It's hard to write a comprehensive history of anything that is both thorough and engaging, and especially hard when the topic is ballet, which has a history of declining and reemerging at various times in various places around the world. Oh, and it has no system of notation for dance steps, so descr...
The first two-thirds was a fascinatingly detailed history of ballet and its relationship to the politics and events around it, if a bit heave on metaphor and a bit light on physical description. Unfortunately, in the last third it decended into rather snobbish Balanchine hagiography, which pulled it...