Theirs are stories of heartbreak and resilience, of reinvention and regret. From sweet and innocent Emily, whose body was deemed thin enough only when she was too ill to eat, to precocious and talented Meiying, who was thrilled to be cast as the young star of the Nutcracker but dismayed to see Asians stereotyped onstage, and Lily, who won the carrot they had all been chasing-an apprenticeship with the New York City Ballet-only to spend her first season dancing eight shows a week on a broken foot. Profound, nuanced, and passionately researched, Don't Think, Dear is Robb's excavation of her adolescent years as a dancer and an exploration of how those days informed her life for years to come.Īs she grapples with the pressure she faced as a student at the School of American Ballet, she investigates the fates of her former classmates as well. The traits ballet takes to an extreme-stoicism, silence, submission-are valued in girls and women everywhere. After she quit, she tried to avoid ballet-only to realize, years later, that she was still haunted by the lessons she had absorbed in the mirror-lined studios of Lincoln Center, and that they had served her well in the wider world. But by age fifteen, she had to face the reality that she would never meet the impossibly high standards of the hyper-competitive ballet world. Growing up, Alice Robb dreamed of becoming a ballet dancer. "Neither romanticizing or decrying the dance world, Robb beautifully explores the push-pull of masochism and perfectionism-preoccupations not just relevant to aspiring dancers, but to anyone who's ever pursued an almost-impossible dream." ?- Ada Calhoun, New York Times bestselling author of Why We Can't Sleep and Also a PoetĪn incisive exploration of ballet's role in the modern world, told through the experience of the author and her classmates at the most elite ballet school in the country: the School of American Ballet.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |