Few women do it and even fewer will admit to it. But in Toni Bentley's daring and intimate memoir, The Surrender, she pulls the sheets back on an erotic experience that's been forbidden since the Bible and celebrates "the joy that lies on the other side of convention, where risk is real and rapture resides." From Story of O to The Kiss to The Sexual Life of Catherine M., readers have been enthralled with sexually subversive memoirs by women. But even those erotic classics didn't navigate the psychosexual terrain that Bentley does when she meets a lover who introduces her to a radical and unexpected pleasure, to the "holy" act that she came to see as her awakening. The Surrender is a witty, intelligent, and eloquent exploration of one woman's obsession that will be sure to leave readers questioning their own desires.

The Surrender

Bentley, Toni

Biographies & Memoirs

Harper-perennial

This New York Times Notable Book is a stunning story of sexual and spiritual awakening.
Few women do it and even fewer will admit to it. But in Toni Bentley's daring and intimate memoir, The Surrender, she pulls the sheets back on an erotic experience that's been forbidden since the Bible and celebrates "the joy that lies on the other side of convention, where risk is real and rapture resides." From Story of O to The Kiss to The Sexual Life of Catherine M, readers have been enthralled with sexually subversive memoirs by women. But even those erotic classics didn't navigate the psychosexual terrain that Bentley does when she meets a lover who introduces her to a radical and unexpected pleasure, to the "holy" act that she came to see as her awakening.
The Surrender is a witty, intelligent, and eloquent exploration of one woman's obsession that will be sure to leave readers questioning their own desires.

The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir

Arts & Literature

Ecco

Few women do it and even fewer will admit to it. But in Toni Bentley's daring and intimate memoir, The Surrender, she pulls the sheets back on an erotic experience that's been forbidden since the Bible and celebrates "the joy that lies on the other side of convention, where risk is real and rapture resides." From Story of O to The Kiss to The Sexual Life of Catherine M., readers have been enthralled with sexually subversive memoirs by women. But even those erotic classics didn't navigate the psychosexual terrain that Bentley does when she meets a lover who introduces her to a radical and unexpected pleasure, to the "holy" act that she came to see as her awakening.
The Surrender is a witty, intelligent, and eloquent exploration of one woman's obsession that will be sure to leave readers questioning their own desires.

Suzanne Farrell joined the New York City Ballet in 1961 and went on to become one of George Balanchine's most celebrated muses. By the time she retired from performing in 1989, she had achieved a career without precedent in the history of ballet. She danced over one hundred ballets, a third of which were composed expressly for her by Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, and Maurice Bejart, including masterpieces in which the limits of ballet technique were expanded to a degree not seen before. As a repetiteur for the George Balanchine Trust, she has staged Balanchine ballets for companies throughout the United States, as well as for the Royal Danish Ballet, the Kirov Ballet, and the Bolshoi Ballet. In 1999 she staged a week-long season of Balanchine for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., which led to the creation of the Suzanne Farrell Ballet as an ongoing partnership with the Center. Farrell joined the faculty of the Department of Dance at Florida State University as a Francis Eppes Professor in 2000. She is the recipient of honorary degrees from several universities, including Yale, Georgetown, and Notre Dame.

Holding on to the Air

Farrell, Suzanne

Humor & Entertainment

Penguin??Books

As the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth, a short-lived but extraordinary cultural phenomenon spread throughout Europe and the United States-"Salomania." The term was coined when biblical bad girl Salome was resurrected from the Old Testament and reborn on the modern stage in Oscar Wilde's 1893 play Salome and in Richard Strauss's 1905 opera based on it. Salome quickly came to embody the turn-of-the-century concept of the femme fatale. She and the striptease Wilde created for her, "The Dance of the Seven Veils," soon captivated the popular imagination in performances on stages high and low, from the Metropolitan Opera to the Ziegfeld Follies. This book details for the first time the Salomania craze and four remarkable women who personified Salome and performed her seductive dance: Maud Allan, a Canadian modern dancer; Mata Hari, a Dutch spy; Ida Rubinstein, a Russian heiress; and French novelist Colette. Toni Bentley masterfully weaves the stories of these women together, showing how each embraced the persona of the femme fatale and transformed the misogynist idea of a dangerously sexual woman into a form of personal liberation. Bentley explores how Salome became a pop icon in Europe and America, how the real women who played her influenced the beginnings of modern dance, and how her striptease became in the twentieth century an act of glamorous empowerment and unlikely feminism. Sisters of Salome is a dramatic account of an ancient myth played out onstage and in real life, at the fascinating edge where sex and art, desire and decency, merge.

Sisters of Salome

History

World

Yale University Press

The diary of a member of the New York City Ballet provides a behind-the-scenes view of the ballet company and the experiences of the dancers

Winter Season

Americas

Random House, Inc.

Arts & Photography

Performing Arts

Vintage

Serenade: A Balanchine Story

Toni Bentley, a dancer for George Balanchine, the greatest ballet maker of the 20th century, tells the story of Serenade, his iconic masterpiece, and what it was like to dance--and live--in his world at New York City Ballet during its legendary era. At age seventeen, Toni Bentley was chosen by Balanchine, then in his final years, to join the New York City Ballet. From both backstage and onstage, she carries us through the serendipitous history and physical intricacies and demands of Serenade: its dazzling opening, with seventeen women in a double-diamond pattern; its radical, even jazzy, use of the highly refined language that is ballet; its place in the choreographer's own dramatic story of his immigration to the United States from Soviet Russia; its mystical--and literal--embodiment of the tradition of classical ballet in just thirty-three minutes. Bentley takes us inside the rarefied, intense, and thrilling world Balanchine created through his lifelong devotion to celebrating and expanding female beauty and strength--a world that, inevitably, passed upon his death. An intimate elegy to grace and loss and to the imprint of a towering artist and his transcendent creation on Bentley's own life, Serenade: A Balanchine Story is a rich narrative by a dynamic artist about the nature of art itself at its most ephemeral and glorious.

A ballerina tells the story of George Balanchine's iconic masterpiece, Serenade, and what it is like to be one the young women who danced it, lived it, during his lifetime. At age seventeen, Toni Bentley was chosen by Balanchine, then in his final years, to join the New York City Ballet. From backstage and onstage, she carries us through both the serendipitous history and physical intricacies and demands of Serenade-its dazzling opening, with seventeen women in a double-diamond pattern; its radical, even jazzy, use of the highly refined language that is ballet; its place in the choreographer's own dramatic story of emigration to the U.S. from Bolshevik Russia; its profound influence on the art form internationally. Bentley takes us inside the rarefied, intense and thrilling world Balanchine created through his lifelong devotion to celebrating and expanding female beauty and strength-a world that, inevitably, passed upon his death. An intimate elegy to grace and loss and the imprint of a towering artist and his transcendent creation on her life, Serenade- A Balanchine Story is a rich narrative by a woman artist about the nature of art itself at its most fleeting, dynamic, and glorious.

Pantheon

Holding on to the Air: An Autobiography

Summit Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Bentley, Toni. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Bentley, Toni

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Bentley, Toni. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Surrender

The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir

The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir

Holding on to the Air

Sisters of Salome

Winter Season

Winter Season

Serenade: A Balanchine Story

Serenade: A Balanchine Story

Holding on to the Air: An Autobiography