In the current dance scene, performers contend with choreography that involves extreme dance, multiple techniques, and acrobatic moves, exemplified in the popular reality television show, "So You Think You Can Dance." The dilemma for aspiring professionals is that dance class no longer provides sufficient preparation for performing at this level. Dancers who want to achieve their best, avoid injury, and perform at their peak will welcome the insight and advice in the pages of The Dancer's Way. The world-renowned New York City Ballet developed their proven wellness program to help dancers reach their potential without compromising their health. As one of the key designers of this program, former dancer and clinical psychologist Linda Hamilton, Ph.D. provides the essential principles of wellness that will help you achieve your goals in all levels and forms of dance. These include keeping yourself physically healthy, nutritionally sound, and mentally prepared as a dancer. New York City Ballet's celebrated program, here for the first time in book form, highlights every tool you'll need to stay in great shape.

Ballet dancers have the strongest, most beautiful, probably the most envied bodies in the world. How do they stay slender and willowy while maintaining the extraordinary energy it takes to perform night after night? Can a nondancer or an amateur attain a dancer's figure and a dancer's vitality? And keep it? Here, in The Dancers' Body Book, the legendary ballerina Allegra Kent discloses the health, weight-watching, and relaxation secrets of some of the world's greatest ballet dancers -- from Suzanne Farrell and Fernando Bujones to Darci Kistler and Madame Alexandra Danilova. Combining them with two well-balanced diets -- one to lose weight by and one to live by -- and an exercise regimen that can be tailored to the individual, she provides a fabulous fitness program for everyone who longs to be slimmer, healthier, and more energetic. Fourteen varied menus incorporate delicious recipes from the dancers themselves (such as Jacques D'Amboise's Wonderful Dinner Salad and Dierdre Carberry's Almond Meringue Kisses), along with calorie guides and advice on how to create additional menus using your own favorite dishes. Helpful discussions on sports and exercise systems -- ranging from jogging and swimming to the sophisticated "Pilates" workout -- are also included, and in a special chapter entitled "A Healthy Outlook," the dancers talk candidly on such issues as smoking, anorexia, vitamins, doctors, massage, junk foods, fad diets, and injuries. Dancers take meticulous care of all their equipment because training and performance depend on it. Of course, the most essential piece of equipment, the body, needs the most care of all, and that is what this book is about: how to take care of the world's greatest machine. Allegra Kent joined the New York City Ballet at the age of fifteen and was a principal dancer with the company for thirty years, during which time she created a number of starring roles in ballets by Balanchine and Robbins. The mother of two daughters and a son, she is also the author of Allegra Kent's Water Beauty Book.

Deluxe -- Thank You -- Pelham Road -- There Is No Mike Here -- Things People Said: An Essay in Seven Steps -- Temporary Talismans -- Six Hours from Anywhere You Want to Be -- No One Is Ordinary; Everyone Is Ordinary -- Ring Theory -- Saris and Sorrows -- Voice Texting with My Mother.

Fourteen-year-old 03Vicki Harris's dream has come true. She has been accepted into the summer program at New York City's prestigious School of American Ballet. It will be hard work and highly competitive. But Vicki feels ready. She is totally committed to dancing. Vicki isn't prepared to be one of only two African American students in the program. Nor is she expecting the racism she finds within the school. And Michael, from Harlem, takes Vicki completely by surprise. He shakes up her dream world -- where Baryshnikov is her idol, her parents never really got divorced, and every pirouette is perfect -- and shows her that the real world is bigger than a stage.

Dancers experience pain, joy, frustration, rapture, failure, applause, and are above the worldly concerns of food, money, and financial security. They live only to dance. Or do they? The reality is dancers of all ages, types, and skill levels often experience incredible physical and psychological stress and have traditionally bore their pain in stoic silence. In this much needed new book, Dance Magazine's Linda Hamilton offers dancers the same type of advice and understanding they have come to trust from her popular monthly column. Psychologist Hamilton--a former dancer with New York City Ballet under the legendary George Balanchine--offers a complete resource for coping with the day to day pressures of being a dancer. Page after page is filled with the insight that can only come from a person who has been intimately involved in the world of dance. Hamilton outlines strategies for dancers for dealing with a variety of common physical and psychological issues and shows how to be true to your passion and bring back the joy in dancing. The book is filled with answers to dancer's most often asked questions and offers practical methods for dealing with such difficult problems as eating disorders, substance abuse, ruthless competition, and performance anxiety. Advice for Dancers will teach you how to: Achieve you physical potential and select the dance technique that's right for you Find out which teaching practices you can trust and why Learn how to reach your optimal weight without compromising your energy, health, and career Develop healthy relationships both inside and outside the dance studio Use a variety of resources to get work, roles, and promotions Perform technical feats in front of an audience even when you are frightened Advice for Dancers is a result of Hamiltion's extensive research and years clinical work with dancers and includes information for a survey of more that 1,000 dancers from across the country.

This book is about the kind of ordinary dancing you and I might do in our kitchens when a favourite tune comes on. It's more than a social history: it's a set of interconnected histories of the overlooked places where dancing happens . . . Why do we dance together? What does dancing tells us about ourselves, individually and collectively? And what can it do for us? Whether it be at home, '80s club nights, Irish dancehalls or reggae dances, jungle raves or volunteer-run spaces and youth centres, Emma Warren has sought the answers to these questions her entire life. Dancing doesn't just refract the music and culture within which it evolves; it also generates new music and culture. When we speak only of the music, we lose part of the story - the part that finds us dancing as children on the toes of adults; the half that triggers communication across borders and languages; the part that finds us worried that we'll never be able to dance again, and the part that finds us wondering why we were ever nervous in the first place. At the intersection of memoir, social and cultural history, Dance Your Way Home is an intimate foray onto the dancefloor - wherever and whenever it may be - that speaks to the heart of what it is that makes us move.