Serenade: A Balanchine Story

by Toni Bentley

Overview

Toni Bentley, a dancer for George Balanchine, the greatest ballet maker of the 20th century, tells the story of Serenade, his iconic masterpiece, and what it was like to dance—and live—in his world at New York City Ballet during its legendary era.

"Reading Bentley's Serenade made me feel as alive as I felt on the stage the moment that I fell in love with ballet…. [A] delicate balance of personal memoir, rarefied elegance, history of the arts and pure human interest.”—Misty Copeland, New York Times Book Review

"[A] unique document about one of the greatest ballets ever created…. A beautiful read”—Mikhail Baryshnikov


At age seventeen, Toni Bentley was chosen by Balanchine, then in his final years, to join the New York City Ballet. From both backstage and onstage, she carries us through the serendipitous history and physical intricacies and demands of Serenade: its dazzling opening, with seventeen women in a double-diamond pattern; its radical, even jazzy, use of the highly refined language that is ballet; its place in the choreographer’s own dramatic story of his immigration to the United States from Soviet Russia; its mystical—and literal—embodiment of the tradition of classical ballet in just thirty-three minutes.

Bentley takes us inside the rarefied, intense, and thrilling world Balanchine created through his lifelong devotion to celebrating and expanding female beauty and strength—a world that, inevitably, passed upon his death. An intimate elegy to grace and loss and to the imprint of a towering artist and his transcendent creation on Bentley’s own life, Serenade: A Balanchine Story is a rich narrative by a dynamic artist about the nature of art itself at its most ephemeral and glorious.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593316399
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/12/2022
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	239,941
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

TONI BENTLEY danced with George Balanchine's New York City Ballet for ten years. She is the author of five New York Times Notable Books, including Winter Season: A Dancer’s Journal, Holding On to the Air (coauthored with Suzanne Farrell), and The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir. Bentley is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and her work has appeared in The Best American Essays as well as in many periodicals, including The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Review of Books, The Daily Beast, Vogue, and Vanity Fair.

Table of Contents

Curtain Up xi

Introduction xvii

1 Audience 3

2 Initiation 14

3 Mr. B 22

4 Sixteen 33

5 1934 38

6 Turnout 49

7 Pointe 66

8 The Great Run 77

9 John's Geometry 83

10 Stonehenge 90

11 Waltz 102

12 Little Georgi 109

13 The American 124

14 The Composer 133

15 Transitions 150

16 The Other Balletmaster 155

17 Hopping 168

18 Anarchists 176

19 Cupid's Kiss 188

20 Maria's Arabesque 200

21 Vitruvian Man 208

22 Charlie's Angels 216

23 Destiny 226

Curtain Down 234

Coda 243

Epilogue 245

Acknowledgments 251

Notes 253

Bibliography 267

Index 275

Editorial Reviews

02/14/2022

Former dancer Bentley (Winter Season) revisits “the man and the ballet that are the story of my life” in this touching and eloquent tribute to choreographer George Balanchine (1904–1983). The author was 17 when she was chosen by Balanchine in the late ’70s to perform with the New York City Ballet. In 10 years she danced his 1934 masterpiece, Serenade, more than 50 times—knowing it, she writes, “as a part of my own body.” Using the dance’s various movements and scenes as an underpinning for the narrative, she tells Balanchine’s story, and her own, as one of many who were entranced by the choreographer’s “no-nonsense Sufi master soul.” In lithe prose, she dissects the artistry behind Serenade—brushing past its “pale blue tulle” to meditate on its symbolism and wavelike motion—then glissades to thoughtful reflections on Balanchine’s fairy tale–like early life in St. Petersburg, Russia, where he went from dancing at the tsar’s Imperial Ballet School to “all-but-orphaned starvation” to studying music at St. Petersburg’s famed observatory. Alongside this runs a rich elegy to Bentley’s dancing career, which ended when she was 25 due to sustained injuries. Her command of ballet and its history is breathtaking, and her reverence for Balanchine’s genius is consistently moving. This behind-the-scenes tour of a rarefied world will enchant ballet lovers. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

A New Yorker Best Book of the Year

“Written from the heart as much as the head…Serenade: A Balanchine Story, [Bentley’s] brilliant new book-length meditation on Balanchine’s greatest ballet . . . is ultimately far more interesting than just another cultural history: With her rare combination of access to Balanchine and her genuine literary ability . . . she writes with grace and gratitude . . . It’s [her] personal voice that makes this book consistently engaging, and her enthusiasm is catching . . .Bentley is no longer a young girl, but her love for Balanchine has remained true, and with this splendid account, she has honored an incomparable artistic romance.” —Peter Tonguette, National Review

“Beautifully composed, [Serenade] provides a three-dimensional experience of Balanchine’s titular ballet: historical, artistic and personal. Between chapters narrated in the first person—putting readers onstage within the ballet's split-second timing and exact positioning—Bentley provides fascinating background on Balanchine . . . As in all her books, she gives generously of her finely tuned emotions, her experience and her own polished opinions. In short, Serenade: A Balanchine Story has earned a place on the shelf.” —Pointe Magazine

