Ballet Matters: A Cultural Memoir of Dance Dreams and Empowering Realities

Part memoir, part dance history and ethnography, this critical study explores ballet’s power to inspire and to embody ideas about politics, race, women’s agency, and spiritual experience. Women who dance—and who watch dance—gain perspectives on such questions as: What do images projected by ballerinas say to their admirers? Can ballet be like a blueprint for life or a religious experience? How do dancers embody heritages from around globe?The author argues that dance relates to life in powerful, individual, and communal ways, reflecting culture and embodying new ideas. Although ballet can appear (and sometimes is) elite and exclusionary, it also has revolutionary potential, seen here through the eyes of women who experience it.