From Dance Today magazine:
When Brigitt Mayer’s son turned to her and asked: “What is more important, your book or me?”, she knew that her desire to capture the stories of ballroom’s greatest names had taken over her life. Now, seven years after beginning Ballroom Icons, the completed work – 294 pages, 64 icons, two sections of dance history and 200 vintage photos – is published, but she admits it still feels “unfinished”. “It could have gone on forever. Every interview revealed something new, someone else I could have spoken to or something else to research. I just had to say, ‘this is it’ and get it printed,” she says.
The great names, those responsible for crafting ballroom dancing and evolving it into what we know today, are documented in words and pictures – from Victor Silvester and Josephine Bradley to Richard Gleave and Espen Salberg. Brigitt is the first to acknowledge that her readers will no doubt find “omissions”.
“When I started, I had a core group in mind and they were the key players I knew through my own experience as a dancer, but there were others I did not know about so the group grew as a result of those initial interviews. Bill and Bobbie Irvine were among those. I met them with my ideas for the book and how I envisaged its structure and they suggested many people that they thought I should include.”
Alison Gallagher-Hughes, Dance Today
Read the full article in Dance Today magazine (1Mb PDF file)
