A reckoning with one of our most beloved art forms, whose past and present are shaped by gender, racial, and class inequities—and a look inside the fight for its future Every day, in dance studios all across America, legions of little children line up at the barre to take ballet class. This time in the studio shapes their lives, instilling lessons about gender, power, bodies, and their place in the world both in and outside of dance. In Turning Pointe, journalist Chloe Angyal captures the intense love for ballet that so many dancers feel, while also grappling with its devastating shortcomings: the power imbalance of an art form performed mostly by women, but dominated by men; the impossible standards of beauty and thinness; and the racism that keeps so many people of color out of ballet. As the rigid traditions of ballet grow increasingly out of step with the modern world, a new generation of dancers is confronting these issues head on, in the studio and on stage. For ballet to survive the twenty-first century and forge a path into a more socially just future, this reckoning is essential.

A New Classic for Today's Dancer The Ballet Companion is a fresh, comprehensive, and thoroughly up-to-date reference book for the dancer. With 150 stunning photographs of ballet stars Maria Riccetto and Benjamin Millepied demonstrating perfect execution of positions and steps, this elegant volume brims with everything today's dance student needs, including: Practical advice for getting started, such as selecting a school, making the most of class, and studio etiquette Explanations of ballet fundamentals and major training systems An illustrated guide through ballet class -- warm-up, barre, and center floor Guidelines for safe, healthy dancing through a sensible diet, injury prevention, and cross-training with yoga and Pilates Descriptions of must-see ballets and glossaries of dance, music, and theater terms Along the way you'll find technique secrets from stars of American Ballet Theatre, lavishly illustrated sidebars on ballet history, and tips on everything from styling a ballet bun to stage makeup to performing the perfect pirouette. Whether a budding ballerina, serious student, or adult returning to ballet, dancers will find a lively mix of ballet's time-honored traditions and essential new information.

What becomes of ballet dancers when they finally leave the stage, when their last curtain falls? Maja Langsdorff, journalist, writer and a former ballet dancer, interviewed 27 former dancers and recorded their life stories from their first ballet steps to their lives after dance. At the time of their interviews they were between 21 and 62 years old, their careers had ended from three months to 34 years ago. Dancers give a lot, if not everything, in the performances. They live their lives in the limelight. In ballet, profession and calling are united: passion and suffering are often close to each other. For most dancers, their time is up at thirty, thirty-five. They disappear from view. One doesn't hear anything about them anymore; as if they were swallowed up by the earth. This book investigates their fates. These short biographies show what formed them, what moved them, what influenced them. And the portraits leave no doubt, that dancers are special people; even if they no longer dance.

Three orphan girls. A pair of pink slippers. A lifetime in the spotlight. Read the classic that has captivated generations! Pauline, Petrova, and Posy love their quiet life together. They are orphans who have been raised as sisters, and when their new family needs money, the girls want to help. They decide to join the Children's Academy of Dancing and Stage Training to earn their keep. Each girl works hard following her dream. Pauline is destined for the movies. Posy is a born dancer. And Petrova? She finds she'd rather be a pilot than perform a pirouette. This beautiful children's classic is perfect for girls who love to dream about ballet, friendship, and finding their own special talents. Adult readers may remember them as the "Shoes" books from You've Got Mail!

When an alligator shows up to class one day, Mrs. Iraina and her ballet students are very suprised. But she is able to follow along, so they decide it's okay for her to join. The class starts calling her Tanya and even creates a new dance to showcase her larger-than-life talents and big, swishy tail: "The Legend of the Swamp Queen." Tanya has the starring role.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, LOS ANGELES TIMES, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY For more than four hundred years, the art of ballet has stood at the center of Western civilization. Its traditions serve as a record of our past. Lavishly illustrated and beautifully told, Apollo’s Angels—the first cultural history of ballet ever written—is a groundbreaking work. From ballet’s origins in the Renaissance and the codification of its basic steps and positions under France’s Louis XIV (himself an avid dancer), the art form wound its way through the courts of Europe, from Paris and Milan to Vienna and St. Petersburg. In the twentieth century, émigré dancers taught their art to a generation in the United States and in Western Europe, setting off a new and radical transformation of dance. Jennifer Homans, a historian, critic, and former professional ballerina, wields a knowledge of dance born of dedicated practice. Her admiration and love for the ballet, as Entertainment Weekly notes, brings “a dancer’s grace and sure-footed agility to the page.”

“A glimpse into the fragile psyche of a dancer.” —The Washington Post Jenifer Ringer, a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, was thrust into the headlines after her weight was commented on by a New York Times critic, and her response ignited a public dialogue about dance and weight. Ballet aficionados and aspiring performers of all ages will want to join Ringer behind the scenes as she shares her journey from student to star and candidly discusses both her struggle with an eating disorder and the media storm that erupted after the Times review. An unusually upbeat account of life on the stage, Dancing Through It is also a coming-of-age story and an inspiring memoir of faith and of triumph over the body issues that torment all too many women and men.

A pathbreaking social history that takes seriously the experiences of the countless everyday people who pursued recreational ballet, Ballet Class: An American History explores the growth of this now quintessential extracurricular activity as it became an integral part of American childhood across borders of gender, class, race, and sexuality.

A dark-hued, hybrid novel by a writer who “delivers our culture back to us, made entirely new” (A. M. Homes) In The Complete Ballet, John Haskell choreographs an intricate and irresistible pas de deux in which fiction and criticism come together to create a new kind of story. Fueled by the dramatic retelling of five romantic ballets, and interwoven with a contemporary story about a man whose daunting gambling debt pushes him to the edge of his own abyss, it is both a pulpy entertainment and a meditation on the physicality—and psychology—of dance. The unnamed narrator finds himself inexorably drawn back to the pre–cell phone world of Technicolor Los Angeles, to a time when the tragedies of his life were about to collide. Working as a part-time masseur in Hollywood, he attends an underground poker game with his friend Cosmo, a strip-club entrepreneur. What happens there hurtles the narrator down the road and into the room where the novel’s violent and surreal showdown leaves him a different person. As the narrator revisits his past, he simultaneously inhabits and reconstructs the mythic stories of ballet, assessing along the way the lives and obsessions of Nijinsky and Balanchine, Pavlova and Fonteyn, Joseph Cornell and the story’s presiding spirit, the film director John Cassavetes. This compulsively readable fiction is ultimately a profound and haunting consideration of the nature of art and identity.