The Cranes Dance
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- 99,00 kr
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- 99,00 kr
Publisher Description
I threw my neck out in the middle of Swan Lake last night.
So begins the tale of Kate Crane, a soloist in a celebrated New York City ballet company who is struggling to keep her place in a very demanding world. At every turn she is haunted by her close relationship with her younger sister, Gwen, a fellow company dancer whose career quickly surpassed Kate’s, but who has recently suffered a breakdown and returned home.
Alone for the first time in her life, Kate is anxious and full of guilt about the role she may have played in her sister’s collapse. As we follow her on an insider tour of rehearsals, performances, and partners onstage and off, she confronts the tangle of love, jealousy, pride, and obsession that are beginning to fracture her own sanity. Funny, dark, intimate, and unflinchingly honest, The Cranes Dance is a book that pulls back the curtains to reveal the private lives of dancers and explores the complicated bond between sisters.
Customer Reviews
Kate complained about the pain in her neck too many times.
I don't know about you, but reading about Kate's neck a thousand times really irritated me. She complained about the pain in her neck too many times.
Anyway, it took me some time to finish the book. I basically gave up, but discovered the book again among the books I had put away.
Kate and her sister, Gwen, have been training to be ballerinas since they were three and four years old. Gwen has always been the prima ballerina, though. But after Gwen injures her knee by putting it through a patio door, Kate gets a chance to be the star: she gets to be the lead dancer in Swan Lake. This throws her into a whirlwind of stress, physical and psychological pressure and demands more from her than she is able to perform. The psychological problems worsen. Kate has to work harder to achieve her dream of becoming a prima ballerina.
The first chapter in the book is completely unnecessary and probably scares away readers because there are far too many facts about a completely random ballet - probably an attempt to set the atmosphere in the book - but in my opinion, it failed.
But after a few chapters the plot became somewhat interesting, even if the plot simply didn't interested me as much as I had hoped for.
I enjoyed all the details from ballet itself, about the dance as an art form and found it interesting how dedicated you have to be to the art to really master it. I like watching ballet. I think it's beautiful. ‘The Cranes Dance’ shows that ballet is closer to being ugly-beautiful, because it involves real «blood, sweat and tears».