The Unmaking of a Dancer: An Unconventional Life

by Joan Brady

Book Overview

Joan Brady grew up in California, the daughter of a blacklisted economics professor and his strong-willed, powerfully jealous wife. Dancing lessons took Joan away from the tensions between these two... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060149728
• ISBN13: 9780060149727
• Release Date: January 1982
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.08 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Common Sense! Common Sense! Common Sense!

I think non-dancers realize that dancers have to work very, very hard for their art. Brady's interesting and heartbreaking biography outlines the ugliness behind this beautiful art form. George Ballanchine (sp?) controlled his own company, and indirectly other ballet companies by setting up impossible physical standards. Ballanchine liked dancers to be skeletally thin--so Brady and other dancers performed physical feats that would stagger a professional football player while at the same time being grossly malnourished. Ballanchine and other directors treated his dancers as machines, not human beings. Dancers were to "dance through" injuries, sometimes permanently crippling themselves. The psychological torture was almost as bad and almost a parody of a patriarchal system. Mr. B wrote the gospel and all were to listen and not question the Holy Writ. And, naturally the patriarch manipulated the women comparing one to another, manipulating jealousy among the dancers and playing favorits. Dancers for the New York City Ballet, living in an expesnsive city were paid pittances so that the Ballet could pay the superstars huge salaries and buy elaborate costumes. Another reviewer castigated Joan Brady for her ego. In contrast I applaud her for her common sense in walking away from this insanity, struggling years later to learn how to dance again, and then realizing that she could walk away from madness again. This book is out of print in the U.S. It has been reprinted in the U.K. under the title _Prologue_.

Brillant!

Joan let's you in on her privet life of being a dancer. From diets to injury care being a dancer isn't easy. The hard truth that your friend made the touring group and you didn't, crying in the dressing rooms. This beautiful autobioaphy let's you in on the secret life of a dancer.