The Boy from Kyiv by Marina Harss

The Boy from Kyiv is the life story of Alexei Ratmansky, the most
celebrated ballet choreographer of our time.
Alexei Ratmansky is the most sought-after man in ballet" ( The New Yorker ).
At just thirty-five years of age, he was named artistic director at Moscow's
famed Bolshoi Ballet. He went on to be appointed the resident choreographer
at the American Ballet Theatre in New York, a post he held for 13 years, and is
set to join the New York City Ballet as Artist in Residence in Fall of 2023. He
has created magnificent new works for the world's most revered ballet
companies, breathing fresh, exquisite new life into this allegedly moribund art
form.
In The Boy from Kyiv, the celebrated dance critic Marina Harss charts
Ratmansky's exceptional life: his modest upbringing in Kyiv, his early years
training at the Bolshoi Academy in Moscow and sneaking into the company's
performances at night, and his dance career spent in Ukraine, Canada, and
Denmark. Through these wide-ranging experiences, he developed a singular
creative style by fusing Russian and Western sensibilities and filtering them
through his own eclectic imagination and varied interests inmusic, literature,
art, and film - putting him on the path to becoming the most respected,
admired, and in-demand ballet choreographer at work today. Ratmansky has
created more than fifty original ballets for companies across the globe and is
renowned above all for having revitalized storytelling in ballet, eschewing the
cool abstraction that dominated twentieth-century choreography in favor of
narratively suggestive, emotionally vibrant, and uniquely demanding works.
Just as radically, he has (...)

Marina Harss is a dance writer, journalist, and critic based in New York City.
Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Nation,
The Guardian, The Boston Globe, Dance Magazine, and Fjord Review

Farrar, Straus and Giroux
On Sale: Oct 3/23
6 x 9 • 464 pages
8 Pages of Color Images; 76 Black-and-White Images
in Text / Chronology of Works, Notes, Index
9780374102616 • $47.00 • CL - With dust jacket
Performing Arts / Dance / Classical