Rogoff's new collection inspired by dance

Jay Rogoff, lecturer in English, has published a book of dance-inspired poetry, The Art of Gravity (2011, Louisiana State University Press). 

The poems unfold in a rich variety of forms, both traditional and experimental. Some focus on how Edgar Degas's paintings expose the artifice and artistic self-consciousness of ballet while, paradoxically, illuminating how it creates rapture. Others investigate dance's translation of physical gesture into allegorical mystery, especially in Balanchine's matchless works. Rogoff pays tribute to superb dancers who grant audiences seductive glimpses of the sublime, but also to all of us who find in dance a hopeful and redemptive image of ourselves.

Dance critic Mindy Aloff, who also teaches dance at Barnard College, writes that the collection "is both informed by a ranging knowledge of American and European poetic traditions and deeply and happily drenched in balletomania. . . . Mr. Rogoff seems to appreciate ballet dancers as real people and as incarnations of thought from every possible angle. He brings us the transcendent stars within the constellations of choreographic form and human beings whose youth and beauty, subjected to the merciless ticking of the clock, are chronicled from close by. A remarkable feat of aesthetics and empathy."

Rogoff will introduce the book in a reading and book signing scheduled at 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 13, at the National Museum of Dance, South Broadway. Admission is free and refreshments will be provided. RSVPs are encouraged and may be made by calling 584-2225 or emailing the dance museum.