Following her PhD, Homans accepted a position as a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at NYU, where she wrote her first book, ''Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet.
Apollo's Angels'' traced back the origins of ballet from the Renaissance to modern times. The book was described by
The New York Times as "the only truly definitive history of ballet". It was a finalist for the
National Book Critics Circle Award and was named as one of the "10 Best Books of 2010" by the New York Times. Homans' claim that ballet is a dying art form generated controversy. Art critic
Claudia La Rocco rebuffed Homans' claims and critiqued the book for its alleged lack of attention to post-
George Balanchine developments in ballet, including
William Forsythe. From 2012 to 2013, Homans was granted a
Guggenheim Fellowship as she began writing her second book, a history of George Balanchine. The following year, she established the Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to help "establish ballet as a serious subject of academic inquiry." In its inaugural cohort, the institute accepted seven fellows;
John Carrafa,
Gregory Mosher,
J. David Velleman,
Heather Watts,
Frederick Wiseman,
Christopher d'Amboise, and John Michael Schert. In 2016, Homans was selected as a Fellow of the New York Public Library's Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. In 2019, Homans' Center for Ballet and the Arts received a three-year $2 million grant. She was also named The New Yorker's dance critic, replacing Joan Acocella. She was named a fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021. Her 2022 book ''Mr. B: George Balanchine's 20th Century'' was a finalist for the 2023
National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography and the
Pulitzer Prize for Biography. ==Personal life==