Apollo's Angels

Superb history of ballet from a dancer turned academic * Sunday Times * Homans, a former dancer, is exceptionally good at placing dance in the context of its times and explaining why events such as the French Revolution or the abolition of serfdom in Tsarist Russia affected the course and development of this art form -- Sarah Crompton * Daily Telegraph * Homans writes with translucent beauty and authority of [Ballet's] lost past ... The case that Homans makes wholly convincingly, in the case of Taglioni and others, is that the great dancers and choreographers of the 18th to the 20th centuries succeeded at least in part because of their ability to reproduce the emotional tone of the eras in which they lived -- Luke Jennings * Observer * Sweeping across three centuries and half a dozen countries, Homan's elegiac study resembles a well-crafted three-act ballet ...she writes with equal verve about, say, French romantic literature and US-Soviet cold war rivalry in this exceptional chronicle -- John Dugdale * Guardian * A tremendous book, crucially written by a former dancer ... Always extending its thinking outwards, it even follows the gestures of dance into film -- Antonia Quirke * Sunday Times * A diverting history of ballet, from its roots in the 17th-century French court through Nijinsky to Balanchine's reinvention of classicism ... an invaluable primer on how ballet gained such a foothold among the cultural elite. It's as much an eloquent social history as it is specialist dance study -- Keith Watson * Metro * A beautiful book which takes an in-depth look into the history of ballet ... it manages to deliver the rich 400-year history of ballet alongside an emotional narrative. Homans account of the rigours of training and pressures put upon ballerinas is familiar yet gripping, and is delivered in the same breath as the cross-cultural traditions of ballet ... An edifying read and a refreshing alternative to the fiction-heavy bestseller lists coming up to Christmas * Stylist * Apollo's Angels is a book that every dance lover should read, for it explains not only the art we love, and why we love it, but it explains why it matters -- Judith Flanders * Arts Desk * A brilliant book of enormous scope, a detailed cultural history of ballet, from its earliest origins in Italy and France to the glamour of the New York scene ... in a lucid and absorbing style that makes this hefty tome easy reading, Homans illuminates the characters, ideals and politics that make ballet at various times an act to honour God, a complex system of courtly etiquette, a career for serfs, acrobats and part-time courtesans, a symbol of the French Revolution and a tool of Soviet propaganda ... can Homans put ballet back at the centre of intellectual debate? This book is definitely at step in the right direction -- Lyndsey Winship * Time Out * An authoritative and beautifully researched book -- Culture Cafe * BBC Radio Scotland * It will doubtless come to rank as the standard and authoritative work in the field, its scope, scholarship and intellectual ambition far exceeding that of modestly scaled textbooks ... Homans writes a clean, lucid and disciplined prose which happily reminds one of the rigour and precision of the classical barre ... this is by any reckoning a magnificent achievement -- Rupert Christianson * Literary Review * I was rapt for almost the entire book. Jennifer Homan's Apollo's Angels is the closest thing I have read to a non-fiction page turner in quite a while. And beyond that, it was an extremely ambitious project ... What makes Apollo's Angels so delightfully interesting is how deeply the story's roots burrow into the culture from which it grew. She follows the trail of ballet across Europe, the Caucasus, eventually the Atlantic, and through the epiphanies and upheavals which have shaped Western thought and perspective -- Dwayne Holliday * Dance Europe * Homans takes us through the rises and falls, the individuals who helped turn the ballerina into the iconic image we have today, as well as the links between society at large and ballets in countries as diverse as the United States, Russia, France and Sweden. A fascinating history, as sensual as one might expect -- Lesley McDowell * Herald * This book drills deep: on the hand into the evolution of ballet technique and training, and on the other into the cultural contexts that shaped these practices ... Homan's synthesizes a huge body of primary and secondary sources ... The strength of Homan's book is that ballet and its historical contexts are discussed in inextricable proximity -- James Steichen * Times Literary Supplement *