DANZ QUARTERLY - No 8 July, August, September 2007

Book Reviews

‘Balanchine, The Ballet Maker,’ by Robert Gottlieb
Eminent Lives, Harper Press, 2004
Reviewed by Francesca Horsley

‘Balanchine, The Ballet Maker,’ by Robert Gottlieb, on the life of famed choreographer George Balanchine is similar to many dance reviews carried in the New York Times – clever, informed but reserved.

Gottlieb keeps a warm but respectful distance from his subject matter, much in the way he would while standing near him in wings of the theatre. His position as a member of the New York City Ballet Board for Balanchine’s last 12 years would no doubt have also added constraints to the man affectionately known as “Mr B”. As Gottlieb says in his introduction, “To me, too, he was a God, and I saw my role as being some kind of messenger of the gods.”

The sheer volume of work produced by Balanchine, Russian-born of a Georgian father and half-German mother and christened Georgi Melitonovitch Balanchivadze, would have provided a headache for the structure of the book. Gottlieb chose a linear approach, which meticulously references significant events, his ballets, his dancers and his wives. It traces his life from his lonely and often hard years as a youngster in St Petersburg’s Imperial School of Ballet, his remarkable journey out of Russia to Europe, and with Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes to America.

His New York City Ballet became a defining point for modern ballet, a place where the legacy from Imperial Russia melded into something intrinsically all-American. It gives a wonderful picture of American ballet life in the middle part of the century, when it crystallized for them into an art form. 

Importance is given to Balanchine’s six wives (and other women) who were essentially linked to his creativity. As each one lost her magic for one reason or another they are replaced, from a never ending supply of ingénue rising through the Ballet School. Gottlieb assures us he remained on good terms with them all.  Male dancers, however, took a definite second place.

While there are bountiful references to his ballets throughout the book, often the details are tantalizingly slight. There is also an assumption that the reader will know why works, such as Anon, were so significant, with the result that the analysis is too brief and somewhat superficial.

There is also no reference made to the Balanchine look – long legs, small heads – and also the considerable demands he made on his dancers. I was left feeling saturated with information, but still hungry for insight. Just as Gottlieb skimmed over the top of Balanchine’s extraordinary talent, he also kept his distance from the innate poetry and pathos of one of the great artists of last century.

 Gottlieb by way of explanation does say Balanchine was an enigma, his lonely childhood rendering him incapable of true love. “He was incapable of giving in any depth,” remarked a friend. Perhaps to understand him deeply is to see more of his ballets.

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