Books: In the Company of Others

[jimpickles]

As a matter of interest, I wonder if anyone here has read "In the Company of Others" by Anthony Howell (that's Howell, not Dowell). He is a multi-talented school friend of mine who danced in the Royal Ballet in about the mid-1960s - I think he used the name Aley or something at the time so as not to get confused with Anthony Dowell who was in the company at the time. He's now a performance artist.

 

It was published by Marion Boyars, and may be long out of print.

 

It is a beautiful, poetically and precisely written book, about being in a ballet company, from a company members point of view. It is very revealing about the ballet dancer's life. Anthony is an accomplished poet and writer and it the book is beautifully written. If you ever come across a copy, I very highly recommend it.

 

I should say that it is completely unrelated to the many other books with the same title (i've just done a search on Google).

 

I just wonder if any one here has read it.

 

Jim.

[minty]

I have !! I'm a bit of a compulsive reader, so I've git a huge collection of dance books ; actually, though, I can't say it was one of my favorite ...

[jimpickles]

Well that's amazing! I was fully explecting no replies. Its not necessarily easy to read, because there's hardly any story. But to me, it givs a real feeling of what it might be like to be in a ballet company. "Might be", because of course I dont know if this is really what it is like, but I guess it's accurate.

 

Jim.

[minty]

well yes, I guess it's the 'no story' thing that I didn't like...

anyway, I see you're from Australia, I'm from France, so it might be why we read strange english books...

[jimpickles]

I'm really from England. But I always thought the French were much more intellectual in their approach to literature. This one is very poetically written, which is part of its pleasure, but maybe that also makes it not such a pleasurable read, if you see what I mean.

 

Jim.