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Holding On to the Air

10 best books like Holding On to the Air (Suzanne Farrell): Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet, Maria Tallchief: America's Prima Ballerina, Breaking Pointe: A Ballet Novel, Winter Season: A Dancer's Journal, Ballerina: Sex, Scandal, and Suffering Behind the Symbol of Perfection, White Swan, Black Swan, A Very Young Dancer, Once a Dancer: An Autobiography, The Pointe Book: Shoes, Training & Technique, Dancing on My Grave

Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet
AuthorJennifer Homans
ISBN1400060605
One of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year

For more than four hundred years, the art of ballet has stood at the center of Western civilization. Its traditions serve as a record of our past. A ballerina dancing The Sleeping Beauty today is a link in a long chain of dancers stretching...
Maria Tallchief: America's Prima Ballerina
AuthorMaria Tallchief
ISBN0813028469
The definitive autobiography in a new paperback edition! "Maria Tallchief and American ballet came of age in the same moment. . . . Her story will always be the story of ballet conquering America. It was and is an American romance."--The New Yorker
  "Tallchief's autobiography provides us with...
Breaking Pointe: A Ballet Novel
AuthorMiriam Wenger-Landis
"The people, the excitement, and the beauty of dancers were the story of my life...."

When eighteen-year-old dancer Anna Linado began her professional ballet career with the prestigious Los Angeles Ballet Theatre, she thought all of her dreams had come true. Company life offered glamorous...
Winter Season: A Dancer's Journal
AuthorToni Bentley
ISBN0813027055
An irresistible inside look at one of the world's great dance companies, Winter Season is also a sensitive, intimate, and almost painfully honest account of the emotional and intellectual development of a young woman dedicated to one of the most demanding of all the arts.

Bentley's association...
Ballerina: Sex, Scandal, and Suffering Behind the Symbol of Perfection
AuthorDeirdre Kelly
ISBN1926812662
Throughout her history, the ballerina has been perceived as the embodiment of beauty and perfection-- the feminine ideal. But the reality is another story. From the earliest ballerinas in the 17th century, who often led double lives as concubines, through the poverty of the corps de ballet dancers...
White Swan, Black Swan
AuthorAdrienne Sharp
“Adrienne Sharp writes with breathtaking perception about the needs and desires of the body, its resilience and its vulnerabilities. Art, passion, history intersect with burning immediacy in this beautifully crafted book.”
–CHITRA BANERJEE DIVAKARUNI
Author of The Mistress...
A Very Young Dancer
AuthorJill Krementz
ISBN0394408853
Growing up, my sister and I took turns checking out this and A VERY YOUNG GYMNAST from the library. My mom eventually bought us A VERY YOUNG SKATER and A VERY YOUNG HORSEBACK RIDER, but DANCER and GYMNAST are still the best.
In the mid-1970s, Krementz spent months following 10-year-old Stephanie...
Once a Dancer: An Autobiography
AuthorAllegra Kent
ISBN0312187505
Allegra Kent joined the New York City Ballet at the age of fifteen and, only two years later, inspired Balanchine's unforgettable The Unanswered Question. Beautiful, sensuous, and mysterious, she quickly became an essential Balanchine dancer-and the story of her personal life is as dramatic as...
The Pointe Book: Shoes, Training & Technique
AuthorJanice Barringer
The Pointe Book is the only book to include an extensive explanation of pointe shoe fitting, preparing, and maintenance. Interviews with dancers Larissa Ponomarenko, Paloma Herrera, and Marisa Soltis reveal different personal and highly evolved methods of breaking in and taking care of pointe...
Dancing on My Grave
AuthorGelsey Kirkland
Update: Lord, I'd forgotten how difficult it is to read this book. Gelsey's pain is palpable. What is, perhaps, even more distressing is reading the response here on goodreads. Gelsey never intended to promote anorexia, drug addiction, or promiscuity. She doesn't deserve such contempt from readers....
I Was a Dancer
AuthorJacques D'Amboise
ISBN1400042348
“Who am I? I’m a man; an American, a father, a teacher, but most of all, I am a person who knows how the arts can change lives, because they transformed mine. I was a dancer.”

