Peter Tregear

Opera Indigene: Re/presenting First Nations and Indigenous Cultures

psychoanalytic theory, exemplified by Voyage (1953), in which, he argues, she worked through the demise of her relationship with Hawkins. Franko’s research is meticulous, and the breadth of scholarship he brings to bear on Graham’s work is impressive, going far beyond dance history to encompass Modernist literature, music history, psychoanalytic theory and American political history, as well as feminist and contemporary critical theory. He brings a new approach to Graham’s relationship with Hawkins, presenting Hawkins far more sympathetically than has hitherto been usual, and he offers a nuanced reading of the complexities of Graham’s selffashioning as a serious woman artist in the early twentieth century. His attempt to situate her work in its political, intellectual and cultural context is a worthy contribution to dance scholarship’s project of reinstating modern dance into history. However, despite the depth and breadth of his research and the original insights that it throws up, reading Martha Graham in Love and War is a hard slog. In places, this is due to inadequate contextualization: Franko assumes a level of knowledge across such diverse fields that his ideal readers are likely to be few. This study’s deployment of critical theory can also be problematic. Franko sometimes uses theoretical material productively, as in his illuminating discussion of archetypal psychoanalytic theory in relation toDark Meadow (1946) and Errand into the Maze (1947). At other times, fleeting allusions to Derrida, theories of ‘women’s film’, feminist theory and so forth, aredropped into the text in amanner that appears gratuitous simply because they are not adequately explained. The most laborious aspect of the reading process, however, is wading through Franko’s prose. Franko is a dancer, choreographer and dance academic: fleet of foot he may be, but he writes, sadly, with a dead hand. Almost impenetrably dense and compressed sentences that require multiple re-reads, and the use of jargon and unnecessarily complex language, undermine the intrinsic interest of the material. This is a shame, becauseFranko’s insights deserve awide audience.As it is, this ground-breaking analysis of a crucial period in Graham’s creative history is very much a specialist volume.

Music and the Construction of National Identities in the 19th Century

Music. He was made a Member and Officer of the Order of Australia, culminating in the award of Companion (AC). Roger Covell is quoted in this book as saying: ‘he is a man who has volunteered for onerous but important duty, working for excellent and difficult causes and doing kind and neighbourly things without drawing public attention to them’ (p. 218). Ken Tribe gave out so much to the performing arts world. The stories in Gwen Bennett’s book show that he had the desire and the professional ability to help arts organizations to support artists and present good repertoire to Australian audiences. This book represents excellent reading.