dance book – Page 4

10 Questions With…Sophie Flack

September 19, 2011 by 4dancers

This week on “10 Questions With…” we’re featuring Sophie Flack, author of “Bunheads”… a book about the ballet world. I’m reading it right now, and it’s fabulous!

1. How did you get involved in dance?

When I was seven, the Boston Ballet studios were under renovation and they temporarily relocated to my school gymnasium. I’d see these lithe ballerinas lingering in the hallways as they stretched and spoke to one another between rehearsals. I begged my mother to take ballet classes, but I was too shy to walk into theclass that first day. I wanted my mother to go with me. It took me six months to find the courage to walk in alone.

2. What is your dance background?

I began my training at the Boston Ballet School learning the Vaganova technique. When I was eleven I was introduced to the Balanchine technique by Patricia McBride at the Chautauqua summer intensive. After watching a video of McBride dancing Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, I decided that I wanted to dance with the New York City Ballet, because I wanted to move like she did.

When I returned home, I transferred to Ballet Workshop of New England in order to study Balanchine technique. I spent my summers training with Suzanne Farrell, Gloria Govrin, Violette Verdy and Patricia McBride.

My mother would drive me to New York City in order to take private lessons with Nancy Bielski and Wilhelm Burmann, some of the best coaches in the country. I took open classes at Steps on Broadway alongside New York City Ballet dancers, and regular Pilates privates with Laurie Hurt.

At fifteen, I was accepted into the School of American Ballet on full scholarship and moved to New York City alone. At age seventeen, I joined the New York City Ballet as an apprentice and became a member of the corps de ballet the following year.

After dancing with the New York City Ballet for nine years, I retired from professional dance in 2009.

3. What is your book about, and who is it written for? [Read more…]

Review: Carla And Leo’s World Of Dance

July 20, 2011 by 4dancers

Quite frankly, this is an amazing book. Created by a former fashion model and dancer and designed for children ages 8 to 12, “Carla and Leo’s World of Dance” is well written and beautifully illustrated.

The book tells the story of best friends, Leo and Carla, who take classes at a dance studio. They sample everything from swing to foxtrot to tango. Throughout their journey, the reader learns about the history and background of each dance style as their teacher, Miss Paulina teaches them.

The book is visually engaging from the moment you see it. The cover features a darling picture of Carla and Leo dancing together, and he has sparkles on his tie while she has them dotted throughout her skirt–a detail you can’t see from the photo.

Thierry Perez is the illustrator, and he is nothing short of amazing. Every picture is imaginative and skillfully drawn–the book is really a feast for the eyes. It’s the kind of thing that as a child I would have cherished, and looked at again and again.

Author, Agatha Relota has done a wonderful job of capturing her love of dance here–it’s contagious. She strikes a nice balance between educating the reader and sharing the excitement of discovering dance for the first time. I also appreciated the fact that she chose something other than ballet to highlight, as so many dance books limit themselves to that as subject matter. This one exposes kids to a wide range of styles and teaches them what countries they hail from as well. You can tell a great deal of thought went into the format. Also, Relota’s friend, Jessica Alba penned a forward for her–something that was a bit unexpected, yet interesting.

If you are looking for a terrific dance book, “Carla and Leo’s World of Dance” is as good as they come. I wish I had something this cool when I was a 10-year-old girl.

It’s stunning.

You can purchase this book on Amazon.com.

Dance Book: Codename: Dancer

June 8, 2011 by 4dancers

Thanks so much for having me here today! I’m very excited to speak with dancers about my new YA book, Codename: Dancer.

I’ve been dancing pretty much my entire life. My mom enrolled me in a ballet/tap combo class at age 3 because she noticed I would jump around and spin whenever the Coke commercial came on. From that point on, I was hooked!

As a preteen and teen, I was in my dance studio’s company, and was dancing around 30 hours per week. Then in college, in addition to double majoring in Political Science and French, I studied flamenco, ballet, and ballroom. My junior year I auditioned for the ballroom dance team, and spent the next two years competing against other schools up and down the East Coast. It was a lot of fun!

I decided to write Codename: Dancer because it was the type of book I would have loved growing up. There were tons of fiction books about dancers for little girls, but not much for teens. There still isn’t, really, except for books about the ballets and choreographers. In other words, non-fiction.

So I decided to do something about that. I’ve always loved mystery novels, so why not write a mystery series about a group of dance students at a performing arts boarding school? And thus, Codename: Dancer was born.

Of course, I’ve never solved a mystery, nor did I go to a boarding school, so I still had a lot to learn. But I’d started reading Nancy Drew books in elementary school, and always used to win at Clue, so how hard could it be?

It actually ended up being a lot more difficult than I expected, but readers tell me they don’t figure out whodunit until right at the end, so hopefully I met my mark!

I hope you’ll enjoy my book. Here’s a little bit about it:

“Aspiring ballerina Dani Spevak is thrilled when hit TV show Teen Celebrity Dance Off comes to the campus of her performing arts boarding school. She trades the barre for the ballroom and gets set to cha-cha-cha to stardom with Hollywood wonderboy Nick Galliano.

At first their partnership is awkward, because Dani is in awe of her longtime teen idol crush. But soon their chemistry is heating up the dance floor and the attraction moves into real life.

Her excitement is short-lived, because someone wants her off the show. Bombs, poisoning, arson… Will Dani’s 15 minutes of fame be over before she reaches age 15? Dani and her friends are suddenly at the center of some serious sabotage. And if she doesn’t find out who is behind it, her next pirouette could be her last.

It’s like Nancy Drew in toe shoes in this light-hearted tween mystery, a finalist for Romance Writers of America’s Golden Heart® Award for Best Young Adult Romance.”

You can learn more at www.amandabrice.net.

Would you like to win a copy of the e-book? If so, just leave me a comment and tell me what your favorite dance book or dance movie is. I can’t wait to hear from you!

Dance Book: Russian Winter

May 16, 2011 by 4dancers

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…]

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