Like a sudden aerolith alighting in some historian's surprised garden, Dorf's glowing book gives us an alternative history of turn-of-the-century Europe filled with earnest lesbians and archaeologists, hidden pianos in neo-Delian villas, visionary dancers, and an exuberant arc of musical and artistic fantasy about ancient Greece that returns us to the wonder of a period a hundred years behind us, yet which still invites us to ask who we are and what we love.
Dr. Samuel N. Dorf is a musicologist and dance historian. His research areas include intersections between musicology and dance studies and the history of technology, studies of antiquity, reception studies, queer studies, and the history of performance practice. He teaches at the University of Dayton.