A New Book Revisits George Balanchine’s Legacy

by Natasha Wolff | October 26, 2025 7:12 pm

Georgian-American ballet choreographer George Balanchine[1] co-founded the New York City Ballet[2] in 1948, where he created over 400 works, shaping the American ballet landscape. This fall sees the arrival of a new volume on Balanchine—titled In Balanchine’s Steps[3]—viewed by many as the architect of America’s ballet identity and the man who transformed the stage. Yet, In Balanchine’s Steps does not simply recite the familiar milestones, it invites the reader to walk along his footsteps: in-studio, on stage and behind the curtain of creation. Through archival photographs, personal recollections and essays by dancers and scholars, it reveals the through-line between his musicality and his choreography, how the contact of toe-tip and floor became a harbinger of sound turned to motion. “We must first realize that dancing is an absolutely independent art, not merely a secondary accompanying one,” Balanchine has said. The book showcases a close visual study of rehearsals at the School of American Ballet[4], where Balanchine moulded movement like clay, refining line, rhythm and clarity. In Balanchine’s Steps doesn’t just revisit the past, it invites us into it thanks to reflections from his dancers on what it meant to work in his studio: the precision, the sudden intuition, the musical translation of movement. It is at once archive and celebration, reflection and revelation. As Balanchine once said, “The past is part of the present, just as the future is.” With this book, the past pirouettes into the present and the reader becomes part of the choreography.

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