Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5.0 out of 5 stars
"...there is a glow -- the space, the hands, everything is fantastically beautiful", 2 Oct 2007
This is one of several volumes in the HarperCollins Eminent Lives series. Each offers a concise rather than comprehensive, much less definitive biography. However, just as Al Hirschfeld's illustrations of various celebrities capture their defining physical characteristics, the authors of books in this series focus on the defining influences and developments during the lives and careers of their respective subjects. In this instance, George Balanchine.
Credit Gottlieb with attracting and then generously rewarding the interest of readers such as I who previously knew very little (if anything) about Balanchine. Even a summary of the key biographical details suggests that his life and career were extraordinary. The subtitle of this compact biography correctly but insufficiently describes him as "The Ballet Maker." True, Balanchine created a total of at least 425 ballets but it is much more important to note that according those best qualified to do so, during his lifetime and then since his death (on April 30, 1983), Balanchine is described as the greatest choreographer.
Because there is already an abundance of information about Balanchine readily available from The George Balanchine Foundation (http://balanchine.org/01/bio.html) and other excellent sources, Gottlieb wisely and brilliantly focuses on what seems to him to be most remarkable about a man for whom "teaching was the heart and soul of his enterprise -- he was frequently quoted as saying that he would be remembered first and foremost as a teacher, not as a choreographer, [his] school now firmly in place as the premier training ground for ballet dancers in America. It taught the basics the way he wanted them taught, and he was secure in the competence of his teachers, who through the years included important dancers from his Russian past." He taught by example, by demonstration, not be words.
But it is also true that Balanchine could "explain a step or role with a simple image that would uncannily convey his intentions." Here are two examples from one of his greatest creative achievements, The Prodigal:
When explaining to the Prodigal's drinking companions how they should run their fingers up and down his (the Prodigal's) exhausted, nearly naked body as if to strip it further of worldly goods: "Like mice."
When explaining to the Prodigal what to do when the Siren steps off of his legs as he lowers them to the floor: "You lower her like an elevator."
According to Nathan Milstein, Balanchine "left an inheritance that consists of more than his works. He left his moral example, a considerable legacy: the strength and wholeness of his character; his directness, adherence to principle, and lack of greed....his devotion to his art; his independence of fashion, fame, and trappings of success."
I am grateful to Gottlieb for so much. First, for helping me to understand and appreciate a man who "carried within him all of ballet, past and present, and was constantly redefining its future. Looking backward and forward were not separate matters for him; he summed up everything even as he was reinventing everything." I am also grateful to Gottlieb for obtaining permission to reprint an article written by Balanchine, "Mr. B Talks About Ballet," which appeared in the June 11, 1965, issue of Life magazine. As Gottlieb explains, it is one of Balanchine's very few by-lined articles. In it, he invites those who are interested in ballet to "come and see, come and discover."
When concluding this brief commentary, I presume to suggest that Gottlieb invites those who are interested in Balanchine to "come and see, come and discover."
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