Pirouette

Simone was raised as a dancer, but she hates performing. Hannah loves nothing more than dancing, but her adoptive parents think it should only be a hobby. When the two girls meet at camp, they discover they’re identical twins. Choreographing a plan to switch places, they realize fooling their friends and family is harder than they expected.

From popular and award-winning author Sherryl Clark comes a story about the pressure, heartache and determination that it takes to live your dreams. Attending the National Ballet School is every aspiring dancer's dream. It's been Brynna's for as long as she can remember. When her parents move her family to Melbourne so Brynna can attend a top ballet school, it looks like her dream is about to become a reality. But why does she feel so awful about the move? Her brother Tam is angrier than she has ever seen him and her mother is working hard to keep the family afloat. Will every step towards success come at a price? For Brynna to realise her heart's desire, something has to give. But will it be her family?

Fans of literary detective fiction will enjoy this elegantly crafted novella that explores how the tenderest emotions can be subverted through the alchemy of evil. After graduating college, Vladimir Petrovsky joins his beautiful mother, a former prima ballerina, at her ballet school in a mansion overlooking the Hudson River where they lead an isolated, self-indulgent life . . . until the disappearance of one and then another dancer alters their lives forever. The local police chief asks P. J. O'Malley, a retired NYPD detective, to help in the investigation. Over time, nearly everyone becomes convinced that the girls' disappearance is the work of a sinister stranger. O'Malley is not so sure.

Akim Volynsky was a Russian literary critic, journalist, and art historian who became Saint Petersburgs liveliest and most prolific ballet critic in the early part of the twentieth century. This book, the first English edition of his provocative and influential writings, provides a striking look at life inside the world of Russian ballet at a crucial era in its history. Stanley J. Rabinowitz selects and translates forty of Volynskys articlesvivid, eyewitness accounts that sparkle with details about the careers and personalities of such dance luminaries as Anna Pavlova, Mikhail Fokine, Tamara Karsavina, and George Balanchine, at that time a young dancer in the Maryinsky company whose keen musical sense and creative interpretive power Volynsky was one of the first to recognize. Rabinowitz also translates Volynskys magnum opus, The Book of Exaltations, an elaborate meditation on classical dance technique that is at once a primer and an ideological treatise. Throughout his writings, Rabinowitz argues in his critical introduction, which sets Volynskys life and work against the backdrop of the principal intellectual currents of his time, Volynsky emphasizes the spiritual and ethereal qualities of ballet.

Raised from infancy by duplicitous clowns who entertain by day and menace by night, Pirouette dreams of washing the paint from her face and escaping to a better life far away from her cruel adoptive circus family... because when the spotlights dim and the crowd disperses, the clown princess' big-top dreams give way to a nightmarish world of monsters with painted smiles. M.L. Miller (Gravetrancers) spins Pirouette with authentic darkness and depth of character, while Carlos Granda's (CALEXIT) sweeping, exuberant line art evokes all the exotic charm and mysterious gloom of Pirouette's shadowy big top. "A comic unlike anything you've ever read before!" -Zac Thompson (X-Men Black, The Dregs, Undone By Blood) "I loved Pirouette! It's hard to think up a more story-friendly setting than an old timey circus, and M.L. Miller and Carlos Granda truly make the most of it!" -Charles Soule (Star Wars, Daredevil)

In Advanced Dressage Training, Grand Prix rider/trainer Angela Niemeyer Eastwood outlines the hows and whys of advanced training in a practical, logical fashion, with the aim of helping you to create harmonious partnerships with your horses. Dressage has moved beyond the basics of just riding and training a horse, and now encompasses many complementary disciplines, including psychology. This has always been part of the most successful athletes' repertoires and is now acknowledged as being one of the main contributory factors to excellence in any sport. Technical skills need to go hand in hand with mental commitment, discipline, dedication and resilience. Mindsets can be changed - what is needed is knowledge, support, imagination and perseverance. This book introduces the idea that aids are just that: they let the horse know what the rider wants. When this is understood, the horse should be allowed to do whatever has been asked of him - alone and unaided - until something else is required or the horse needs a reminder. The pursuit of excellence - not perfection - is what dressage is all about. Advanced Dressage Training offers advice and encouragement towards the improvement and development of you and your horse as an advanced partnership, taking you towards excellence in the process. This book will be of great interest to dressage riders and trainers and dressage professionals, and is superbly illustrated with 300 colour photographs.