Mr. B
George Balanchine's 20th Century
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Narrated by:
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Cassandra Campbell
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By:
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Jennifer Homans
About this listen
Arguably the greatest choreographer who ever lived, George Balanchine was one of the cultural titans of the twentieth century—the New York Times called him "the Shakespeare of dancing." His radical approach to choreography—and life—reinvented the art of ballet and made him a legend. Written with enormous style and artistry, and based on more than one hundred interviews and research in archives across Russia, Europe, and the Americas, Mr. B carries us through Balanchine's tumultuous and high-pitched life story and into the making of his extraordinary dances.
Balanchine's life intersected with some of the biggest historical events of his century. Born in Russia under the last czar, Balanchine experienced the upheavals of World War I, the Russian Revolution, exile, World War II, and the Cold War. A cofounder of the New York City Ballet, he pressed ballet in America to the forefront of modernism and made it a popular art. None of this was easy, and we see his loneliness and failures, his five marriages—all to dancers—and many loves. We follow his bouts of ill health and spiritual crises, and learn of his profound musical skills and sensibility and his immense determination to make some of the most glorious, strange, and beautiful dances ever to grace the modern stage.
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In the summer of 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days' intellectual shopping: a prince, a count, and a commoner with an Italian name. In time, each of these men would achieve a certain level of renown, but who were they then and what was the significance of their sojourn to England? Answering these questions, Julian Barnes unfurls the stories of their lives which play out against the backdrop of the Belle Epoque in Paris. Our guide through this world is Samuel Pozzi, the society doctor, free-thinker, and man of science with a famously complicated private life....
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Pathetic narration makes this title unbearable
- By Chris Quigg on 02-27-20
By: Julian Barnes
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The Years
- By: Annie Ernaux
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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The Years is a personal narrative of the period of 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present - even projections into the future - photos, books, songs, radio, television, and decades of advertising and headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and written notes from six decades of diaries. Local dialect, words of the time, slogans, brands, and names for ever-proliferating objects are given a voice here. The voice we recognize as the author's continually dissolves and re-emerges.
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Mixed Feelings
- By Elin VanD on 05-10-20
By: Annie Ernaux
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What Would Frida Do?
- A Guide to Living Boldly
- By: Arianna Davis
- Narrated by: Marisa Blake
- Length: 5 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Revered as much for her fierce spirit as she is for her art, Frida Kahlo stands today as a brazen symbol of daring creativity. She was a woman ahead of her time whose paintings have earned her generations of admirers around the globe. But perhaps her greatest work of art was her own life. What Would Frida Do? explores the feminist icon's signature style, outspoken politics, and boldness in love and art, even in the face of pain and heartbreak.
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I was excited
- By Edgar E Armendariz on 01-14-21
By: Arianna Davis
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Immortality
- By: Milan Kundera
- Narrated by: Richmond Hoxie
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Milan Kundera's sixth novel springs from a casual gesture of a woman to her swimming instructor, a gesture that creates a character in the mind of a writer named Kundera. Like Flaubert's Emma or Tolstoy's Anna, Kundera's Agnes becomes an object of fascination, of indefinable longing. From that character springs a novel, a gesture of the imagination that both embodies and articulates Milan Kundera's supreme mastery of the novel and its purpose: to explore thoroughly the great themes of existence.
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Cerebral Crosswinds in Parisian fields
- By W Perry Hall on 01-13-14
By: Milan Kundera
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Foursome
- Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe, Paul Strand, Rebecca Salsbury
- By: Carolyn Burke
- Narrated by: Amanda Carlin
- Length: 16 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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New York, 1921: Acclaimed photographer Alfred Stieglitz celebrates the success of his latest exhibition - the centerpiece, a series of nude portraits of his soon-to-be wife, the young Georgia O'Keeffe. The exhibit acts as a turning point for the painter poised to make her entrance into the art scene. There, she meets Rebecca Salsbury, the fiancé of Stieglitz’s protégé, Paul Strand, marking the start of a bond between the couples that will last more than a decade and reverberate throughout their lives.
