PositiveThe Times (UK)a critical yet personal examination of classical ballet — a performing art highly dependent on the talent of women — filtered through the lens of 21st-century feminism. Robb’s writing style is scattershot at times, as she jumps from one idea to another and then back again, but she brings a welcome academic rigour to the subject, clearly born of deeply held emotions ... Throughout the book Robb quotes from dozens of studies and scholarly articles, using facts and figures to bolster her assertions ... Robb interrogates a ballerina’s life, illustrating her thesis with portraits of famous ballerinas whose pursuit of stardom came at a price.
Rupert Christiansen
RaveThe Sunday Times (UK)... [a] fine new history ... immensely readable and exhaustively researched ... Most delightful of all are the vivid portraits Christiansen paints of the dramatis personae, starting with Diaghilev and his succession of temperamental Ballets Russes lovers, all of whose careers he promoted — as choreographer or dancer — until, inevitably, fractiously, he fell out with them ... Happily, though, he writes about his subject with such descriptive flair and affectionate animation that its very essence leaps off the page.
Andrew Wilson
PositiveThe Sunday Times (UK)The claustrophobic country house setting is pure Christie, as is the nursery rhyme clue (if somewhat far-fetched in this case) and the use of poison, her murder weapon of choice ... Wilson see-saws once too often from suspect to suspect—a colourful and entertaining bunch—while his plot runneth over with revelations. Still, while I did guess whodunnit early on, I couldn’t begin to guess why, and therein lies the fun in a book that is essentially one giant puzzle.
Nadine Meisner
RaveThe Times (UK)...[a] wonderful, comprehensive biography ... I have always worshipped at the altar of Petipa without knowing much about the man. Marius Petipa: The Emperor’s Ballet Master, the first biography written in English about this extraordinary artist, is a welcome righting of that wrong. Meisner...has meticulously researched the facts of Petipa’s life and presents a full portrait of the man born in Marseilles in 1818, investigating his talent and his temperament ... It’s immensely readable, with tantalising archive photographs and an exhaustive — and invaluable — chronology of all Petipa’s Russian works ... What emerges is a man with impeccable manners, an incredible work ethic, a nasty jealous streak and a mercurial temper.
