Winter Season: A Dancer's Journal is the exquisite chronicle of a ballet dancer's experiences with the New York City Ballet. The dancer, Toni Bentley, claims a certain naivetee, but I don't believe it's innocent ignorance as much as it is simple yearning for experiences she rarely has.

She has a delicate flair for words, and her prose couldn't be any less lovely than her pliees and tondus.

Dancing with a world-famous ballet company is gruelling. The dancers are overworked, underfed, and have little understanding of how the "real world" works, yet it would seem they like it that way. Ballet companies thusly have much in common with military outfits: soldiers and dancers work brutally hard, but have their concerns looked after by the higher-ups. Balanchine is the dancers' general.

With the incredibly long hours and the accompanying mental and physical exhaustion, how did Toni get the time to write this book?

She writes,

"We are hairless. We have no leg hairs, no pubic hair, no armpit hair, no facial hair, no neck hair and only a solid little lump at the top of our heads. Any sign of stubble must be closely watched out for and removed.

"That is not all. We don't eat food, we eat music. We need artistic sustenance only. Emotional, inspiring sustenance. Al our physical energy is the overflow of spiritual feelings. We live on faith, belief, love, inspiration, vitamins and Tab."

Toni eventually does break free of the NYC Ballet machine, but she's drawn inexorably back. After all, as she says, "We live only to dance. If living were not an essential prerequisite, we would abstain."

With "Winter Season," Toni Bentley allows her audience to see a real picture of the incredibly tough, demanding and creative world of professional ballet. We see George Balanchine at the end of the career, and such greats as Suzanne Farrell and Peter Martins. The incredible, difficult, almost insane demands put on the dancers are clearly drawn, as is Ms. Bentley's love for her art. Especially evocative is her struggle with reconciling art with her demanding profession.

Often, artistic memoirs focus on the superstars, the Tallchiefs and Nureyevs, for instance. The view from the corps de ballet is all the more interesting for being so rare. This book is beautiful, wry, humorous and exquisitely-written. I wish Ms. Bentley had written several other volumes.

I really enjoyed this book. It gave a wonderful glimpse into the real world of professional dancing. Miss Bentley told this story with beautiful language, her words flowed like water. I found it wonderful to know what it was like to live the life of a dancer, to know the struggles and the victories, the fantasies and the realities. I recommend this book for all who love dance and for anyone interested in show business or simply anyone who enjoys a good read.

If you have ever seen a ballet by George Balanchine, then you are familiar with the name Karinska. In the foreward to this magnificently produced book, the great Balanchine is quoted as saying to the Ford Foundation that what he needed most for his work was "Karinska." Truth or overstatement, it is an obvious tribute to the woman who designed the costumes for more than 75 ballets by one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century.

The author, Toni Bentley was not only a dancer with Balanchine's New York City Ballet, she also wrote the best book on ballet I've ever read: WINTER SEASON, A DANCER'S JOURNAL.

In COSTUMES BY KARINSKA Bentley traces Barbara Karinska's life and work in Russia and then, after becoming one of the numerous emigrees to the West, in Paris, Monte Carlo, London, Hollywood and, finally, Manhattan in 1949. Karinska worked with many other famous creative people in her long and varied career including Agnes De Mille, Jerome Robbins, Franco Zeffirelli and George Cukor to name just a few.

This oversized book contains scores of wonderful photographs and sketches in color and in black and white including, to me, the most interesting part of the book: descriptions of how Karinska took "raw" sketches by artists such as Noguchi, Dali, Chagall, etc. and, literally, turned them into costumes.

Bentley writes gracefully and wittily and, most importantly, she doesn't only write for dance professionals.

Treat yourself to this relatively expensive but very much worthwhile history of costume in the last century and the personal and professional life of the woman who "dressed" so many major stars from Gypsy Rose Lee to Laurence Olivier. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

After reading (or, in my case, rereading) Suzanne Farrell's wonderful book, one feels a tremendous debt of gratitude. It isn't just that her life and views on dance and art are fascinating, though that is certainly true. It's the tremendous sense of generosity and compassion that flow from these pages. I remember when I first read her mother's words to her young daughters, that if they had "the arts in their life they would never be lonely", that I quietly marked the page, closed the book, and wept appreciatively. This was the first time I had heard these words expressed by anyone and it confirmed the feelings I've had since being very young.
Many may find the Balanchine references the definitive biography of this section of his life, but there is so much more to this glorious volume, gratefully back in print from the University of Florida. This paperback edition is very well-bound, pages are highest quality; the price may seem a tad high, but is in truth worth more than pricier hardcovers. This, along with the DVD of Farrell's exquisite "Elusive Muse" documentary make an outstanding gift idea for young people uncertain of how to attain their dreams. Ms. Farrell's life is certainly a great inspiration.

