Swan Dive
The Making of a Rogue Ballerina
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- 5,99 €
Publisher Description
'Swan Dive is to ballet what Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential was to restaurants, a chance to go behind the serene front of house to the sweaty, foul-mouthed, psychofrenzy backstage.' – Daisy Goodwin, Sunday Times
In this love letter to the art of dance, Georgina Pazcoguin, New York City Ballet’s first Asian American female soloist, lays bare the backstage world of elite ballet.
With an unapologetic sense of humour about the cut-throat mentality required, Pazcoguin takes us from her small home town in Pennsylvania to training for one of the most revered ballet companies in the world – a company that was rocked by scandal in the wake of the #MeToo movement. Pazcoguin continues to be one of the few dancers openly speaking up against harassment, abuse and racism – all of which she has painfully experienced firsthand.
Tying together Pazcoguin’s fight for equality with an infectious passion for her craft, Swan Dive is a page-turning, one-of-a-kind memoir that guarantees you’ll never view a ballerina or a ballet the same way again.
'Always arresting onstage, Georgina Pazcoguin gives us a take on the ballet world that is witty and from the heart. An eye-opening read.' – Mikhail Baryshnikov
'A funny, poignant and shocking read . . . [Pazcoguin] punctures, with enormous glee, the stereotype of the ballet dancer as an elegant, ethereal being.' – Fiona Sturges, Guardian
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pazcoguin, New York City Ballet's first Asian American soloist, reveals the grimy underbelly of elite stagecraft and the extreme passions that fuel it in this rollicking debut. She affectionately recounts her 1980s childhood in Pennsylvania, where she started dancing at age four. ("I didn't know what I was doing, but... I wanted to move this way all the time," she recounts.) At age 13, Pazcoguin attended the School of American Ballet in New York, where she thrived under the grueling regimen but felt battered by racism and body shaming, including one instance in which the artistic director said "you don't really fit in from here... to there," pointing to her thighs. She also exposes the truth about ballet's sequins and tulle: costumes go unwashed for years, and the glittering snow in The Nutcracker (which she calls the "NUTBUSTER" because it's such a grind) is swept up and dumped right back onto dancers' heads the next night. Pazcoguin's humorous asides entertain, though at times they can undermine the abuse she endured. ("I've felt the pain... I've even farted onstage and survived.") While the juicy details of beautiful people behaving badly are beguiling, it's Pazcoguin's unsparing criticism of the industry that begs an encore. This is potent stuff.
