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Summary: For Anglophiles a satire of British manners between the wars
Review: For people who like Jane Austen, yet set in more recent times, Anthony Powell's series is worth reading. The story lines are not gripping thrillers, yet one becomes interested in the characters as they drift in and out of the main protagonist's life. I picked up the first `trilogy' in the reissue of Powell's work because I had watched and enjoyed the televisation made by one of the UK's networks. All the reviewers said that the series did not reflect the depth of the books. So I read the books to compare them. I found that the television series mirrored the books very well indeed. The producers had caught the wistfull and distant mood of Nicholas Jenkins well and the dissipation of the upper classes between the two world wars excellently. Do the stories go anywhere? Not in the accepted sense of the word. They exist in a time capsule, for us to observe - a measured dance to the music of time, as so aptly titled. If you are a fan of Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford you will! enjoy Anthony Powell, and if you enjoy these novels yet have not read Waugh and Mitford, try them as well.
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Summary: addictive, unforgettable
Review: I found this series to be a slow start but midway through the first of the three novels in the book, I was hooked. I couldn't put the book down and when I finished it, couldn't wait to get the next volume. As the title probably suggests, a theme in the book is--I guess you could say-- the continual (random?) grouping and regrouping of people and events in life. At first, this can be a bit off-putting. You get interested in a certain set of characters, then suddenly, they're gone. Keep reading--they'll be back again in even more interesting/unlikely circumstances. Powell's characters are memorable, vivid, and eerily real--through the course of the books, they undergo various transformations which are fascinating to observe. The narrator always remains a bit mysterious which I found added to the book's interest. Powell creates a world of instability where relationships, morals, culture, even governments, are continually in flux. It's often sad, but very often hilarious, too. These books offer hours and hours of enjoyment you won't soon forget.
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Summary: Excellent storytelling
Review: I just finished reading the twelfth novel in the series, and feel rather sad that I won't have another several to read over the coming year. Some of the best writing I have ever read, with subtleties draped over every sentence. I was especially taken by the jokes which Powell would spend 100 pages setting up, then unleash with incredible wit and fury. After reading the first one or two novels, continue to read all of them- you won't regret it.
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Summary: A Trivial review of the 20th Century
Review: I read the whole series of 12 beacause it was one of the New York Times list of 100 greatest novels of the 20th Century.
I found the whole series to be unfunny and trivial considering they covered a very significant era of History. Over 3000 pages of narration by Nick Jenkins and by the end of the series the reader has little insight into who Nick really is. The characters are a bunch of odd-ball hanger-ons who,though intellectually stimulating, seem shallow and indiscreet.
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Summary: One of the great 20th Century English Novels
Review: If you ever wondered what England was like in the 20's & 30's, this is the series that will answer most of your questions. Beautifully written, it may also engage your curiousity to see what next happens to the characters. After you've read the series, you can read Powell's memoirs and find out who the characters in the novel are modelled on. After Proust and Durrell, one of the great fictional series of the age.
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Summary: The reading experience of a lifetime.
Review: Once in a while you get the foolish idea to embark on a vast reading experience (Remembrance of Thing Past sits on my shelf unread and unreadable--by me, anyway). Well, recently I ordered the four-volume, twelve novel elegant U. of Chicago edition of this Powell classic and have spent the past five weeks luxuriating in the music wafting from its nearly 3,000 pages of polished prose, intricate and elaborate plotting and acute psychological appreciation of the human character. And what a cast of characters. Powell must rival Dickens in his capacity to invent delightfully eccentric and scene-stealing minor characters---Uncle Giles, Trewalney, Umfraville, Erridge and his besotted butler among so many others. My own favorites are Mrs. Erdleigh ("hearing secret harmonies" in both this life and the next), Teddy Jeavons, and the heartbreaking Gwatkin. And looming over all the megomaniacal Widmerpool (ably assisted by his horror of a wife in the latter novels), as morbidly fascinating as a car wreck, who gives the magnum opus its unity. And don't believe any nonsense about the epic losing its power in the post-WWII novels. Powell may have the conservative's disdain for the radicalism of the sixties, but Scorpio is delineated with fairness and vigor, and the Quiggen twins are a hoot. I did not think I would ever ever again encounter a serial reading experience as delightful as Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels but "Dance"-- for sheer enjoyment, delight, and intelligence---has been the reading pleasure of a lifetime. "The Vision of visions heals the blindness of sight." Yes.
