Praise for Balanchine Variations

"If you like Balanchine, you must read Nancy Goldner's Balanchine Variations. She has the best ear for music and dance musicality of any dance critic writing today."-- Alastair Macaulay, New York Times

"The book is modest and, at the same time, utterly self-assured. Anyone who cares about Balanchine should buy it immediately."-- Joan Acocella, New Yorker

"A remarkable new book. Immediately takes its place among the half-dozen or so essential books on George Balanchine."--Robert Gottlieb in the New York Review of Books

In this deliciously evocative new volume, Nancy Goldner returns to offer in-depth discussions of twenty more of George Balanchine's ballets. As in the critically acclaimed Balanchine Variations, Goldner’s focus is not on history or biography but on the dances themselves: the technique, the coordination with music, the storytelling, and the evolution of Balanchine's style.
This encore performance features provocative and insightful descriptions and analyses of a group of works spanning forty years (1941–1981) and includes profiles of Ballet Imperial, Bugaku, Coppelia, Divertimento No. 15, La Valse, Symphony in C, and Union Jack, among many others. Inspiring, exquisite, and thought-provoking, More Balanchine Variations is both a delightful meditation on and an essential critical examination of some of the twentieth century's most extraordinary works of art.

"Pure joy. Even more exciting and wonderfully imaginative than the author's previous volume, this collection of personal essays about some of George Balanchine's most beloved ballets takes a reader through deep levels of Balanchine's sensibility. Nancy Goldner illuminates the organization of the works, their construction on the level of dance technique and its coordination with music, and--most marvelous--the spooky and passionate stories embedded within their 'plotless' maneuvers."--Mindy Aloff, editor of Leaps in the Dark

Nancy Goldner, author of Balanchine Variations, was a dance critic for the Christian Science Monitor, the Nation, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Dance News for twenty five years.

BALANCHINE is a registered trademark of The George Balanchine Trust.

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"Goldner provides valuable insights into Balanchine's working relationship with the New York City Ballet and the music, the dancers' challenges, evolution of his style, and legacy."
--Book News Inc.

"This slim, captivating volume, like its 2008 companion, adds up to a wealth of sympathetic criticism, born of a lifetime's experience watching and reflecting on Balanchine's greatest and lesser works. No dance critic possesses a more acute eye for the telling choreographic detail and how it forms part of a grand design. Thanks to Goldner's prose, her musings on even a familiar dance like Symphony in C make you hungry to see the ballet again. For Balanchine newcomers, this and the previous installment should open doors to unspeakable and enduring pleasures."
--Dance Magazine

"Her writing is approachable, engaging and colorful all the while probing deeply into the meaning, structure, and content of the dances... takes the reader on a journey of ups and downs through the solos and massive group ensembles, Balanchine’s greatest works and lesser works, ultimately elucidating Balanchine’s genius as a choreographer.”
--Attitude: The Dancer's Magazine