Recommendations from our site
“It’s a biography of a man who almost walks with the 20th century, so you get all that history. Balanchine was of Georgian heritage and grew up in Tsarist Russia. Early on, he was selected to go into the Imperial Ballet School, so he’s on that track. Then, the Russian Revolution happens and everything falls into turmoil on all fronts. There’s a lot of hunger, violence, and chaos…Balanchine eventually winds up in America, where he meets well-connected benefactors and cultural managers. They feel that American ballet hadn’t yet achieved the same level of institutional high standing as Europe. They have the ambition to rectify that and are keen to use people like Balanchine and others who had come over to the US. Eventually, Balanchine sets up the New York City Ballet Company, which, in effect, becomes the country’s national ballet.” Read more...
The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2023 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist
Frederick Studemann, Journalist
“In felicitous prose, Homans channels the dancer’s experience onto the page, from the body movements that can produce such beauty to the aching tendons and ligaments. Training is transformation, Homan writes, and working with Balanchine was a kind of metamorphosis tangled with pain. She evokes the dances so vividly that one can almost hear the music.” Read more...
The Best Biographies of 2023: The National Book Critics Circle Shortlist
Elizabeth Taylor, Biographer
Our most recommended books
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Speak, Memory
by Vladimir Nabokov -
Chips: The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon
by Sir Henry Channon -
Supermac
by DR Thorpe -
Basil Street Blues
by Michael Holroyd -
The Self-Aware Image: An Insight Into Early Modern Meta-Painting
by Victor Stoichita -
Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement
by Tarana Burke