Today I’d like to share an interview with Daphne Kalotay, a writer who has authored a book that has ballet as a backdrop for the story…
1. Could you tell readers a bit about who you are and what you do?
I’m a dance-lover rather than a dancer; and I’m a writer with two books of fiction published, the first one a short story collection, the second one a novel.
2. What is your latest book called and what is it about?
It’s called RUSSIAN WINTER and centers on a Bolshoi ballerina during the last years of Stalin’s rule. The book goes back and forth between modern-day Boston, where the dancer has been living in the decades since her defection, and post-World War II Moscow, where we witness her life as a young dancer rising in the ranks of the Bolshoi and her friendships with other artists striving to fulfill their dreams while living in a totalitarian state.
3. Why did you decide ballet would play a part in your book?
From the moment I pictured this elderly Russian woman in Boston, I thought of her as a ballerina, maybe because the idea of exploring that world and learning about life in a ballet company was exciting to me. Then, in my research, I began to understand just how important the ballet was to the Soviet regime, which relied on the beauty and glamour of the theatre as a counter to the bleakness of daily life. I’m fascinated by how well that government understood the need for the arts in society and tried to foster—well, manipulate—ballet, opera, music, literature, if in an ultimately stifling manner. What I most wanted to show in my novel, though, was how art is this humanizing force that really can save us.
Only later did it strike me how appropriate ballet in particular was to the book, since I was writing about life in authoritarian state, and ballet can be seen as authoritarian, with its precise rules and strict discipline. Think of the corps de ballet, the self-abnegation and conformity ballet often requires. So it was a good parallel to what I was trying to say about Soviet life.
4. How did you make sure your information about dance was accurate? [Read more…]
