I was hoping for more from this book. At the least, I was hoping for excellent photography, but the photographs range from great to mediocre, with far few really good ones to make up for all the blurry, poorly composed, and unflattering ones. The text accompaniment was adequate, but though the authors attempted to be more international, ultimately this was from a strongly American perspective, and an upper class white one for that matter. I didn't expect the focus on avant garde and post-modernist dance, and the lack of history. It's as though queer dancers and dance came into existence at earliest around 1959, and mostly in the last 20 years in big cities. I came away feeling like queer dance was even less accessible and more disconnected to me than mainstream dance, despite being queer myself and having enjoyed dancing in the past.

This book would be a wonderful gift or resource for anyone who loves dance, as it covers a wide berth from traditional formats to contemporary styles. It also features representation of different cultures. I learned about several different forms of dance, such as butoh, with a queer history as well as how LGBTQ+ folks are influencing and adapting more familiar styles, like ballet. Romack supplies great descriptions of those involved, while Malka’s photography helps capture them visually.

All this said, I wish there had been more text to accompany the images, or perhaps a deeper dive into fewer styles. That said, I can understand if that had to be sacrificed in pursuit of representing the truly diverse offerings.

Beautiful, powerful, captivating. There is so much raw emotion capture in this book! I loved reading all the snippets on each piece.

An expansive portrayal of queerness in dance, with evocative photographs and interesting essays.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!

Really lovely coffee table book, and of course an interesting and important subject. Thank you for the opportunity to review.

I am queer and a lover of dance photography, so I was ecstatic when I saw this book was available. It wasn’t quite what I expected though, as the photos varied in quality. While enjoyable, most did not live up to the photo on the cover.

There were written accounts of the artist or group accompanying each set of photos, which was a nice addition of context.

I read this as an ARC from NetGalley but it would be better as a coffee table book to keep on hand to share with friends. I asked to read it because I love pictures and dancing, and there was a surprising amount of variety. You can see everything from cowboys to ethnic dancers, and there are stories about the people and how the pictures came to be.
The only criticism I had was that the print seemed small, but that might be solved with a full sized print book.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Chronicle Books for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book has beautiful pictures with short blurbs about the pictures and people. I love the variety in orientation, gender, race, etc. and would love this as a coffee table book. I will say that this book is not condusive to an "ebook" format.