Customer Reviews

Collusion: Memoir of a Young Girl and Her Ballet Master

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Yes, well written. Yes, somewhat disturbing. Yes, obsession. But, as far as memories can be accurate the best description of what a child is able to do to please an adult, how much a child is able to deny what we would call normal needs to reach a goal itself has the urge to reach. First it is perfection in ballet, perfect posture, perfect body control - pleasing herself. Then, with a strike of his cane her ballet master claims her, and so there comes a shift - he becomes the center of her universe, starting an emotional bonding which excludes the rest of the world, also her family. Emotional needs can be as strong as hunger and thirst, and in fulfilling or denying an adult can do as much good and damage as with starving or overfeeding. Read and decide for yourself if this relationship was good or evil - or both.

I couldn't put this down - from the opening scene I was fascinated and locked in Evan's erotic spell. Collusion presents a more than plausible picture of the shape that female adolescent sexuality can take.

It's fascinating to be allowed a glimpse into the hidden world of advanced ballet study. It's disturbing to see a child getting an erotic thrill from being dominated, both mentally and physically, by an older man. Provided this is wholly autobiographical, I believe that the author's memory of her thoughts on the matter are accurately portrayed, but it's disturbing nonetheless. In the book, she wonders if (and hopes that) F. found their interaction to be erotic. Maybe he didn't. Maybe he was employing dominance as a tactic that he knew would motivate her to perform to the best of her ability. Maybe he had her fooled. But he created a monster - an arrogant girl who would stop at nothing to provoke him and turn his wrath/dominance upon her, at the expense of her career and relationships with others.

Evan Zimroth's touching and insightful memoir left this reader stunned and enlightened. It is one of the most honest personal revelations I have read, boldly honest and unwilling to cringe under or conform to what our sexually dysfunctional society says should be the "normal" response to what is told of in this book. Obviously, one should not read this book if one is afraid of hearing what a real girl thought about a very unusual and intimate relationship. It is not a story of prurient events; it is about the love this girl has for the discipline of ballet and for a dynamic and compelling man who initiated her into its world. Ms. Zimroth has unsparingly chronicled her growth of character during the two years of her tale, and tells a story that is at once tense, dramatic, frightening, exciting and uplifting. Her refusal to cast a sentimental pall over her childhood and these events certainly frightens those who cannot see the individual human being that is a child for all the treacle with which we sugar-coat the concept of childhood. This book is a template by which we can judge the ability of people to truly listen to other voices instead of running in fear from differing views. Despite the lip service paid to "inclusiveness" in liberal circles these days, some of the responses I have seen to this memoir indicate the degree to which that concept should include the label "but only to include that of which we approve." Finally, a note about hypocrisy. I couldn't help but think, while reading what is one of the most intense scenes in the book (when the young girl is punished by her mentor for smoking) that, was that punishment to be inflicted by a parent, most of us would not think twice. But from someone else? Horrors! Yet the dynamics of the event were no different than the countless physical punishments which parents inflict daily and unquestioningly (and, many times, rightly) on their own offspring. Children today exist only as slaves, owned by their parents and forced to obey the strictures of whatever -ism those around them feel they should be taught. We career from no discipline for children to subservience for them without ever thinking to teach them simple morals and ethics that respect them as individuals and take into account their need to grow through experience. (They certainly will not grow through coddling and protection from everything the world has to offer, only to thrust them out unready and frightened into harsh reality when they turn eighteen.) The horror some adults feel at the child who can think for and desire for herself is evident in the very parents who spend so much time praising children as pure, unsullied angels. Those of us who remember our childhoods well, as Ms. Zimroth does, know better. This book deserves huge success. Congratulations and thanks to Evan Zimroth for having the courage to tell us this remarkable story.

Collusion was extremely well written and easy to read. It kept my interest from the first sentance to the last word.

However, the content was somewhat questionable. It was a wonderful and interesting showing of the life of a serious dancer, yet seemed SO obsessed with violence, sex and eroticism.

Interesting, but not really worth the time.

As a former dancer, the title alone intrigued me enough to buy this book. As I finished each page I was struck by how much the words and stories mirrored my strict ballet training growing up. While I cannot identify with the eroticism she feels as a part of the relationship with her ballet master, I was eerily reminded of other feelings: control, admiration to the point of obsession with an older, authoritative male teacher, endless aspiration for perfection, and a realization that ballet is not just a part of one's life, but has become the sole purpose of one's life.

This was an interesting story and it gave a good feel for the drive and obsession that is associated with being a standout ballet student and ultimately a professional dancer. This was a very subtle book, however....in some ways, it seemed that very little actually happened within its pages and that much of the activity was felt, implied, unspoken, and under the surface. I feel that the girl's teacher, F., acted very cowardly in his final act and was very much to blame in making the heroine feel that she was "above the law" at his ballet school....no doubt driving her over-confident behavior. Overall, an interesting read for anyone interested in the day-to-day lifestyle and requirements of a ballet dancer in-the-making!

As a former dancer I was intrigued by reviews of this book. It turned out to be a complete waste of my time. The writing was dull and thoroughly uncaptivating. Although I'm sure Evan Zimroth gave up her childhood for dance, I found her storytelling to be written more for shock value than for anything else. I had difficulty finishing this book. I'd reccommend skipping this one.

This is an autobiography that reads like a novel of self-revelation. We are even given Evan's fantasy of what she wanted to have happen at the climax of her relationship with "F". When he asked her at the outset, "Do you want to be a great dancer?" Her answer in all honesty should have been, "Yes, if that will make you mine."

Did she really have the potential to become a great dancer, a potential she squandered in her obsession with possessing "F"? Or was he using her, making her his pet not only to inspire her but an an object lesson to the rest of his class? In ballet there is always someone who is better than you, someone who gets more attention, more praise, more respect. Dancers fail to develop who will not strive in the face of this disappointment. "F's" motives in singling Evan out may have been to harden his pupils to his fact, and to goad them into working harder. Were her responses to his attentions merely the perfervid imaginations of a love-struck teenager, or was this a genuine duel of love and power between a svengali and his most promising pupil? At fourteen she already understood her powers of attraction, and in testing the limits of her power it was she who either betrayed or defeated him by simply neglecting to learn a simple stand-in role. In his humiliation and frustration he lashes himself not her, and their relationship collapses. Subsequently we learn that the highlight of her life was never dancing, but always "F". Zimroth's narrative is sad, compelling, well told, and raises more questions than it answers.

I'm sorry. I tried to read this book but couldn't. I was so disgusted. Violence is glorified as a vehicle for perverse sexuality, albeit imagined. I certainly hope that the wretched instructor would be as horrified as I was at this incestuous breach of the "in loco parentis" status once held by all teachers.