In this rich, expansive, spirited memoir, Jacques d’Amboise, one of America’s most celebrated classical dancers,...
Nureyev: The Life
AuthorJulie Kavanagh
ISBN0375405135
Rudolf Nureyev had it all: beauty, genius, charm, passion, and sex appeal. No other dancer of our time has generated the same excitement, for both men and women, on or off the stage. With Nureyev: The Life, Julie Kavanagh shows how his intense drive and passion for dance propelled him from a poor, Tatar-peasant...
101 Stories of the Great Ballets: The Scene-by-Scene Stories of the Most Popular Ballets, Old and New
AuthorGeorge Balanchine
ISBN0385033982
This book was obviously written for serious balletomanes and dancers, as some bits will be hard to follow unless you understand dance terminology. As a dancer myself, I find it really useful. You get spare, clean plot paraphrases with a decided lack of the busy pink illustrations so common in books of...
George Balanchine: The Ballet Maker
AuthorRobert Gottlieb
ISBN0060750707
Written by the gifted author, editor, and dance critic Robert Gottlieb, George Balanchine describes the life and art of the celebrated, revolutionary ballet choreographer. Here is a necessary and singular look at the life of one of the great figures of the 20th Century: the dynamic Balanchine, founder...
Margot Fonteyn
AuthorMeredith Daneman
ISBN0140165304
Margot Fonteyn - born plain Peggy Hookham - was dreamed into existence by the architects of British ballet: Ninette de Valois, Frederick Ashton and Constant Lambert. Carried to fame on a wave of wartime patriotism, Margot's sense of duty rather than ambition propelled her forward. Yet her gifts were...
I, Maya Plisetskaya
AuthorMaya Plisetskaya
ISBN0300088574
Maya Plisetskaya, one of the world’s foremost dancers, rose to become a prima ballerina of Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet after an early life filled with tragedy and loss. In this spirited memoir, Plisetskaya reflects on her personal and professional odyssey, presenting a unique view of the life of...
The Ballet Companion: A Dancer's Guide to the Technique, Traditions, and Joys of Ballet
AuthorEliza Gaynor Minden
A New Classic for Today's Dancer The Ballet Companion is a fresh, comprehensive, and thoroughly up-to-date reference book for the dancer. With 150 stunning photographs of ballet stars Maria Riccetto and Benjamin Millepied demonstrating perfect execution of positions and steps, this elegant volume...
I Dreamed I Was a Ballerina
AuthorAnna Pavlova
ISBN0689846762
Every girl remembers her first trip to the ballet: the anticipation beforehand, the orchestra's first notes, the ethereal beauty of the ballerinas. This is a tale of one such girl who was caught up in ballet's mesmerizing spell and became one of the greatest ballerinas of all time.In a story drawn from...
Classical Ballet Technique
AuthorGretchen Ward Warren
ISBN0813009456
"Classical Ballet Technique is an invaluable guide for students, teachers, and ballet lovers. It not only covers the broad spectrum of ballet vocabulary but also gives sound, practical advice to aspiring dancers. The clarity of the writing, in a field notorious for its opaqueness, is in itself a major...
Blood Memory
AuthorMartha Graham
ISBN0333574419
this should be required reading for anyone who is seriously studying dance (especially dance history). martha graham is one of the most important people in dance history, and being able to peek into her mind is exhilarating. i felt like i was a kid listening outside a door to a very adult conversation--like...
No Way Home: A Dancer's Journey from the Streets of Havana to the Stages of the World
AuthorCarlos Acosta
ISBN1416566295
Carlos Acosta, the Cuban dancer considered to be one of the world's greatest performers, fearlessly depicts his journey from adolescent troublemaker to international superstar in his captivating memoir, No Way Home. Carlos was just another kid from the slums of Havana; the youngest son of a truck...
My Life
AuthorIsadora Duncan
ISBN0871401584
My Life, the classic autobiography first published just after Duncan's death, is a frank and engrossing life account of this remarkable visionary and feminist who took on the world, reinvented dance, and led the way for future great American modernists Ruth St. Denis, Agnes de Mille, and Martha Graham.Documenting...
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