Balanchine and the lost muse : revolution & the making of a choreographer /

The "lost muse" of Kendall's title is ballerina Liidia Ivanova, who died mysteriously at the age of 20 when she was on the brink of leaving Russia with George Balanchine and a few other dancers. Kendall (literary studies, The New School) offers a biographical consideration of the early lives of Ivanova and Balanchine, told against the background of the Russian Revolution. At a young age, Ivanova and Balanchine were thrust into the social tides of Lenin's New Economic Policy. Kendall did extensive research: her knowledge of the Russian language helped with translations and her endnotes are wonderful. However, some of her conclusions seem to be based not on her research but on her interviews, which gather memories of these early years. For example, she compares Ivanova and Suzanne Farrell. Still, this is a must read for lovers and scholars of ballet, especially those interested in Balanchine. This reviewer can recall only a few mentions of Ivanova in Bernard Taper's Balanchine, a Biography (1963) and Richard Buckle's George Balanchine, Ballet Master (CH, Sep'88, 26-1216). --Lana Kay Rosenberg, Miami University

In this extensively researched, if overly detailed, dual biography, literature professor and dance critic Kendall (Autobiography of a Wardrobe) posits that ballet dancer Lidia Ivanova (1903-1924) had an enduring influence on the long and illustrious choreographic career of Georgi Balanchivadze (1904-1983), known in the West since 1925 as George Balanchine. Tracing the obscure origins and early childhoods of both figures, through their years at St. Petersburg's Imperial Theater School from 1914 until 1921, and into the mid-1920s, Kendall juxtaposes the classmates' rarified lives with the political turmoil of Russia in the teens and '20s. This generation of dancers, Kendall contends, trained in prerevolutionary ballet technique but assimilated new Soviet-era tenets into their psyches, thereby creating a modern style of ballet embodied by Ivanova as a dancer and Balanchine as choreographer. Highlights include contemporaries' recollections of Ivanova's performances and an analysis of her mystique-attributable to her physique, intense musicality, and deep "compulsion to reach audiences"-as well as a discussion of selected Balanchine works from the 1920s through to his final masterpiece, Mozartiana. An uneasy combination of history and biography, the book informs readers unfamiliar with the cultural history of the period but leaves balletomanes hungry for more convincing connections between the so-called muse and the master choreographer. Map and b&w photos. Agent: Lane Zachary, Zachary Shuster Harmsworth. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

It's remarkable that so many great dancers and choreographers came out of repressive, revolutionary Russia. This book is the story of how and why. Kendall (Literary Studies/The New School; Autobiography of a Wardrobe, 2009) begins with the 1920 class of the Petrograd Imperial Theater School, which began their ballet training during the last days of the czar. When he was 9, Balanchine's parents took his sister to audition, and while she was rejected, he was quickly chosen--against his wishes. He hated dancing. The students' housing was warm and comfortable, food was bountiful, and carriages were provided to take students to performances. That abruptly ended in 1917, and the struggle to survive after the revolution illustrates the dancers' resolve. This is not so much a biography of Balanchine but a story of the dedication of all these young dancers and their drive for perfection. Their determination to perform, along with all Russians' love for the arts, particularly ballet, ensured their survival under the Bolsheviks. Was his muse the ballerina Lidia Ivanova, or was it the experience of his intensive classical training? He absorbed Ivanova's brilliant new ways of movement inspired by a visit from Isadora Duncan. Ivanova's death, just before Balanchine's small group left Russia in 1924, deprived the world of a great ballerina but left him with an ideal to copy as he wrote for others. While Balanchine was a great dancer, this is when his choreographic talents were born. His classical training is what enabled him to create the avant-garde dancing that is today's norm. The ballet students barely survived through the civil war, foraging for food, burning furniture for heat, searching for venues and always dancing. Kendall's great success is her illustration of the profound love and devotion of these dancers for their art.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.