Dancing in Montreal

Iro Tembeck's Dancing in Montreal examines the complex web of artistic, social, and political forces that have made the cosmopolitan city of Montreal one of North America's most vibrant dance centers. A native of Egypt, Tembeck moves easily within the many dance worlds of Montreal and among the practitioners of many idioms, from ballet to traditional forms of modern dance and its many postmodern progeny. Tembeck writes with the eye of a critic, the judiciousness of a historian, and the sensory radar of an ethnographer. The result is an exemplary study of multiple cultures inhabiting—not always amicably—a contested urban space.