Balanchine Variations
This book’s essays on twenty Balanchine ballets are based on pre-performance lectures. That’s bad—the essays are too short—and it’s good, because, for the lay reader, they are perfect Friday-night previews of a Saturday matinée. But this is armchair reading, too. With each ballet, Goldner addresses a different facet of Balanchine’s work: abstraction ("Concerto Barocco"), economy ("Valse Fantaisie"), tension ("Agon"), classical technique ("Ballo della Regina"), pacing (" Theme and Variations"), dreamwork ("A Midsummer Night’s Dream"). In every case, she draws on her long experience, her great common sense—this is the least churchy book ever published on Balanchine—and, rarest of all, her ability to relate choreography to heart and soul without sounding gaseous. The book is modest and, at the same time, utterly self-assured. Anyone who cares about Balanchine should buy it immediately.Copyright ©2008Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker