The author artfully choreographs a huge, sometimes unruly cast, producing a work of elegance, emotion and enduring...
A magisterial and often moving history of the silent art by a former dancer and current journalist.
New Republic dance critic Homans confronts her historical problems immediately—most ballets are lost. Because of difficulties with notation, the evanescent nature of movement itself and the relatively late arrival of visual-recording technology, we will never really know how Vaslav Nijinsky moved—or how his many other predecessors created, defined and refined the dance. The author also expresses her fear that ballet is dying, a theme she revisits in a sadly valedictory section at the end. After stating these admonitions and worries, Homans leaps into European history, beginning with the 16th-century French, whose lavish court entertainments fathered the art. Later, she notes that Charles Perrault’s 1697 story “Sleeping Beauty” would achieve enormous significance in ballet history (it was Balanchine’s earliest and last dance experience). The author examines the increasing importance of story in ballets of the 18th century and credits Marie Antoinette for aiding ballet’s success. In the 19th century, the ballerina began to soar in importance (here the author tells the story of Marie Taglioni). The scene then shifts to Denmark, where August Bournonville inspired a dance revolution. Next is Italy, where the art flourished before political and military matters fractured it. Unsurprisingly, Homans devotes many pages to the Russians, whose techniques of training and staging were dominant for decades. She looks at the Ballets Russes, Sergei Diaghilev, Nijinsky, Balanchine, Nijinska, Ulanova, Nureyev, Baryshnikov and other luminaries known and forgotten. The British had their (brief) time in the sun, but Homans shifts her focuse to Balanchine (who deservedly dominates the final sections), Joffrey, Robbins and many others in the American school.
The author artfully choreographs a huge, sometimes unruly cast, producing a work of elegance, emotion and enduring importance.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6060-3
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
