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George Balanchine's 20th Century
by Jennifer Homans
Based on a decade of unprecedented research, the first major biography of George Balanchine, a broad-canvas portrait set against the backdrop of the tumultuous century that shaped the man the New York Times called "the Shakespeare of dancing" - from the bestselling author of Apollo's Angels.
Arguably the greatest choreographer who ever lived, George Balanchine was one of the cultural titans of the twentieth century—the New York Times called him "the Shakespeare of dancing." His radical approach to choreography—and life—reinvented the art of ballet and made him a legend. Written with enormous style and artistry, and based on more than one hundred interviews and research in archives across Russia, Europe, and the Americas, Mr. B carries us through Balanchine's tumultuous and high-pitched life story and into the making of his extraordinary dances.
Balanchine's life intersected with some of the biggest historical events of his century. Born in Russia under the last czar, Balanchine experienced the upheavals of World War I, the Russian Revolution, exile, World War II, and the Cold War. A co-founder of the New York City Ballet, he pressed ballet in America to the forefront of modernism and made it a popular art. None of this was easy, and we see his loneliness and failures, his five marriages—all to dancers—and many loves. We follow his bouts of ill health and spiritual crises, and learn of his profound musical skills and sensibility and his immense determination to make some of the most glorious, strange, and beautiful dances ever to grace the modern stage.
With full access to Balanchine's papers and many of his dancers, Jennifer Homans, the dance critic for The New Yorker and a former dancer herself, has spent more than a decade researching Balanchine's life and times to write a vast history of the twentieth century through the lens of one of its greatest artists: the definitive biography of the man his dancers called Mr. B.
"[An] entrancing biography...Homans, an ex-ballerina who trained at Balanchine's School of American Ballet, knows this world well and combines marvelous recreations of dances—'she leaned, spiderlike, almost crawling on his spine'—with novelistic evocations of character. The result is a revelatory, aptly melodramatic portrait of Balanchine and his aesthetic." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"An intricate, meticulously researched biography...Given that Balanchine embellished some memories and omitted others from his own narrative, this gripping book reveals a talented artist who feels familiar and yet unknowable...The definitive account of a remarkable and flawed artist." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Homans's lovingly detailed descriptions of the dances and the challenges they pose to dancers, bring them to life for readers. This book will fly off the shelves. It's that good and the subject that absorbing." - Library Journal (starred review)
"An extraordinary biography by one of America's most prominent dance writers...the level of detail and depth of research are mind boggling, but most compelling are Homans's insights into Balanchine's emotional and spiritual life...Homans writes with the care and lyricism of a poet and every page is a joy." - Lit Hub
"It was one of the highlights of my life to know George Balanchine personally and professionally. I truly loved this man, but he certainly wasn't perfect. Jennifer Homans's meticulously researched Mr. B gives us an artist who is as complicated, and even flawed, as he was groundbreaking and brilliant. It is a fascinating read about a true genius and his unrelenting thirst for beauty in art and in life." - Mikhail Baryshnikov
"Jennifer Homans has not only resurrected George Balanchine, she has restored the Russia that disappeared out from behind him. More remarkably, she pins dance to the page with the precision, intensity, and range her subject prized. The result is lyrical and commanding, among the most electrifying pas de deux you're likely to find on the biography shelf." - Stacy Schiff, author of Cleopatra and The Revolutionary
This information about Mr. B was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jennifer Homans is the dance critic for The New Yorker. Her widely acclaimed, bestselling Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet was named one of the ten best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review. Trained in dance at George Balanchine's School of American Ballet, Homans danced professionally with the Pacific Northwest Ballet. She earned her BA at Columbia University and her PhD in modern European history at New York University, where she is a Scholar in Residence and the Founding Director of the Center for Ballet and the Arts.
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