Not the worst brief overview ever, but it is lacking in terms of discussing queer women and a generally more comprehensive history. It's not a bad place to start your research but it's not particularly expansive.

No. If this is what ballet is then all my years of training and education is for naught. As a queer person I disagree with all of his unexplained conclusions, which he often would confuse with gender expression and role.

It is on how the gay choreographers formed the classic ballet.

I love that this book is out there (and on my shelf), but really, I just wanted it to be so much better. The entire text hangs on suggestion-- this is one of the least gay books "about" queerness I have ever read.

Not that it didn't have some interesting parts-- the section about fairies and their association with homo culture was particularly strong, and I'm definitely going to need to read some Margot Fonteyn biographies now because the snippets on her life were totally fascinating. As for disappointments, as mentioned earlier, it's very closeted. The author does discuss homosexuality in Tchaikovsky and Diaghilev, but glosses over later artists who had the good fortune of living in a culture where they could safely be out. Stoneley admits to blowing his wad on pre-20th Century figures, and leaves the most flamboyant, later figures to other scholars (so little on Nureyev? on AIDS? on drag acts like Ballets Trockadero? seriously?)

Another disappointment is Stoneley's treatment of queer women. Female homosexuality is barely mentioned, other than some far-fetched speculation and Madonna-Britney-esque posing by the ballet dancer/prostitutes of Degas's era. Ida Rubinstein gets a few lines in the sections on the Ballets Russes. But really, Stoneley is tracing ballet's covert appeal to, and safe space for, queer men over time. He presents no evidence of a similar community of queer women, nor any queer female performers (aside from Rubinstein, who was not actually a ballet dancer, and took male as well as female lovers). Not that I can think of any lesbian presence in the ballet community. But to tack women on as an afterthought feels insulting. I wish he had narrowed and clarified his inquiry.

In short, the book serves as a building block for richer books to come.