Customer Reviews

The Unmaking of a Dancer

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I read this book quite a few years ago and the first thing that struck me was just how miserable this woman was. Then how miserable everyone was around her. If indeed this was the case it is a wonder that everyone did not simply quit. No one ever found joy in dancing in her book. Not ballet dancers, not Broadway dancers, no one.

She is constantly pulled and pushed in and out of class, in and out of schools, indeed to other cities with little thought other than to follow the instructions given to her. She seems to have simply fallen into the life of a dancer. She never actually chooses it herself until far into her adult-hood, and then only to prove that she can "still do it".

In the end this book is about a woman who should never have set foot into a dance studio, the ultimate tragedy being that it took her years of wasted time and energy to figure that out. One good thing about the book, it is a clear illustration of what living your life according to what other people think you should do, will leave you with in the end. Nothing.