Balanchine: The Ballet Maker (Eminent Lives) - Hardcover

Gottlieb, Robert

3.76

161 ratings by Goodreads

9780007213740: Balanchine: The Ballet Maker (Eminent Lives)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0007213743 ISBN 13: 9780007213740

Publisher: HarperPress, 2006

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Part of the new ‘Eminent Lives’ series, this short biography captures the remarkable talent and spirit of the world’s foremost contemporary choreographer and his legendary creative force.

Writing with wit, warmth and insight, Robert Gottlieb has created a loving portrait of a man he knew and admired, whose life story was almost as dramatic as some of the seminal performances he created for stage and screen. Founder of the School of American Ballet and the New York City Ballet, Balanchine came to America from Russia in the early 1930s and married five times. His forays into films and musicals, as well as his reinterpretations of ballet classics, revolutionised the look of modern dance to such an extent that he remains a paramount influence in the dance world.

Building on a biographical tradition that can be traced back to Aubrey’s ‘Brief Lives’, Dr Johnson's ‘Lives of the Poets’ and Lytton Strachey's ‘Eminent Victorians’, this exciting and groundbreaking new series pairs great biographers, historians and novelists with iconic subjects, the writing bristling with original and distinctive points of view. ‘To preserve a becoming brevity which excludes everything that is redundant and nothing that is significant,’ wrote Strachey. ‘That, surely, is the first duty of the biographer.’

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Review:

Praise for ‘Balanchine, The Ballet Maker’:

‘“The Ballet Maker” is a graceful little book, a twirl into the world of George Balanchine.’ Washington Post

‘I'd recommend Gottlieb's book for its authority, completeness and articulate excellence.’ New York Times Book Review

‘This book sounds much like the way [Gottlieb] spoke about Balanchine in the halls of the New Yorker, where I was a contributor during the late ’80s and early ’90s. Its integrity is unquestionable.’ Los Angeles Times

From the Back Cover:

The foremost contemporary choreographer in the history of ballet, George Balanchine extended the art form into radical new paths that came to seem inevitable under his direction. He transformed movement and dance in classical and modern ballet, on the Broadway stage, and in the cinema.

George Balanchine chronicles the life and achievements of this visionary artist from his early, almost accidental career in Russia, where his lifelong collaboration with Igor Stravinsky was forged, to his extraordinary accomplishments in America. The editor and writer Robert Gottlieb, one of the most knowledgeable dance critics in America, offers a superb and loving portrait of a genius who, though married many times to many ballerinas, remained truest to his greatest love, Terpischore, the Greek Muse of dance.

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