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Balanchine Finds His America: A Tale of Love Lost and Ballet Reborn
In 1933, George Balanchine arrived in the United States, brought by even younger sponsors who had dreamed of inventing an American ballet. He came with extraordinary he had trained as a child in Russia's imperial dance academy, he had absorbed the utopian ideals of the Russian revolution, and he had spent nine years in a culturally volatile interwar Europe. But on a new continent, his career was blocked by local biases, global politics, and even his own character. His sponsors had their own ideas of what this new art should look like. A bigger-scale, European-based ballet company was crowding into the U.S. arts scene. A combination of Balanchine's loneliness and ill-health, both traceable to the revolutionary turmoil of his native city, St. Petersburg, were pushing him towards romantic obsessions with young female dancers - obsessions that seem today to border on the unethical.
Balanchine Finds His America provides a close-up of this crucial time in the life of a young immigrant choreographer who would become one of the 20th century's greatest artists. It opens on Balanchine's first day in the United States and closes 13 years later, with the culture's recognition of his importance. Along the way, it sketches in the extreme politics of his time from the Great Depression to WWII, evokes the places that inspired him from New York City to Hollywood, and charts the sexuality of longing that fueled his creative life, but also threatened his and his muses' personal stability. It draws connections between Balanchine's loves and the earliest ballets he made on American soil, especially his mysterious exploration of American romance, Serenade (1933), and his even more mysterious 1946 masterwork, The Four Temperaments, that pointed the way to America's victorious postwar art of abstraction.
Most of all, this book highlights the young Balanchine's tragic yet triumphant inner journey towards American-ness, and the impact of this journey on the ballet organizations he helped form and the legacy he left the world.
Balanchine Finds His America provides a close-up of this crucial time in the life of a young immigrant choreographer who would become one of the 20th century's greatest artists. It opens on Balanchine's first day in the United States and closes 13 years later, with the culture's recognition of his importance. Along the way, it sketches in the extreme politics of his time from the Great Depression to WWII, evokes the places that inspired him from New York City to Hollywood, and charts the sexuality of longing that fueled his creative life, but also threatened his and his muses' personal stability. It draws connections between Balanchine's loves and the earliest ballets he made on American soil, especially his mysterious exploration of American romance, Serenade (1933), and his even more mysterious 1946 masterwork, The Four Temperaments, that pointed the way to America's victorious postwar art of abstraction.
Most of all, this book highlights the young Balanchine's tragic yet triumphant inner journey towards American-ness, and the impact of this journey on the ballet organizations he helped form and the legacy he left the world.
232 pages, Hardcover
Published October 3, 2025
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August 28, 2026
Elizabeth Kendall’s Balanchine Finds His America: A Tale of Love Lost and Ballet Reborn offers an intimate portrait of George Balanchine at the moment when his European past collided with the cultural possibilities and limitations of the United States.
The book’s greatest strength is its focus on the thirteen formative years between Balanchine’s arrival in America in 1933 and his eventual recognition as a major artistic force. Rather than beginning with the celebrated choreographer readers already know, Kendall concentrates on the uncertain young immigrant who was still trying to determine what an American ballet could actually become.
That perspective makes the book as much a story of cultural migration as it is of dance. Balanchine arrived carrying the influence of Russia’s imperial ballet academy, the upheavals of revolution, and years spent navigating interwar Europe. In America, those experiences encountered local artistic ambitions, political pressures, economic uncertainty, and competing visions for the future of ballet.
Kendall also addresses the more troubling dimensions of Balanchine’s personal life, particularly his relationships with young female dancers. Rather than separating artistic achievement from uncomfortable questions of power, sexuality, loneliness, and obsession, the book examines how these relationships intersected with his creative development and the stability of the people around him.
The discussion of Serenade and The Four Temperaments is especially significant because it connects Balanchine’s emotional and cultural transformation with the evolution of his artistic language. His movement toward abstraction becomes part of a larger American story about modernism and the emergence of a distinctive postwar artistic culture.
The book should appeal beyond ballet specialists to readers interested in dance history, immigration, American cultural history, modernism, biography, sexuality and the arts, New York cultural life, and twentieth century artistic movements.
Ultimately, Balanchine Finds His America appears to tell a more complicated story than the familiar triumph narrative. It shows an artist becoming American while simultaneously wrestling with the personal history, desires, vulnerabilities, and cultural contradictions that shaped what he would eventually create.
The book’s greatest strength is its focus on the thirteen formative years between Balanchine’s arrival in America in 1933 and his eventual recognition as a major artistic force. Rather than beginning with the celebrated choreographer readers already know, Kendall concentrates on the uncertain young immigrant who was still trying to determine what an American ballet could actually become.
That perspective makes the book as much a story of cultural migration as it is of dance. Balanchine arrived carrying the influence of Russia’s imperial ballet academy, the upheavals of revolution, and years spent navigating interwar Europe. In America, those experiences encountered local artistic ambitions, political pressures, economic uncertainty, and competing visions for the future of ballet.
Kendall also addresses the more troubling dimensions of Balanchine’s personal life, particularly his relationships with young female dancers. Rather than separating artistic achievement from uncomfortable questions of power, sexuality, loneliness, and obsession, the book examines how these relationships intersected with his creative development and the stability of the people around him.
The discussion of Serenade and The Four Temperaments is especially significant because it connects Balanchine’s emotional and cultural transformation with the evolution of his artistic language. His movement toward abstraction becomes part of a larger American story about modernism and the emergence of a distinctive postwar artistic culture.
The book should appeal beyond ballet specialists to readers interested in dance history, immigration, American cultural history, modernism, biography, sexuality and the arts, New York cultural life, and twentieth century artistic movements.
Ultimately, Balanchine Finds His America appears to tell a more complicated story than the familiar triumph narrative. It shows an artist becoming American while simultaneously wrestling with the personal history, desires, vulnerabilities, and cultural contradictions that shaped what he would eventually create.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review