Books for dance lovers — and arts lovers generally — come in a variety of shapes and styles this year (like choreography!). Three of the books, all of them new, and in themselves works of art, are centered on gorgeous photographs of dancers in motion, and they all provide valuable insights into the making and practice of what many regard as the most human of the arts.  In addition, every book on this list contributes to our understanding of what motivates people to dance, professionally, recreationally, and therapeutically.

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I’ll start with In Balanchine’s Steps: How the George Balanchine Foundation Preserves his Genius, an elegantly designed and highly informative book, with photographs by Costas and Brian Rushton. Edited by Mindy Aloff, it’s an aesthetically pleasing documentation of the Interpreter’s Archive, a program funded and invented by former New York City Ballet dancer Nancy Reynolds, who is also the co-author (with Malcolm McCormick) of No Fixed Points, an invaluable survey of twentieth century dance.

Reynolds came up with the idea of the Interpreter’s Archive thirty or so years ago, as a way of preserving Balanchine’s choreography for future generations of dancers and audience members. Dancers who originated important roles in Balanchine’s ballets (Todd Bolender in the Phlegmatic section of Four Temperaments is an example) or worked extensively with Balanchine (who died in 1983) are filmed actively coaching current dancers, in order to provide a living record of the choreography, as well as Balanchine’s original choreographic intent. 

I witnessed, in 2002, Melissa Hayden coaching Pacific Northwest Ballet’s dancers in a section of Agon, and I’ll not soon forget her telling them, “Mr. Balanchine made this just for me, and I did it very well.” Which close to half a century later, she still did.

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The format for the Interpreter’s Archive includes interviews with the coaches by informed dance historians and critics, and also musicologists.  The result is not only an archival record of selected ballets created by Balanchine, but also a slice of ballet history that’s a lot of fun to read. Note, the book is published in conjunction with the George Balanchine Foundation, which benefits from the sales.

• In Balanchine’s Steps: How The George Balanchine Foundation Preserves His Genius, photographs by Costas, additional photographs by Brian Rushton, edited and introduction by Mindy Aloff, designer and photo editor Kyle Froman, Tide-mark Press, Ltd. $49.95.

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Balanchine was notoriously leery of interviewers, but not long before he died, he agreed to be interviewed by musicologist Solomon Volkov about his early life in Russia. The interviews were conducted in Russian, Balanchine was at ease with his friend and compatriot, and the result is a book that charms the reader while also illuminating the work. 

Readers of the resulting book, Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky, may be surprised to learn that Balanchine considered The Nutcracker to be the masterpiece of the composer of Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty, for which he makes a very good case.

• Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky: Interviews with George Balanchine by Solomon Volkov, translated from the Russian by Antonina W. Bouis, Simon & Schuster, published 1986, prices vary.

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Getting dancers to talk about their lives and work can be difficult — their expertise, after all, is in nonverbal communication — but Gavin Larsen, former Oregon Ballet Theatre principal dancer and author of Being a Ballerina: The Power and Perfection of a Dancing Life, got plenty of practice when she interviewed OBT’s dancers for the playbill in days of yore.

In Infinite Steps: Thirty-three Dancers and their Lives in Ballet, created in partnership with American Ballet Theatre staff photographer Gene Schiavone, Larsen managed to extract some highly idiosyncratic information from a wide variety of classical dancers, including several children.

From her no-nonsense conversation with American Ballet Theatre’s artistic director Susan Jaffe, to her profile of Albanian nightclub dancer Vjola Hajati, who was photographed by Schiavone visiting Nijinsky’s grave in Pere la Chaise cemetery in Paris, Larsen has created a highly intriguing mini-biographical encyclopedia of (mostly) ABT’s dancers. 

Schiavone’s photographs go way beyond illustration: I was particularly intrigued by a picture of a young student, alone in a studio, caught in midair in a split jump, the image reflected many times over in the mirror. Note: Infinite Steps will be issued by the University Press of Florida in March, 2026. It can be preordered from the publisher, as well as from Amazon.

• Infinite Steps: Thirty-three Dancers and their Lives in Ballet, by Gavin Larsen and Gene Schiavone, University Press of Florida, publishing March 2026, paperback $35.

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A third book of photographs, Martha Graham Dance Company 100 Years, by Ken Browar and Deborah Ory, commemorates the centenary of this country’s oldest modern dance company, with many handsome photographs from the past and quite a few of today’s dancers, rehearsing and performing Graham’s considerable body of work. 

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Graham’s work was highly theatrical, and she collaborated with many artists of several disciplines, most frequently and notably the Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi. They, and their work, are included in this pictorial history of one of this country’s most important artists of any discipline.

An essay describing her work with Noguchi, who did the set and costume design for such works as Cave of the Heart and Errand into the Maze (recently seen in Portland when White Bird presented the Graham Company) is included.

• Martha Graham Dance Company 100 Years, by Ken Browar and Deborah Ory, Black Dog & Leventhal, $75.  

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A passion — a compulsion, really — to dance can make you unstoppable, as Naomi Goldberg Haas reveals in her memoir, Moving Through Life: Essential Lessons of Dance. Written with Mikhaela Mahony, the book includes descriptions and photographs of exercises/dances that can be done at home, if the reader is so inclined.

Haas, the founder of Dances for a Variable Population, knows whereof she speaks. She starts the book with a childhood memory of auditioning for the School of American Ballet, where she received her professional training. In the middle of that training she was diagnosed with spinal scoliosis, which could easily have ended her career as a ballet dancer before it began. 

It did not. Haas had a substantial career as a performer of ballet and other dance forms on the West Coast, first in Seattle with Pacific Northwest Ballet, then in Los Angeles, where Portland dancer Gregg Bielemeier took her ballet class and enjoyed it! 

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In L.A. she made the shift to modern dance, a movement style that she has honed and changed over the years to make inclusive for people of varying abilities. She concludes her memoir with an encomium to the present members of her company, who express themselves in movement they create themselves, using a vocabulary created by the author.

Moving Through Life is an inward- looking account of Haas’s life in which she offers some interesting insights into the motivation and psyche of the dancer, and describes how, through her own body, she developed ways of enabling everyone, regardless of training or ability or talent, to express themselves with the organized movement we call dance.

• Moving Through Life: Essential Lessons of Dance by Naomi Goldberg Haas with Mikhaela Mahony, University Press of Florida, paperback, $28.