Jennifer Homans was a professional dancer trained at the North Carolina School of the Arts, American Ballet Theatre, and The School of American Ballet. She performed with the Chicago Lyric Opera Ballet, the San Francisco Ballet, and Pacific Northwest Ballet. Currently the dance critic for The New Republic, she has written for The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, The New York Review of Books, and The Australian. She earned her B.A. at Columbia University and her Ph.D. in modern European history at New York University, where she is a Distinguished Scholar in Residence.
“The only truly definitive history of the most impossibly fantastic
art form, ballet . . . an eloquent and lasting elegy to an
unlasting art.”—The New York Times Book Review
“A delight to read, massively informed yet remarkably agile . . .
The story of ballet offers a singular perspective on the evolution
of our culture: a fascinating mirror on the arts. Nowhere is this
narrative told more amply and compellingly than in Jennifer
Homans’s triumphant Apollo’s Angels.”—The Washington Post
“Here is a book of immense ambition—a one-volume history of
ballet—and of considerable accomplishment. Jennifer Homans, whom we
know primarily as The New Republic’s provocative dance critic,
shows herself to be both dogged and graceful as a historian—a rare
and welcome combination of qualities.”—The New York Review of
Books
“Intellectually rigorous, beautifully written, brilliantly
structured.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“Magnificent . . . [a] monumental work.”—The Boston Globe
“Each page of this luminous work delights, enlightens and beckons.
Every dancer should live with this book, of course, but every
person who loves literature and history, is word-struck and
story-addicted, should give themselves a treat with Apollo’s
Angels. Treasure this treasure.”—Jacques d’Amboise
“This is a wonderful book about how ballet evolved. Written by
a gifted dancer, Apollo’s Angels is dance history seen from
the inside. The wonder to me is how much this accessible,
beautifully-crafted book reveals about the times and places in
which ballets were made; it makes culture come alive.”—Richard
Sennett, author of The Craftsman
“A dancer who is also a historian—who ever dreamed of such an
improbable creature? But here is Jennifer Homans and her
indispensable book. She puts the understanding of ballet on a whole
new footing. Finally the delicacies of ballet have been restored to
the indelicacies of history, and the art seems even more wondrous
for it. Apollo’s Angels is an enlightenment, a remarkable feat of
scholarship and sensibility, an affecting mixture of criticism and
devotion, an intellectual joy.”—Leon Wieseltier
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