Marina Harss's Books

The Boy from Kyiv

Alexei Ratmansky's Life in Ballet

By: Marina Harss

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The Boy from Kyiv

Alexei Ratmansky's Life in Ballet

By: Marina Harss

Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR and The New Yorker The Boy from Kyiv is the life story of Alexei Ratmansky, the most celebrated ballet choreographer of our time. “A revelatory book about how [Ratmansky] evolved into the internationally sought-after choreographer of the moment . . . A must-read.” — Martha Anne Toll, NPR Alexei Ratmansky is transforming ballet for the twenty-first century. An artist of daring imagination, the choreographer has created breathtakingly original works for the world’s most revered companies. He has fashioned a singular approach to balletic storytelling that bridges the space between narrative and abstraction and heightens ambiguity and surprise on the stage. He has boldly restored great centuries-old ballets to their former glory, combining archival research with his own choreographic genius to retrieve detail and color once lost to the ages. And above all, he is renowned for fusing the Western and Eastern ballet traditions, and for drawing on the visual arts, literature, music, film, and beyond with inspired vim, to forge a style that is vibrant, eclectic, and utterly new: one that promises to leave an indelible mark on this venerable art form. But before Ratmansky was the artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet, the resident choreographer at American Ballet Theatre, the artist in residence at New York City Ballet, and generally, as The New Yorker has it, “the most sought-after man in ballet,” he was just a boy from Kyiv, sneaking into the ballet at night, concocting his own juvenile adaptations of novels and stories, and dreaming up new possibilities for bodies in motion. In The Boy from Kyiv, the first biography of this groundbreaking artist, the celebrated dance writer Marina Harss takes us behind the curtain to reveal Ratmansky’s fascinating life, from his Soviet boyhood through his globe-spanning career. Over a decade in the making, this biography arrives at a pivotal moment in Ratmansky’s journey, one that has seen him painfully and publicly break ties with Russia, the country in which he made his name, in solidarity with his native Ukraine, and take on a new challenge at the storied New York City Ballet. Told with the lyricism, drama, and verve that befit its subject, The Boy from Kyiv is a riveting account of this major artist’s ascent to the peaks of his field, a mesmerizing study of creativity in action, and a triumphant testament to ballet’s enduring vitality.

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Page Count

326

Publisher

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published Date

ISBN 10

0374717494

ISBN 13

9780374717490

The Boy from Kyiv

Alexei Ratmansky's Life in Ballet

By: Marina Harss

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Boy from Kyiv

Alexei Ratmansky's Life in Ballet

By: Marina Harss

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

326

Publisher

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published Date

ISBN 10

0374717494

ISBN 13

9780374717490

Stories from the City of God

Sketches and Chronicles of Rome

By: Pier Paolo Pasolini

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Stories from the City of God

Sketches and Chronicles of Rome

By: Pier Paolo Pasolini

Now in paperback, a collection of the legendary filmmaker's short fiction and nonfiction from 1950 to 1966, in which we see the machinations of the creative mind in post-World War II Rome. In a portrait of the city at once poignant and intimate, we find artistic witness to the customs, dialect, squalor, and beauty of the ancient imperial capital that has succumbed to modern warfare, marginalization, and mass culture. The sketches portray the impoverished masses that Pasolini calls "the sub-proletariat," those who live under Third World conditions and for whom simple pleasures, such as a blue sweater in a storefront window, are completely out of reach. Pasolini's art develops throughout the works collected here, from his early lyricism to tragicomic outlines for screenplays, and finally to the maturation of his Neo-realism in eight chronicles on the shantytowns of Rome. The pieces in this collection were all published in Italian journals and newspapers, and then later edited by Walter Siti in the original Italian edition.

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Page Count

273

Publisher

Other Press, LLC

Published Date

ISBN 10

1590519973

ISBN 13

9781590519974

Book's by Marina Harss

The Boy from Kyiv

The Boy from Kyiv

The Boy from Kyiv

The Boy from Kyiv

Stories from the City of God

Stories from the City of God

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