ALL IN THE DANCES: A Brief Life of George Balanchine
By Terry Teachout
Harcourt. pp. 185 pp. $22
GEORGE BALANCHINE: The Ballet Maker
By Robert Gottlieb
HarperCollins. 216 pp. $19.95
Born in 1904, George Balanchine was not only the greatest choreographer of the 20th century; many would call him the greatest of all time. During his life, Mr. B was compared less to other artists in dance than to geniuses in all fields -- to Mozart for the beating heart of his classicism, and to Shakespeare for the reach of his lyricism; to Matisse for his delighted eye, and to Stravinsky for a neoclassicism that laid the stress on energy; to Picasso for his ease in abstraction, and to Ingmar Bergman for the gifted women with whom he worked, muses he often loved and sometimes married. The range, scale and poetic depth of Balanchine's art -- 425 ballets, beginning with student pieces in St. Petersburg, Russia, and ending in a glorious 35-year prime with the company he created in 1948, the New York City Ballet -- are pretty much unparalleled in the theater. And so in this, the centennial year of Balanchine's birth, the world has taken note with celebratory performances, museum exhibitions, restored archival film footage, international symposia and, of course, the publication of new books.
The first two Balanchine books out of the gate, slim volumes both, were written for newcomers, for those who have heard the name Balanchine and sensed its cultural importance but who may not be ready for the granddaddy of Balanchine biographies, Bernard Taper's superb 458-page Balanchine. Indeed, one of these books, All in the Dances, was written by critic Terry Teachout, who only recently came under the spell himself. (Disclosure: Teachout was an occasional contributor to Stagebill when I was editor in chief in the early '90s.) Teachout saw his first Balanchine ballet in 1987, four years after Balanchine's death. It was the phenomenal "Concerto Barocco," a masterpiece choreographed to Bach, and as Teachout writes in his book, "I asked myself, Why hasn't anybody ever told me about this? And what kind of man made it?" Teachout sets out to answer that second question.
It's not a bad angle: Ask a fresh convert to Balanchine for a fresh take on the master's art. Unfortunately, Teachout has no fresh take. In fact, in his preface, he writes that the book "makes no pretense of thoroughness or originality." Nothing original?! Having confessed this, he yet takes a know-it-all tone. All in the Dances is a lumpily chronological, strangely argumentative hike through Balanchine's life, with quotes and stories recycled from older books of first-hand reporting. Teachout, who recently wrote a book on H.L. Mencken (another critic who likes to lay down the law), is trying to nail down Balanchine's greatness for a new audience. Problem is, it's hard not to sound ham-fisted when you're arguing something no one disputes.
And then there are the cheap shots at the art of ballet pre-Balanchine. According to Teachout, the classic story ballets are "dumb show . . . mere pantomime," Diaghilev's visionary "Ballets Russes" is "fizzy displays of chic," Fokine's gossamer "Les Sylphides" is a "slow-moving succession of pretty poses." You don't make Balanchine bigger by pronouncing everyone else small. Mr. B was huge, no matter how great the talent around him, and there was a whole lot of dance talent in the 20th century. Teachout's puffed-up performance is decidedly un-Balanchinian.
Robert Gottlieb's book is the one to buy. To begin with, George Balanchine: The Ballet Maker doesn't present Balanchine as an either/or proposition -- i.e., to honor Mr. B you have to disparage "Les Sylphides." Gottlieb writes in his introduction that Balanchine "carried within him all of ballet, past and present, and was constantly redefining its future. Looking backward and looking forward were not separate matters for him; he summed up everything even as he was reinventing everything." Well said. Balanchine once referred to himself as "a cloud in trousers" -- a reference to Vladimir Mayakovsky's famous poem -- and he did seem to float above mere mortals, enjoying a sort of unbound poetic travel, a freedom in time and space.
The Ballet Maker is the latest in the Eminent Lives series, and Gottlieb is just right for it. A former editor in chief at both Knopf and the New Yorker, he has edited dance books and dance criticism. More important, Gottlieb saw his first performance of a Balanchine ballet in 1948, just as the brilliant little Ballet Society -- brainchild of Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein -- evolved into the landmark New York City Ballet. A member of the intellectual and artistic "society" that sprung up around the company -- an erudite coterie of fans that added to NYCB's New York-centric energy -- Gottlieb watched it all unfold. This personal view lends an elegance to his book, a better storytelling flow, and lots of inside tidbits. Eventually Gottlieb joined the board of NYCB and helped out by programming the ballet seasons, which allowed him an even closer look at Balanchine on the job and after hours. "He was always calm, always courteous, always realistic, and always impersonal. . . . To me, too, he was a god, and I saw my role as being some kind of messenger of the gods." The Ballet Maker is a graceful little book, a twirl into the world of George Balanchine. •
Laura Jacobs is dance critic of the New Criterion and a writer at Vanity Fair magazine.
