This book is an astonishing achievement. Nijinska, sister of tragic dancer-genius Nijinsky, emerges here as a larger-than-life heroine, an Amazon endowed with visionary talent, yet blocked at every turn by forces arrayed against an ambitious woman. It's an epic tale, based on impeccable sources, narrated with rare lucidity, set against a three-continent-wide panorama of European, American and 'emigr'e-Russian artists and impresarios, all chasing after this magical quality we now call Modernity.
Lynn Garafola is Professor Emerita of Dance at Barnard College, Columbia University. A dance historian and critic, she is the author of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and Legacies of Twentieth-Century Dance, and the editor of several books, including The Diaries of Marius Petipa, Andr'e Levinson on Dance (with Joan Acocella), Jos'e Limón: An Unfinished Memoir, and The Ballets Russes and Its World. She has curated several exhibitions, including Dance for a City: Fifty Years of the New York City Ballet, New York Story: Jerome Robbins and His World, Diaghilev's Theater of Marvels: The Ballets Russes and Its Aftermath, and, most recently, Arthur Mitchell: Harlem's Ballet Trailblazer