George Balanchine: The Ballet Maker (Eminent Lives Series) Book

Part of the Eminent Lives Series, this biography, written by the gifted author Robert Gottlieb, will describe the life of the dynamic George Balanchine, the foremost contemporary choreographer in ballet. Timed to coincide with the 2004 centenary of the artist's birth.

The life and achievement of the great choreographer who both summed up everything that proceeded him in ballet, and extended the art form into radical yet inevitable new paths. Leaving Revolutionary Russia in 1924 (he was 20), he joined Serge Diaghilev's famous Ballets Russes, where he created his first enduring masterpiece, Apollo, cementing his lifelong collaboration with Stravinsky.

In 1933 he arrived in America to found a school and a company, but the company as we know it – The New York City Ballet – didn't emerge until 1948. Meanwhile, he made ballets wherever opportunity allowed, while choreographing Broadway shows (four for Rodgers and Hart), movies (The Goldwyn Follies), even the circus – a ballet for elephants with a score by Stravinsky. By the time of his death, in 1983, he had been recognized as a member of the triad of the greatest modern masters, alongside Picasso and Stravinsky.

Balanchine was married many times, always to outstanding ballerinas, but his truest muse always remained Terpsichore, the Muse of Dance.

The New York Times - Jennifer Dunning

Mr. Gottlieb is at his best when he writes about Balanchine at work, as in his description of the creation of "Concerto Barocco." Balanchine the artist comes suddenly and immediately alive in Mr. Gottlieb's graceful description of the making of that seminal Balanchine classic in 1941. A member of the original cast, he writes, remembers that there was a movement in the adagio that Balanchine called "the Harlem strut." "There was a lot of kidding around in the rehearsals," he quotes that cast member, Fred Danieli, as saying. "We did that strut as a joke, and Balanchine liked it and kept it in."