The Cranes Dance
10 best books like The Cranes Dance (Meg Howrey): The Green Shore, Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet, Maria Tallchief: America's Prima Ballerina, On Pointe, The Melting Season, Dancing in the Dark, Various Positions, Breaking Pointe: A Ballet Novel, We Only Know So Much, Winter Season: A Dancer's Journal
| Author | Natalie Bakopoulos |
| ISBN | 1451633920 |
Set in Athens and Paris, Natalie Bakopoulos’s masterful debut paints a finely etched portrait of one family, whose heartbreaking stories of love and resistance play out against the backdrop of the late 1960s Greek military dictatorship.
IN HER MASTERFUL DEBUT NOVEL, The Green Shore,...
| Author | Jennifer Homans |
| ISBN | 1400060605 |
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...
| Author | Maria Tallchief |
| ISBN | 0813028469 |
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...
| Author | Lorie Ann Grover |
| ISBN | 0689865252 |
Our feet slipinto satin shoes
with stiff shanks,
hard boxing,
tight elastic,
and slippery ribbons
that wrap and end
in hard knots.
The frayed edges
are crammed
out of sight.
We stand.
A row of bound...
| Author | Celeste Conway |
| ISBN | 0385733399 |
Giselle is a cultured ballet student, the daughter of the famous ballerina Marina Parke-Vanova and the late dance historian Grigori Vanov. On her first-ever trip to "Westchest-ah", as her mother's deranged boyfriend Blitz calls it, she meets the most beautiful boy she's ever seen. Will introduces...
| Author | Robyn Bavati |
| ISBN | 0738734772 |
North American debut of the Australian award-winning drama. Ditty Cohen is passionate about ballet--she loves how it feels to stand en pointe, to rise and spin across the room. But her Orthodox Jewish parents want Ditty to focus on the teachings of the Torah and to marry at a young age according to their...
| Author | Martha Schabas |
| ISBN | 0385668767 |
Nuanced, fresh, and gorgeously well-written, Martha Schabas' extraordinary debut novel takes us inside the beauty and brutality of professional ballet, and the young women striving to make it in that world. Shy and introverted, and trapped between the hyper-sexualized world of her teenaged friends...
| Author | Miriam 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...
| Author | Elizabeth Crane |
| ISBN | 0062099477 |
A funny and moving debut novel that follows four generations of a singularly weird American family, all living under one roof, as each member confronts a moment of crisis in a narrative told through a uniquely quirky, charming, and unforgettable voice. Acclaimed short story writer Elizabeth Crane,...
| Author | Toni Bentley |
| ISBN | 0813027055 |
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...
| Author | Edward Stewart |
| ISBN | 0440203074 |
I read this when I was in college as a fun, mindless read. While it's trash, it's good enough trash to read twice. The plot sounds and is melodramatic: two dancers--one poor, one rich--are pitted against one another in a ballet company. There's also a mysterious illness and the obligatory stage mothers...
| Author | Deirdre Kelly |
| ISBN | 1926812662 |
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...
| Author | Alexandria Constantinova Szeman |
| ISBN | 1559705957 |
After a childhood spent in foster homes and a lifetime of longing, Claudia has finally found a family: a devoted husband, Sam, and a loving and supportive mother, Eleanor. But soon Eleanor develops Alzheimer's -- complete with violent eruptions, speechlessness, incontinence, and suicide attempts...
| Author | Joel Mark Harris |
| ISBN | 1462032680 |
Upon returning from Afghanistan, journalist John Webster discovers a gang war in his backyard. Now he must find a way to survive in this Canadian warzone-or die in the crossfire.
John Webster has seen the terrible things human beings can do. He's an experienced investigative journalist,...
“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...
| Author | Suzanne Farrell |
| ISBN | 0813025931 |
Suzanne Farrell, world-renowned ballerina, was one of George Balanchine's most celebrated muses and remains a legendary figure in the ballet world. This memoir, first published in 1990 and reissued with a new preface by the author, recounts Farrell's transformation from a young girl in Ohio dreaming...
| Author | Charity Shumway |
| ISBN | 1451673418 |
A radiant debut novel about stumbling through the early years of adulthood; and a love letter to the role models who light the way.
Like so many other recent graduates, Dawn West is trying to make her way in New York City. She's got an ex-boyfriend she can't quite stop seeing, a roommate who views...
| Author | Jill Krementz |
| ISBN | 0394408853 |
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...
| Author | Andrea Kayne Kaufman |
| ISBN | 0984675108 |
Oxford Messed Up is a unique literary love story that transports readers on a meaningful and emotional journey where the academic world of Oxford, the music of Van Morrison, and an old claw-foot bathtub serve as a backdrop for learning, self-discovery, and transcendent love.
Rhodes Scholar...
| Author | David Perrett |
| ISBN | 0230340431 |
In our daily lives, in our memories and fantasies, our mental worlds overflow with faces. But why do we have faces at all, and brains that are good at reading them? And why are we attracted to some faces more than others? In Your Face is an engaging and authoritative tour of the science of facial beauty and...
The magic that happens onstage is only half the story...
Go behind the red curtain, and follow Pepper's wild vaudeville adventure.
______
New York City in 1907 is a wonderland of endless possibilities for anyone who dares to dream, and no one has bigger dreams than young Pepper MacClair,...
| Author | Allegra Kent |
| ISBN | 0312187505 |
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...
When Penelope O'Shaunessy steps into Harvard Yard for the first time she has lots of advice from her mother. "Don't be too enthusiastic, don't talk to people who seem to be getting annoyed, and for heaven's sake, stop playing Tetris on your phone at parties." Penelope needs this advice. She is the kind...
