July 23, 2012
Former Globe and Mail dance critic Kelly (Paris Times Eight) traces a history of ballet’s hidden dangers, a stunning array of afflictions that have lurked amid an ideal of transcendent beauty. In the 19th century, not only did chronic poverty force many of the Paris Opéra’s corps de ballet to become prostitutes of wealthy patrons, but frequently ballerinas became human torches when their flimsy tutus caught fire. Notable among the latter were two half-sisters of Oscar Wilde; seven young ballerinas who combusted together in a Philadelphia theater; and celebrated French Romantic ballerina Emma Livry, who died eight agonizing months after colliding with an open flame at the Paris Opéra. Russian great Anna Pavlova contracted pneumonia on tour yet insisted on dancing her signature role, the Dying Swan, in January 1931, dying of double pleurisy three days later. Kelly castigates the 20th century’s most celebrated ballet choreographer, George Balanchine, for creating a plague of eating disorders (she’s not the first to make this charge) and for having a “tyrannical hold” over his ballerinas. Kelly also condemns Baryshnikov, as director of American Ballet Theatre in the 1980s, for firing ballerinas for not being young or thin enough. Though Kelly stumbles as an analyst of 21st-century ballet, she’s fresh and adept when summoning the art’s spellbinding yet harrowing earlier centuries. Illus. Agent: Hilary McMahon, Westwood Creative Artists.
September 1, 2012
Kelly's (dance critic, Globe and Mail; Paris Times Eight: Finding Myself in the City of Dreams) book, despite the academic and sociological overtones of its subtitle, is a fast-paced and fascinating glance at a few of the dancers--some well known, some whose names are lost to history--from 17th-century France (when ballet was a masculine endeavor) through the present. Her knowledge of both dance and Paris are apparent throughout, and there's much to learn about the sexual and economic exploitation of ballerinas throughout history. The eating disorders (for which George Balanchine receives a good deal of blame) suffered by some ballerinas echo the poverty-driven, near-starvation diets of many of their young and unsung 19th-century counterparts. As befits a Canadian critic, many of the dancers interviewed in the last chapters were (or currently are) members of Canadian provincial or national troupes. There are comprehensive chapter notes and a bibliography, as well as several pages of images. VERDICT Although there's no end of readily available ballet histories, such as Jennifer Homans's Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet, this title will be a pleasurable read for any balletomane. Index not seen.--Martha Stone, Massachusetts General Hospital Lib., Boston
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