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ballet stories
Apr. 17th, 2011 11:30 amWHITE SWAN, BLACK SWAN by Adrienne Sharp
This is a loosely connected series of short stories revolving around professional ballet. While each story is self-contained, some characters make encore appearances and over the course of the book a chaotic meta-narrative emerges.
These are stories of broken romances, broken dancers, broken hearts, broken dreams. And yet each story captures and reflects the beauty, elegance and sheer passion of ballet.
While the stories themselves are fictional (though famous dancers like Balanchine, Nureyev, Fonteyn, Farrell, Godunov and Baryshnikov appear as characters), they glitter with an intimate authenticity that renders them deeply compelling and unforgettable. Although they reveal the tarnished edges of the gilded ballet ideal and crumble the illusions of perfection, what remains at the end is the pure heart of the dance. Despite the bleak tone, the bitterness and regret and despair that plagues some of the characters throughout the stories, their dedication to dance fills the pages with a core of beauty and hope.
Sharp's writing is beautiful and her sense of timing is quite clever ~ she lends an appropriate rhythm to every story; whether it's the speed and staccato of a grand allegro or the lilting grace of an adagio, every story feels like a dance.
This is a loosely connected series of short stories revolving around professional ballet. While each story is self-contained, some characters make encore appearances and over the course of the book a chaotic meta-narrative emerges.
These are stories of broken romances, broken dancers, broken hearts, broken dreams. And yet each story captures and reflects the beauty, elegance and sheer passion of ballet.
While the stories themselves are fictional (though famous dancers like Balanchine, Nureyev, Fonteyn, Farrell, Godunov and Baryshnikov appear as characters), they glitter with an intimate authenticity that renders them deeply compelling and unforgettable. Although they reveal the tarnished edges of the gilded ballet ideal and crumble the illusions of perfection, what remains at the end is the pure heart of the dance. Despite the bleak tone, the bitterness and regret and despair that plagues some of the characters throughout the stories, their dedication to dance fills the pages with a core of beauty and hope.
Sharp's writing is beautiful and her sense of timing is quite clever ~ she lends an appropriate rhythm to every story; whether it's the speed and staccato of a grand allegro or the lilting grace of an adagio, every story feels like a dance.
