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Mr. B

Audiobook
Nonfiction:Biography
Unabridged   34 hour(s)
Publication date: 07/25/2023

Pulitzer Prize Finalist

Mr. B

George Balanchine's 20th Century

Available from major retailers or BUY FROM AMAZON
Digital Download ISBN:9781696610117

Summary

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.

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Product Description

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 cofounder 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.

Author Bio

Jennifer Homans is the dance critic for the New Yorker and a former professional dancer. 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.