hollywood and television. And she did so with a single-minded determination that prompted choreographer Paul Taylor to remark upon finally consenting to a photo session: “You are the most persistent person I’ve ever met!” That same persistence was at work in the creation of The Dancer Within.

With few exceptions, Rose’s subjects immediately took her, a stranger, into their confidence, many of them entrusting to her stories of a confessional nature about both their personal and professional lives. In Rose’s presence many of these guarded celebrities shed their armor and masks, revealing their vulnerabilities to one they perceived as their own—a once-aspiring dancer turned photographer/writer but an artist no less. Rose’s interviews reflected her own passion for the dancer’s life, and her thoroughly researched questions demonstrated a level of preparation that endowed her with instant credibility and trustworthiness. Add to that her engaging personality and the rest fell into place.

Once Rose completed her exploration of the choreographer in Masters of Movement, she turned her attention to the dancer, the instrument of the choreographer’s creative expression. Here again Rose engaged the artists on many levels, challenging them to bear witness to their own lives as dancers and to pass along their insights to new generations of aspiring dancers.

What does The Dancer Within mean to Rose at this point in her quest to revive the dancer within herself?

Rose says: “This book is my dance, my choreography, my homage to dancers.”

How do I know so much about Rose Eichenbaum? Not only have I been her editor and artistic collaborator for many years, I am her brother.

Aron Hirt-Manheimer

Ridgefield, Connecticut

August 2007