If you get a sec, do read a review of two recent books about Astaire and Rogers, Hannah Hyam's Fred & Ginger (Pen Press Publishers) and Joseph Epstein's Fred Astaire (Yale University Press), that ran in Sunday's NYT. Miraculously, the piece manages not to draw too many parallels between the Great Depression that spawned their RKO Deco baubles and today's economy. [Although mention is made of "So You Think You Can Dance" and its role in repopularizing--and I'd say bastardizing, if I could bring myself to watch it, that is--ballroom dancing. Sigh.] Better still, a passage in it caused me to revisit and reconsider a number from Swing Time (1936) I'd always dismissed, "The Waltz in Swing Time" [above].
YMMV, but it's quite something.



