Description: For more than 400 years, the art of ballet has stood at the center of Western civilization. Its traditions serve as a record of our past. Lavishly illustrated and beautifully told, "Apollo's Angels"--the first cultural history of ballet ever written--is a groundbreaking work. Homans, a historian, critic, and former professional ballerina, wields a knowledge of dance born of dedicated practice.
Review Quotes: "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