An incisive exploration of ballet's role in the modern world, told
through the experience of the author and her classmates at the most
elite ballet school in the country: the School of American Ballet.
Growing up, Alice Robb dreamed of becoming a ballet dancer. But by age
fifteen, she had to face the reality that she would never meet the
impossibly high standards of the hyper-competitive ballet world. After
she quit, she tried to avoid ballet--only to realize, years later, that
she was still haunted by the lessons she had absorbed in the
mirror-lined studios of Lincoln Center, and that they had served her
well in the wider world. The traits ballet takes to an
extreme--stoicism, silence, submission--are valued in girls and women
everywhere.
Profound, nuanced, and passionately researched, Don't Think, Dear is
Robb's excavation of her adolescent years as a dancer and an exploration
of how those days informed her life for years to come.
As she grapples with the pressure she faced as a student at the School
of American Ballet, she investigates the fates of her former classmates
as well. From sweet and innocent Emily, whose body was deemed thin
enough only when she was too ill to eat, to precocious and talented
Meiying, who was thrilled to be cast as the young star of the Nutcracker
but dismayed to see Asians stereotyped onstage, and Lily, who won the
carrot they had all been chasing--an apprenticeship with the New York
City Ballet--only to spend her first season dancing eight shows a week
on a broken foot.
Theirs are stories of heartbreak and resilience, of reinvention and
regret. Along the way, Robb weaves in the myths of famous ballet
personalities past and present, from the groundbreaking Misty Copeland,
who rose from poverty to become an icon of American ballet, to the blind
diva Alicia Alonso, who used the heat of the spotlights and the
vibrations of the music to navigate space onstage. By examining the
psyche of a dancer, Don't Think, Dear grapples with the contradictions
and challenges of being a woman today.
