Early Days Early Dancers

Early Days, Early Dancers documents the first decade of the National Ballet, focusing on the dancers of the 1950s, especially principal dancers Lois Smith, David Adams, Angela Leigh, Donald Mahler, and Celia Franca, herself a dancer and later the Company's Artistic Director. With an enthusiastic foreword by Karen Kain, and a moving afterword by Veronica Tennant, the book includes pieces by twenty-two dancers, plus memorial tributes to dancers who have passed away. Contributions explore the dancer's journey through St. Lawrence Hall, summer school, rehearsal, and life on tour, as well as life after a career in dance. Portraits includes comments by the dancers on such figures as Celia Franca, Betty Oliphant, and Kay Ambrose among others, and memorial tributes to those dance figures who have died are written by well-known writers contemporaries such as Michael Crabbe, John Fraser, Vanessa Harwood, and Veronica Tennant. These memories of the Company's early dancers provide a unique impression of the origins of the National Ballet, and the history of dance in Canada, and highlight the way the present dances on the shoulders of those who have gone before.

Beauty is Experience is a collaboration between dancer/writer Emmaly Wiederholt and photographer Gregory Bartning. For more than two years, they collected interviews and photographs of dancers over age 50 along the West Coast. Spanning from Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area to Portland and Seattle, the culmination includes over 50 interviews with dancers ranging in age from 50 to 95, and ranging in practice from ballet and Argentine tango to African and contact improvisation.

Finalist, the Arts Club of Washington Marfield Prize A look inside a dancer’s world Inspiring, revealing, and deeply relatable, Being a Ballerina is a firsthand look at the realities of life as a professional ballet dancer. Through episodes from her own career, Gavin Larsen describes the forces that drive a person to study dance; the daily balance that dancers navigate between hardship and joy; and the dancer’s continual quest to discover who they are as a person and as an artist. Starting with her arrival as a young beginner at a class too advanced for her, Larsen tells how the embarrassing mistake ended up helping her learn quickly and advance rapidly. In other stories of her early teachers, training, and auditions, she explains how she gradually came to understand and achieve what she and her body were capable of. Larsen then re-creates scenes from her experiences in dance companies, from unglamorous roles to exhilarating performances. Working as a ballerina was shocking and scary at first, she says, recalling unexpected injuries, leaps of faith, and her constant struggle to operate at the level she wanted—but full of enormously rewarding moments. Larsen also reflects candidly on her difficult decision to retire at age 35. An ideal read for aspiring dancers, Larsen’s memoir will also delight experienced dance professionals and fascinate anyone who wonders what it takes to live a life dedicated to the perfection of the art form.

Inspired by watching a performance of the Alvin Ailey Dance Company, a young black boy longs to dance and enrolls in ballet school.