Bodies Never Lie introduces the Ballet Cookbook Dinner Series, starting with Mr B.

Bod­ies Never Lie, “A blog about dance in New York”, has star­ted an intriguing new series of posts, kick­ing off with Eat­ing George Bal­anchine: The First Install­ment of the Bal­let Cook­book Din­ner Series.

Here is how blog­ger Ryan Wen­zel intro­duces his superb idea:

As both a bal­letomane and a bib­li­o­phile, I had little choice but to pur­chase The Bal­let Cook Book, by former baller­ina Tana­quil Le Clercq. Although out of print for dec­ades, the book has become legendary in dance circles. Cop­ies are like gold dust, but after a pro­longed online search I suc­ceeded in find­ing one for the rel­at­ively low price of $80.

Paging through it for the first time, it was clear the book was worth every cent. Writ­ten in 1966, the 424-page volume is part cook­book and part year­book, with recipes and bio­graph­ies of the most renowned bal­let dan­cers and cho­reo­graph­ers of the day, includ­ing Fre­d­er­ick Ashton, Suz­anne Far­rell, Jerome Rob­bins, and Edward Vil­lella. I knew imme­di­ately that I wanted to pre­pare the recipes, and to enjoy them with oth­ers who love bal­let and food.

There was one prob­lem: I’m a ter­rible cook. For help, I turned to Ant­o­nio Car­mena, New York City Bal­let soloist and gradu­ate of the French Culin­ary Insti­tute. (We ori­gin­ally met through Twit­ter.) He signed on imme­di­ately, as did Susan LaRosa, whose pas­sion for pre­par­ing vin­tage recipes led her to start her own bak­ing blog, A Cake Bakes in Brook­lyn. As our enthu­si­asm for the pro­ject grew, we decided using The Bal­let Cook Book to pre­pare one meal wouldn’t suf­fice: We would plan a monthly series of dinners.

This is fol­lowed by a fun account of the adven­tures of the ballet-cooks, and there’s even a video which proves that they really did cook everything themselves!

Balanchine’s fish din­ner for two and buck­wheat kasha. Pho­to­graph by Paul LaRosa

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