Pantheon Author Toni Bentley to Virtually Discuss Ballet and "SERENADE: A Balanchine Story “
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Toni Bentley, Photo © Clayton Cubitt
Attention fans of ballet: Toni Bentley, author of SERENADE: A Balanchine Story (Pantheon), will discuss her new book with Artistic Director of the Miami City Ballet Lourdes Lopez at a virtual event hosted by Books and Books (Miami, FL) via Crowdcast on Monday, May 9 at 1:00 PM (ET).
To register for this event, click here.
At 17 years old, Toni Bentley was chosen to join the New York City Ballet by George Balanchine – the greatest ballet maker of the 20th century. In SERENADE, Bentley takes readers into the intense and thrilling masterpiece created by Balanchine; from both backstage and onstage, she carries us through the 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.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers author and American Ballet Theater soloist Misty Copeland shared, “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.”
Toni Bentley is the author of five New York Times notable books and her work has appeared in The Best American Essays as well as many periodicals, including New York Times Book Review, Wall Street Journal, The Daily Beast, Vogue, and Vanity Fair. Bentley danced with George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet for ten years.