The foremost choreographer in the history of contemporary ballet, George Balanchine expanded the art form in radical new directions. Ballet, modern dance, musical theater and film are all in debt to this dynamic artist. Throughout his long career he worked with the most prominent figures in 20th century dance, from Serge Diaghelev to Jerome Robbins, even choreographing a ballet for elephants (with music by Stravinsky).
Author and dance critic Robert Gottlieb explores Balanchine’s long and storied career in this entry in the Eminent Lives series, in which in which culturally and historically prominent figures are paired with distinguished authors. Gottlieb chronicles Balanchine’s remarkable life, from his early career in Russia to his later life in the United States, where he founded the New York City Ballet. George Balanchine is an insightful tribute to the man who almost singlehandedly transformed ballet into a modern art form.
Robert Gottlieb has been editor in chief at Simon and Schuster, Alfred Knopf and the New Yorker. He has written two successful anthologies for Pantheon: Reading Jazz and (with Robert Kimball) Reading Lyrics, and has edited hundreds of books from Catch-22 to the memoirs of Katharine Graham and Bill Clinton, as well as the John Cheever Journals and the Everyman Kipling.