Somewhere

“A fantastically interesting book about much, much more than dance, because Robbins was about more than dance.”—NPR’s “All Things Considered”

“[A] great subject for a biography. Robbins’s contradictions, mysteries, achievements, failures, and vision add up to a life worth visiting and revisiting. . . . Vaill proves a seductive storyteller, a penetrating psychologist, a compelling analyst of Robbins’s choreography.”—Chicago Tribune Book World

“Posthumously, up in heaven where he surely is, Robbins should be proud to have inspired such [a] fine testament to his diverse art and complex life.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Jerome Robbins is the great subject of American theatrical biography—self-contradictory, self-hating, arrogant and terrified and gifted almost beyond compare—and Amanda Vaill has done him justice. I can’t think of a better full-length portrait of an American choreographer or director, and I can’t imagine a better book about Robbins ever being written.”—Terry Teachout, drama critic, The Wall Street Journal

“Other books about Robbins give you the facts about the innumerable theater and ballet projects that make him a central figure in the history of twentieth-century theatrical dance. But Vaill has a gift for storytelling, for context, that transforms the production credits and backstage anecdotes into tightly focused dramatic episodes in the life of a man always fiercely self-protective.”—Los Angeles Times

“Superlative . . . a vivid account of a theatrical wizard.”—Vogue

“A critically sophisticated biography that’s as compulsively readable as a novel. . . . The book is essential reading for lovers of theater and dance. [Vaill] writes with both passion and compassion.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Witty, stylishly written . . . Vaill discusses [Robbins’s] complicated libidinal life with great sensitivity. More important, she has a commanding view of his work both in the theater and the more abstract world of the ballet. [And] her account of his final years is deeply moving.”—New York Daily News

“A dramatic, incremental revelation of the kind we expect in novels of a high order. . . . An exquisitely polished performance.”—New York Sun

“Massive and magnetic . . . Spills nearly every bean about the choreographer’s private life that he had always tried so hard to hoard. Vaill has created a page-turner.”—The Washington Post Book World

“Discerning, empathetic, and accessible.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)