Volume 35, Number 5 · March 31, 1988
Balanchine's Steps
By Robert Craft
George Balanchine: Ballet Master
by Richard Buckle, in collaboration with John Taras
Random House, 409 pp., $29.95
Balletmaster: A Dancer's View of George Balanchine
by Moira Shearer
Putnam, 180 pp., $18.95
Dancing on My Grave
by Gelsey Kirkland, by Greg Lawrence
Jove, 363 pp., $4.50 (paper)
No other European émigré artist of the 1930s had as great an effect on American culture and bequeathed as rich a legacy to it as George Balanchine. When he arrived in New York in October 1933, architecture was flourishing in the United States, conservatories and fine arts academies existed, and painters, poets, sculptors, and composers somehow survived. But in this country, classical ballet, that international transplant, indigenous nowhere, was not for certainty considered an art at all, much less a respectable one.
Review, 4170 words
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