Balletmaster

Book excerpt: It was their sole encounter, but the sheer force and élan of Balanchine's personality, technique and genius held the young ballerina in total thrall from that day to this. As Moira Shearer observed his works over the years, she determined to set down Balanchine's extraordinary career and tempestuous life from a dancer's perspective. She researched his Russian youth, and the dazzling Diaghilev and continental years. She talked with key colleagues, ex-wives and impresarios as living background to her account of his hard-won triumphs with the New York City Ballet as the most innovative and important choreographer of this century. The story of Balanchine's life is here is full, the romantic destructiveness and willfulness along with the genius, but it is informal and distillate rather than compendious.