"These pictures of the students of Ballet Tech are beautiful and true. They show a new generation of American ballet dancers as varied as America." --Mikhail Baryshnikov
Through a striking combination of color and black-and-white photography, Jim Varriale takes readers inside Ballet Tech, a school where city kids of all shapes, sizes, and backgrounds have the chance to become professional ballet dancers.
Ballet Tech is America's first public school just for ballet. It has a unique philosophy: to find dance talent in the New York City public-school system. Each year, more than thirty thousand elementary-school students are auditioned, and about a thousand are invited to take classes, free of charge. Jim Varriale follows the children's training from their weekly beginning classes through the full-time schooling they receive as young adults. With quotes and candid photographs, he shows the elements that shape their new lives as dancers--barre work, toe shoes, demanding teachers, long subway rides, camaraderie, competition, performances, and, for the few with exceptional talent and perseverance, places in professional dance companies.
Like Ballet Tech itself, this book will encourage new groups of children from diverse backgrounds to love dance and to appreciate the power it has to change lives.
