The New York Review of Books – There is no full way to capture the presence of dance except through dance itself. The recent exhibition “Hymn to Apollo: The Ancient World and the Ballets Russes” at NYU’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World speaks to this tension—between dance and the representation of dance. The show—beautifully curated by Clare Fitzgerald and Rachel Herschman—explored the influence of ancient Greek, Roman, and Egyptian representations of dance on a group of groundbreaking Modernist artists based in Paris. In the rooms of the ISAW on East 84th Street, Fitzgerald and Herschman gathered ninety-five artifacts, interspersing statuettes, libation bowls, and amphoras from classical times with costumes, set designs, photographs, and other archival material from the Ballets Russes.
