A delightful gift for ballet fans.
The career of an acclaimed choreographer.
Dance writer Harss makes a lively book debut with an appreciative, richly detailed, generously illustrated biography of dancer and choreographer Alexei Ratmansky, formerly director of the Bolshoi Ballet, artist in residence at the American Ballet Theatre, and presently artist in residence at the New York City Ballet. Born in Leningrad in 1968 to Ukrainian parents, he began studying dance at the famed Bolshoi Academy. Because students from the Soviet republics were referred to by their place of origin, the young Alexei became known as “the boy from Kyiv.” Harss recounts the trajectory of Ratmansky’s dancing career: the National Ballet of Ukraine, which sent him touring to Western Europe, Japan, and Mexico; the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, where he was promoted to principal dancer; and the Royal Danish Ballet. Besides dancing, he began to create works, and by the end of 2002, he had made nearly 30 ballets, including two full-length pieces. Invited to become the director of the Bolshoi Ballet in 2003, Ratmansky faced a difficult challenge: The venerable company, with nearly 230 dancers, was suspicious of him. At first, his strategy “was to simply ignore the grumblings and keep moving forward,” but the struggle wore him down. In 2009, he accepted an invitation from the American Ballet Theatre. Harss insightfully chronicles Ratmansky’s works, many characterized by “youthful nonchalance” and irreverent charm, others paying homage to acclaimed choreographers such as Petipa and Bournonville. Ratmansky, Harss writes, “is a playful absurdist, an artist who combines the oddity of Lewis Carroll and Daniil Kharms with the glow of Tiepolo and the vulnerability of Mozart.” Although Ratmansky has drawn from international influences, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has inspired in him “a sense of belonging,” he told Harss, “and it’s something very new to me. I feel it is my duty to support Ukrainian culture.”
A delightful gift for ballet fans.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9780374102616
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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