Bravura!; Lucia Chase and the American Ballet Theatre.

9780813033761

Bravura!; Lucia Chase and the American Ballet Theatre.

Ewing, Alex C.

U. Press of Florida

2009

339 pages

$36.00

Hardcover

GV1785

Ewing (emeritus arts, U. of North Carolina) is a former general director of the Joffrey Ballet. He is also Lucia Chase's son, and offers a biography of his mother using family perspectives not for an expose, but to help explain and contextualize her public career and her seminal role in founding the Theatre in 1945 and serving as its artistic director for four decades. Among his topics are the Mordkin Ballet, life at home, touring in wartime, an adverse US tax court verdict, the disastrous Cannes fire, Balanchine and the New York City Ballet, troubles between Sherwin Goldman and Lucia, Baryshnikov replaces Lucia, and her last years.

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