Rating: 
Summary: Worthwhile... Characters will grow on you
Review: The writing is undeniably good, although I found book II a bit dry (at one point I thought I was reading a Henry James novel. Not good!) The pace picks up again in book III. There are plenty of amusing comments about human nature, especially relationship between the sexes, in addition to "fine art" and the "literary world", etc, etc. Character development is an especially strong point. Reading volume I made me want to read volume II.
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Summary: This is a FEAST for a book lover
Review: These four novels aren't for everyone, obviously. I teach high school English, and most of my students would NOT appreciate them. But if you are a mature reader, and you love books, this set of 12 novels is a feast. The novels are delectable. I can't remember when I've enjoyed a reading experience this much- partly because there is so much to enjoy. My primary problem with good books is that they don't last long enough, so this is like an everlasting gobstopper (to steal from Willy Wonka). I love Proust, but this set of novels was a lot more fun. It's a set that is brilliant, and entertaining, and long lasting- I really don't think you could ask for anything more. Enjoy.
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Summary: "Great English novels"
Review: This series--of which this is the first of four books--will appeal to readers who like carefully judged writing and feeling, an English saga, the British upper classes, the years between the world wars, a close but exterior study of changing relationships between young men, and English humor so reticent as to be easily missed by those not already steeped in the foregoing. The fact these are published by a universty press suggests the limited audience. IMO, the reader needs to be English or Anglophilic to really appreciate, let alone understand, the social structure, the character types, the allusive situations, and the literary-artistic allusions. I think I miss most of the entendres, let alone the doubles, and I was well into the second novel before I began to recognize the alleged "comic" (not "funny") quality of this masterpiece, as distinguished from a slow story about a mob of wealthy and decadent young Englishmen with odd habits and quaint preoccupations. What happens in these novels? Not much in view, yet a very great deal in review, in scenes of meetings, planned or unexpected, over a meal or at a soirée, with epigraphic discussions of people, present and absent, and insightful comments brilliantly expressed, in sentences full of commas--somewhat like this one. Characters are numerous and brilliantly developed over many decades, their lives intertwining in a seemingly accidental way as they float through the life of the marginal narrator, Nicholas Jenkins. Upon repeated readings an actual deep form like Bachian musical counterpoint might emerge, each character a melodic line; certainly many exquisite nuances must be missed by an American reader. Critics are right to describe Powell's writing as wonderfully apt, deft, verbally precise, delicate, subtle, and tasteful. While progressive in time, the novels are unconcerned with dates, wholly undidactic, and on occasion you won't know of momentous contemporary world events unless you understand overheard French, for such an interiorly self-referential world is created here. The cast of characters slowly builds, ever altering, in varied combinations. What I find really fascinating is the surprising re-entry of characters long absent, when we see them anew through the now more experienced eyes of other characters. Each novel (of the three in each book) is separately paginated, but this is definitely a series to read from the beginning or not at all.
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Summary: The FIRST THREE VOLUMES are unsurpassed literature
Review: VOLUME ONE IS OUTSTANDING! I chose to read the Dance series over the summer of 2003 for a graduate level course. The first volume was immediately enchanting, and despite criticism from others, I found it easily readable and accessible. The characters, though numerous, are further defined as the series progresses. However, even by the second book "A Buyer's Market" there is abundant humor from the juxtaposition of the varied participants. Powell's first volume is a gift which illuminates the value and ephemeral nature of people in our lives. It is also a treasure chest of practical if arcane vocabulary. I have now added the useful words "adumbrate", "demiurgic", and "crepitation" to memory. DON'T MISS OUT on the pleasure of this series.
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