![How Diaghilev Reimagined Ballet By Allen Ellenzweig: THE BRITISH DANCE and opera critic Rupert Christiansen has written a history of Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes that is not aimed at scholars or specialists. Referring to his morbid addiction to “watching, thinking or dreaming about classical dance and dancers,” Christiansen chooses “to [make] connections that can explain the allure of ballet to those uninfected with my mania.”](https://glreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Diaghilev-2023-FINAL-540x540.jpg)
Blog Posts View all
The Spanish Far Right: A Clear and Present Danger to LGBTQ Rights
By John Boyce
In an increasingly fractured European political landscape, a bigoted minority with the right leverage has the potential to endanger hard won progress on LGBTQ rights, and challenges the long held assumption that, to paraphrase MLK, the arc inevitably bends towards inclusion.
Saleem Kidwai, India’s LGBT Activist
By Lucky Issar
Apart from being a history professor, Saleem was a queer activist, overtly subdued, but emphatically resilient. He eagerly offered his solidarity to a variety of causes, but he did not beat his chest or shout slogans.
Review of “Queering the Crip, Cripping the Queer” Exhibit
By Denise Noe
Queering the Crip, Cripping the Queer is an enthralling art exhibit. .. It brings to light shared histories of misunderstanding, bigotry, persecution, but most importantly, shared histories of resilience.
Here's My Story View all
An Awkward Coffee Break
By John Brady McDonald
While it is true that it has been over twenty years since I’ve been in a relationship with a man, it’s always awkward to explain to others that my attraction to men isn’t something I ‘switched off,’ and that it is no different than a heterosexual relationship built on trust, love, and loyalty.
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Book Reviews
The Way Things Were
YIDDISH has entered the American language so extensively by now that most people have probably heard the word “shiksa”—especially if they’ve read Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint. It’s the Yiddish word for a gentile woman. Robert Hofler’s new book on the making of the Barbra Streisand-Robert Redford movie The Way We Were (1973) is about its masculine equivalent, the much less euphonic “shegetz.”
The Well-Painted Life
Henry James Framed is a beautifully produced book. The illustrations are first-rate, and the design allows for easy access to footnotes. Many readers skip footnotes, but Michael Anesko, a professor at Penn State, writes with such wit and clarity, it would be a mistake not to dig further into the delights he has served up in this book.
A Brooklyn Boy in Tangier
YOU’VE NEVER heard of Alfred Chester? Well, you’re surely not alone. Chester died in 1971 at the age of 43 of a heart attack caused by drugs and drinking. His closest friend and staunchest supporter, Edward Field, considers it a suicide. All of Alfred Chester’s books are out of print, and he published only five in his lifetime.
‘Airbrushed from History’
Schwabe probably carried his secrets to the grave when he was killed in 1915 by a German officer who, convinced that Schwabe was a traitor because he spoke perfect German, summarily executed him for treason. When Schwabe enlisted, he changed his German name to the more English-sounding Shaw, but he could not convince a German officer that he was English—an irony that Wilde the dramatist would have relished.
An Operatic Fiasco à Trois
Libretto is filled with dramatic complexity, but Wadsworth steers the story to resolution, clarifying subplots with brief recaps. Her dialogue comes across as direct and sophisticated, reflecting careful observation of how people talk, with curiosity and brisk ripostes. Like the narrator in Light, Coming Back, Ally comes to understand “old perceptions of love and loss” and to imagine new possibilities for her vagabond writing life.
Power Games Inhabit Guibert’s Last Novel
Guibert is clearly interested in the master-servant dynamic: What role does each perform? Who enslaves whom? What binds the two into a relationship? What, indeed, is the attraction, keen among some homosexuals, of a uniform? “I’ve always been fascinated, almost erotically so, by the outfits that minions of all sorts wear,” the master says. He has adopted an almost masochistic position vis-à-vis his manservant, who, in turn, indulges in ever more sadistic behavior toward his employer.