“Bentley, who danced under Balanchine’s direction at the New York City Ballet for a decade in the 1970s and 80s, tells a history that is as vivid and poetic as the dance itself . . . Serenade is about more than the making of a single ballet; it is an introspective nod to the life lessons taught through movement . . . I felt the spirit of the movements through Bentley’s descriptive prose. She weaves in impressive detail about the actual technique of ballet, articulating the dancer’s physical experience for the reader . . . Reading Bentley’s Serenade made me feel as alive as I felt on the stage the moment that I fell in love with ballet: with its grounded fantasy, physical demands, intellectual challenge, structure and beauty . . . Serenade is a book that will delight balletomanes for generations to come; but it will also appeal to those newer to the dance world, with its delicate balance of personal memoir, rarefied elegance, history of the arts and pure human interest.” —Misty Copeland, The New York Times Book Review 

"In this beautiful, affecting book . . . an unabashed, heartfelt love letter to Balanchine . . .  Bentley, a poetic writer, eloquently captures the essence of “Serenade” . . . [which] she describes as a map of Balanchine’s soul . . . She dissects this 32-minute ballet in precise, unflinching detail, interweaving reminiscences of her time at the School of American Ballet, which she attended from the age of 10, and life inside the New York City Ballet . . . This moving  book will not only appeal to lovers of ballet, it will make wistful reading for those dancers who will never have the good fortune to work with such a genius as George Balanchine." —Moira Hodgson, Wall Street Journal

"A beautiful read about one of the greatest ballets ever created. A unique document, propulsive and rich in substance. Balanchine's image emerges powerfully, in wonderful detail. Personal, authentic, and revealing about what it took to be one of his dancers." —Mikhail Baryshnikov

"Toni Bentley’s Serenade is in a category all its own—at once an ode to the rigor and passion necessary to create great art and a pointillist description of its making. It is also the story of the embracing yet exacting Balanchine, lending his genius to a young woman’s life. It will consume anyone interested in the generative force that comes from the devoted pursuit of a vocation; you needn't know the difference between a tendu and an arabesque, a prima ballerina and a member of the corps, to be captured by its poetic prose and ingenious structure. This is a transporting reading experience, written with fervor and discernment, and a moving testament to the possibilities that lie within each of us." —Daphne Merkin

“[A] touching and eloquent tribute . . . a rich elegy to Bentley’s dancing career . . . Her command of ballet and its history is breathtaking, and her reverence for Balanchine’s genius is consistently moving. This behind-the-scenes tour of a rarefied world will enchant.” —Publishers Weekly

“Bentley writes as she once danced, with grace and elegance, as she captures the haunting beauty of an art form that exists to be seen and experienced . . . [she] saves her effusive descriptions for the dance, for her very personal experiences in the 10 years she spent with the company (from the mid-1970s to the ’80s), and for the brilliance of Balanchine . . . A touching tribute to a master, this work will delight balletomanes.” —Library Journal

"Effervescent . . .  Serenade endearingly captures Bentley’s passion for ballet . . . A heartfelt tribute to an influential choreographer and one of his crowning achievements." —Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

★ 03/01/2022

Former ballerina and prolific writer Bentley (Winter Season: A Dancer's Journal) painstakingly deconstructs Serenade, George Balanchine's masterpiece and his first American ballet. Bentley writes as she once danced, with grace and elegance, as she captures the haunting beauty of an art form that exists to be seen and experienced. Sprinkled throughout her breakdown of Serenade is an exploration of Balanchine's life; a look at his New York City Ballet in the 1970s; a history of ballet focusing on France's Louis XIV, who started the first ballet school; and even brief biographies of composer Tchaikovsky (whose music Serenade is set to) and choreographer Marius Ivanovich Petipa. But Bentley saves her effusive descriptions for the dance, for her very personal experiences in the 10 years she spent with the company (from the mid-1970s to the '80s), and for the brilliance of Balanchine, who was "primarily, after all, an architect of spirit, wrangling its evanescence to the stage, into our bodies, and then out again in our movement." Included is a moving story of her visit to his deathbed, when he made "an invisible girl feel visible—one final adjustment." VERDICT A touching tribute to a master, this work will delight balletomanes.—Lisa Henry

Library Journal

2021-12-29
A former dancer describes her relationship with George Balanchine and one of his most famous ballets.

Reading a book about ballet is like listening to ice skating on the radio: One can imagine the scene, but the strengths of one medium don’t fully translate the beauty of the other. Bentley gamely tries to translate the majesty of one ballet in her latest book, and with more success than one might expect. The ballet is Balanchine’s groundbreaking Serenade, which premiered in 1934, a piece she danced 50 times for New York City Ballet in the late 1970s, starting when she was 16. The author admits that she sees the choreographer only through “clarifying tears,” writing that her book is “the story of Balanchine, his masterpiece, and my own experience in the vicinity of both.” Bentley describes the ballet’s three movements and the steps that constitute the piece: every arabesque and tendu and turnout. Wisely, she expands her focus to include a brief history of ballet, including France’s King Louis XIV, “a very good dancer of professional quality,” and his establishment of the Académie Royale de Danse, “the first academic national ballet school in the world”; Balanchine’s early years in Russia, where he was born in St. Petersburg in 1904, an upbringing that swung from riches to destitution and back; and brief biographies of Tchaikovsky, “the undisputed musical father of classical ballet,” and Marius Ivanovich Petipa, the pioneering 19th-century choreographer whose life included duels and a scandalous elopement. Bentley’s tone is uneven: effervescent when she describes Balanchine’s ballet—“Serenade is a slant shadow on my heart. She bifurcates my being, my life”—but more restrained in historical passages. Yet the book endearingly captures her passion for ballet and the genius of a man who could incorporate a ballerina’s fall during rehearsal into a permanent part of his dance.

A heartfelt tribute to an influential choreographer and one of his crowning achievements.

Kirkus Reviews