Jennifer Homans.
jENNIFER HOMANS: GEORGE BALANCHINE BIOGRAPHY
mR b: GEORGE BALANCHINE’S TWENTIETH CENTURY (2022)
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George Balanchine (born 1904 in St. Petersburg as Georgiy Melitonovich Balanchivadze) was one of the most important choreographers of the 20th century. He started his career in St. Petersburg and Paris, moving to New York in 1934. There co-founded the school of American Ballet, and then the New York City Ballet of which he was the Director for 35 years. His choreography typically involved plotless ballets with minimal costume and decor, danced to classical music. In addition to his classical work, he choreographed during the 1930s and 1940s Broadway musicals, working among others with Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Balanchine is widely regarded as the father of American ballet.
The New York Times wrote of the book: ‘A sensitive, stately and often thrilling new biography of the Russian-born choreographer George Balanchine... Mr B. is a serious act of cultural retrieval, by a writer who knows when to expand and when to collapse, who makes unexpected connections, and who knows when her subject pinches, borrows or steals. The critic, historian and dancer in Homans are nearly always in sync.’
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Jennifer Homans (born 1960) was trained as a ballerina from the age of eight and danced professionally with the Pacific Northwest Ballet. At the age of 26 she enrolled at Columbia University, where she obtained a BA in French Literature. She went on to obtain a PhD in Modern European Histsory at New York University. Following her PhD, Homans was appointed a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at NYU and embarked on a career as an author on ballet. In 2014 she established the Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU. Its aim is ‘to establish ballet as a serious subject of academic inquiry’.