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A competent account of four interesting lives
- By Sil A. on 11-21-20
By: Carolyn Burke
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Remembering Shanghai
- A Memoir of Socialites, Scholars and Scoundrels
- By: Isabel Sun Chao, Claire Chao
- Narrated by: Rachel Yong, Claire Chao, Isabel Sun Chao
- Length: 7 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Meticulously researched, Remembering Shanghai follows five generations, from vibrant Shanghai to the bright lights of Hong Kong. By turns harrowing and heartwarming, this vivid memoir explores identity and loss against the epic backdrop of a country in turmoil.
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touching stories of resilience and family
- By Rodger on 01-17-21
By: Isabel Sun Chao, and others
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Mademoiselle
- Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History
- By: Rhonda Garelick
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 16 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Little black dresses. Fake pearls. Jersey knit. Blazers. Ballet flats. Today - and for nearly the last hundred years - we all see some version of Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel every time we pass a woman on the street. But few among us realize that Chanel’s role in the events of the twentieth century was as pervasive as her influence on fashion, or how deeply she absorbed and then brilliantly reimagined the historical currents around her.
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An Unlikable Portrait
- By Sara on 09-25-16
By: Rhonda Garelick
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City of Girls
- A Novel
- By: Elizabeth Gilbert
- Narrated by: Blair Brown
- Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Beloved author Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction with a unique love story set in the New York City theater world during the 1940s. Told from the perspective of an older woman as she looks back on her youth with both pleasure and regret (but mostly pleasure), City of Girls explores themes of female sexuality and promiscuity, as well as the idiosyncrasies of true love. In 1940, nineteen-year-old Vivian Morris has just been kicked out of Vassar College, owing to her lackluster freshman-year performance.
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A strong story
- By Anita Kristensen on 06-08-19
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The Goddess Pose
- The Audacious Life of Indra Devi, the Woman Who Helped Bring Yoga to the West
- By: Michelle Goldberg
- Narrated by: Tanya Eby
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Born into the minor aristocracy (as Eugenia Peterson), Devi grew up in the midst of one of the most turbulent times in human history. Forced to flee the Russian Revolution as a teenager, she joined a famous Berlin cabaret troupe, dove into the vibrant prewar spiritualist movement, and, at a time when it was nearly unthinkable for a young European woman to travel alone, followed the charismatic theosophical leader Jiddu Krishnamurti to India.
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The Auntie Mame of yoga!
- By Victoria Moran on 10-09-17
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The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- A Novel
- By: Milan Kundera, Michael Henry Heim - translator
- Narrated by: Richmond Hoxie
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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A young woman is in love with a successful surgeon, a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing. His mistress, a free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals—while her other lover, earnest, faithful, and good, stands to lose everything because of his noble qualities. In a world where lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and fortuitous events, and everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence we feel “the unbearable lightness of being."
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Love, Politics, and Strange Bedfellows
- By Mel on 07-01-12
By: Milan Kundera, and others
What listeners say about Mr. B
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- C. McPherson
- 12-08-23
Brilliant bio
One of the best artist's biography I've read in years and the narration is superb. The artists I most admire are the risk takers - the ones who continue to follow their muse into unknown realms and never stop evolving. Balanchine was one of these. Because of her training and familiarity with the subject and his world Ms. Homans is uniquely qualified to do justice to this complex man and his art.
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- Kathleen
- 01-21-24
Wow!
Reviewed on Goodreads. Comprehensive and authoritative bio of Balanchine by a scholar and dancer. No detail is too small!
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- An Old Crow
- 10-15-23
Interesting.
I thought the writing style very appropriate for young adults and older. It's helpful to get an inside view. They all gave so much to establish ballet in America. I admire them, So much sacrifice! The audible narrator used the correct voice and pace. The Russian pronunciations must have taken a lot of time to get right. She did a great job!. One of my favorite narrators. 4 stars because the author, it seems to me, included everything. Book could have been much shorter. I learned SO much . I'm glad I listened, and read, Mr. B.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Hillary M Batzner
- 07-17-24
A haul
This book was informative but it was a slog! Long read, good for anyone interested in Balanchine’s life + career.
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