An honest, touching, and very well written book about a great dancer with an extraordinary story to tell.

I am taken by the dignity, passion, pragmaticism and faith that imbue(d) Suzanne Farrell and Geroge Balanchine's lives. This was a truly amazing book! I give it my strongest recommendation.

Sorry to dissent, but Toni Bentley's ode to undressing leaves me, well, chilly. Her opening chapter is risque, but don't be misled. All you will read in the following chapters is a very scholarly history of a particular type of dancer, the striptease artiste. The only nudity you will see is one undraped mammelle. The book is dull, the opening chapter a tasteless come on. Ms. Bentley's investigation into nudity, both first hand and vicarious, is by her own admission an attempt to overcome a lifetime's inhibitions and her own innate modesty. It is a mistaken attempt. Ms. Bentley has gone downhill since her days as a Balanchine dancer, and has lowered her artistic standards considerably.

Oscar Wilde is responsible for striptease. Well, not directly, perhaps, but there is a surprising connection drawn in _Sisters of Salome_ (Yale University Press) by Toni Bentley, an examination of four women who interpreted Salome around the turn of the last century. Wilde took his story from legend (not the Bible story), and invented the famous "Dance of the Seven Veils" for his French play _Salome_. It initiated the craze for "Salomania" and there was even a school for Salomes that churned out dancers to go into the variety halls. Bentley's introduction inserts herself into the history of striptease, and she gives a good account of ending her career as a ballerina and going onto the stage (just once?) as a stripper. She felt power; "... there was no victimization on either side of these footlights." It was a revelatory experience: "I was unmasked and, for a miraculous minute, thrilled in my body, unafraid of my life. I was in - for me - Paradise."

Her research into how striptease originated centered on four women who had initially interpreted to the theatrical Salome. Maudie Durant was the sister of a serial killer, and escaped to Europe and to the stage as Maud Allan as a way to free herself from disgrace. She became "the least dressed dancer of our time," and she then portrayed Salome in 1906. She became involved in a ridiculous trial which she lost in large part because it was shown that she knew what a clitoris was. Ida Rubenstein was the child of Russian aristocrats, and the only Salome here who had few worries about money. She liked expensive, self-aggrandizing shows and ended up derided for her vanity. She did, however, sponsor artists of real ability; Ravel composed _Bolero_ for her. Everyone knows the name of the spy Mata Hari, but everyone knows wrong. She performed all over Europe, and took lovers; she had a special weakness for those in uniform. As a result, she did take money for spying, but didn't do any. She was framed and executed in France in 1917. With Colette, perhaps Bentley is guilty of over-application of her theme, because Colette never played Salome, although she did once perform on the same billing as Mata Hari. Unlike the other three women profiled here, Colette had a genuinely happy and long life. She graduated from virgin bride to lesbian, to happily married housewife, although she did seduce a former husband's son. She used her success in scandals, including her stage nakedness, to become an author whose fiction and memoirs have inspired far more readers than just Bentley.

This is a book of a peculiar history, not only of four dancers, but of one period of the dance itself. None of them were very good dancers, but nakedness and scandal made up for that. All four reinvented themselves and used the Salome role for gains in power and money, although such gains were mostly temporary. None had a conventional life or marriage, and perhaps there is some sort of lesson in the sad ends most of them experienced. Bentley has not forced any didacticism from the four stories and her own. Her research and bibliography are good, and she has a light and amused way of telling the stories, full of detail. "Why did these women dance naked?" she asks, and the answers she gives, far from simple, but satisfying while undoubtedly incomplete, are wise and fun to read.

With an intimate knowledge of dance, keen eye for historical detail, enticing premise, and droll prose (many turns of phrase made me grin), Toni Bentley has taken what could have been a bone-dry, pedantic topic and infused it with wit, humor, and rigorous scholarship. The result: one smart, sexy book about four sexual rebels. Here's hoping the success of "Sisters of Salome" brings "Winter Season," Ms. Bentley's haunting memoir of her Balanchine dancer days, back in print.

This book is a very simple telling of Suzanne's start to finish career as a ballet dancer and muse of Balanchine. The relationship between Balanchine and Farrell is certainly not to be described as firey and passionate, only perhaps, as innevitable because of how well they got on together and how they both seemed to understand ballet the same way. They both were always willing to experiment with there medium, and with Balanchine to conduct and Farrell to execute, they rarely failed. An enjoyable narrative, wonderful and touching.