The Unmaking of a Dancer

All writers' pasts are prologue to publication, but few are so dramatic as this unconventional life, which began not in literature but in the cloistered world of professional ballet. Joan Brady grew up in California, the daughter of a black-listed economics professor and his strong-willed, brilliant, powerfully jealous and ultimately vengeful wife. Dancing lessons took Joan away from the tensions between these two, and she turned out to be extremely gifted. By the time she was twenty, she was dancing with the most important ballet company in the Western world, George Balanchine's New York City Ballet, then at the height of its artistic powers. At the crucial moment, Joan lost her confidence and so her chance at stardom. Dance had taught her discipline, technique, elegance and courage. Now she needed all these qualities to fight her mother, whose vengeance had destroyed her prospects, and to claim for herself the love of Dexter Masters, whom her mother had coveted for years. Joan Brady won her man, a university degree, a happy marriage, and a new life in England. She had a son. Then after years away from the excruciating physical demands of ballet, she decided to try again. At thirty-eight, she undertook an astonishing retraining programme and began the journey back to performance level and another chance, to take if she wished. The pages of this book are peopled with characters, many famous, some unknown, so powerful that they leap off the page. Joan Brady writes with exhilarating honesty of growing up, of the emotional and physical intensity of a dancer's life, and so, with ballet as allegory, of life itself: its elations, exhaustions, contradictions and despairs. This is a fierce and moving autobiography. It is also a testament to the reality of dreams that come true.


Genre: General Fiction