Personal Life Media

Toni Bentley took her first ballet class at age four. She entered the School of American Ballet at age ten and studied there for eight years. At age eighteen she joined George Balanchine's New York City Ballet and danced there for ten years. She is the author of Winter Season: A Dancer's Journal, Holding On to the Air: The Autobiography of Suzanne Farrell (co-authored with Farrell), Costumes by Karinska, and Sisters of Salome -- all named New York Times Notable Books. She has written articles and reviews for the New York Times Book Review, New York Newsday, Los Angeles Times, Arts & Antiques, Rolling Stone, Smithsonian, Ballet Review, Dance Magazine, Allure, the New Republic, BookForum, and the New York Review of Books. She has given talks at Harvard University, the Oscar Wilde Society in London, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, the University of North Florida, and the Philoctetes Society in New York. In 2004 ReganBooks/HarperCollins published her fifth book, The Surrender, An Erotic Memoir, which was named one of the 100 Notable Books of 2004 by the New York Times, and one of the Best Books of the Year by Publishers Weekly. It has been translated into ten languages.