Where Snowflakes Dance and Swear: Inside the Land of Ballet - Hardcover

Manes, Stephen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0983562806 ISBN 13: 9780983562801

Publisher: Cadwallader and Stern, 2011

Synopsis

The internationally acclaimed new book that takes you behind the scenes to reveal how ballet really happens:

In a scuffed-up studio, a veteran dancer transmits the magic of an eighty-year-old ballet to a performer barely past drinking age. In a converted barn, an indomitable teacher creates ballerinas as she has for more than half a century. In a monastic mirrored room, dancers from as near as New Jersey and as far as Mongolia learn works as old as the nineteenth century and as new as this morning.

   Snowflakes zooms in on an intimate view of one full season in the life of one of America's top ballet companies and schools: Seattle's Pacific Northwest Ballet. But it also tracks the Land of Ballet to venues as celebrated as New York and Monte Carlo and as seemingly ordinary as Bellingham, Washington and small-town Pennsylvania. Never before has a book taken readers backstage for such a wide-ranging view of the ballet world from the wildly diverse perspectives of dancers, choreographers, stagers, teachers, conductors, musicians, rehearsal pianists, lighting directors, costumers, stage managers, scenic artists, marketers, fundraisers, students, and even pointe shoe fitters--often in their own remarkably candid words.

   The book follows characters as colorful as they are talented. Versatile dancers from around the globe team up with novice choreographers and those as renowned as Susan Stroman, Christopher Wheeldon, and Twyla Tharp to create art on deadline. At the book's center is Peter Boal, a former New York City Ballet star in his third year as PNB's artistic director, as he manages conflicting constituencies with charm, tact, rationality and diplomacy. Readers look over Boal's shoulder as he makes tough decisions about programming, casting, scheduling and budgeting that eventually lead the calm, low-key leader to declare that in his job, "You have to be willing to be hated."

   Snowflakes shows how ballet is made, funded, and sold. It escorts you front and center to the kick zone of studio rehearsals. It takes you to the costume shop where elegant tutus and gowns are created from scratch. It brings you backstage to see sets and lightingwi come alive while stagehands get lovingly snarky and obscene on their headsets. It sits you down in meetings where budgets get slashed and dreams get funded-and axed. It shows you the inner workings of Nutcracker, from kids' charming auditions to no-nonsense marketing meetings, from snow bags in the flies to dancing snowflakes who curse salty flurries that land on their tongues. It follows the tempestuous assembly of a version of Romeo and Juliet that runs afoul of so much pressure, disease, injury, and blood that the dancers begin to call it cursed.

   Snowflakes uncovers the astounding way ballets, with no common form of written preservation, are handed down from generation to generation through the prodigious memories of brilliant athletes who also happen to be artists. It goes on tour with the company to Vail, Colorado, where dancers contend with altitude that makes their muscles cramp and their lungs ache. It visits cattle-call auditions and rigorous classes, tells the stories of dancers whose parents sacrificed for them and dancers whose parents refused to. It meets the resolute woman who created a dance school more than fifty years ago in a Carlisle, Pennsylvania barn and grew it into one of America's most reliable ballerina factories. It shows ballet's appeal to kids from low-income neighborhoods and board members who live in mansions.

   Shattering longstanding die-for-your-art clichés, this book uncovers the real drama in the daily lives of fiercely dedicated union members in slippers and pointe shoes-and the musicians, stagehands, costumers, donors and administrators who support them. Where Snowflakes Dance and Swear: Inside the Land of Ballet brings readers the exciting truth of how ballet actually happens.

About this title

From the Author:

More praise for Snowflakes ...

"Reality TV may have taken an interest in ballet recently, but for a behind-the-scenes look at the life of a company, Stephen Manes' Where Snowflakes Dance and Swear is set to become the gold standard.... it answers in great detail that common question: What really goes into getting a ballet onstage?... A rich, pragmatic resource ..."
--Laura Cappelle, Dance Magazine

"This is a must-read book for anyone vaguely interested in or passionately engaged with ballet or dance in general--a delightfully engaging insider story by an outsider wanting to know, 'How does ballet happen?'"
--Rita Kohn, Broadside: A Newsletter of the Theatre Library Association

"My new literary obsession ... The newest and most exciting book on ballet ... If you do not yet have your hands on a copy of this innovative look into the behind-the-scenes world of ballet, I highly suggest it."
--Rebecca King (Miami City Ballet dancer), Tendus Under a Palm Tree

"Another top gift for dancers ... This intimate look inside Pacific Northwest Ballet is everything we hoped 'Breaking Pointe' the show about Ballet West would be - it is the real deal and was such a page turner we stayed up late reading ... An acclaimed writer, Manes perfectly captures the world of dance ..."
--Got Dance LA

"... a refreshing look at the nuts and bolts of putting together a season of dance."
--Josephine Reed, Art Works, the official blog of the National Endowment for the Arts

"Fab! ... a very thorough account of how a ballet company operates."
--The Ballet Bag

"...a fascinating look behind the scenes at one of America's premiere ballet companies."
--David Dunkle, Patriot-News

"Ballet may seem esoteric to a lot of non-balletomanes ... But it may be less so if they delve into Where Snowflakes Dance and Swear.... the book reveals what happens behind the scenes and how ballet really happens."
--Barbara Trainin Blank, Carlisle Sentinel

"Wonderful!"
--Kim Alexander, Sirius XM Book Radio

"Unlike much of the romantic drivel written about the tulle-and-pointe-shoe crowd, Manes' tome offers a fascinating look at the minutiae of how ballet makes it to the stage.... Overall, this book is a nice reality check for aspiring dancers and a fine antidote to the melodramatic nonsense peddled by films like 'The Red Shoes' and 'Black Swan.'"
--The Tyee

"Where Snowflakes Dance and Swear deftly makes the often arcane world of ballet both tangible and colourful ... a sweeping comprehensive picture of a modern ballet company as a body of artists, as a cultural organization, and as a business.... very well written ... It offers a unique view on the gamut of ballet's various elements, and does so in a way that makes its many pages leaf by quickly."
--Peter DeVries, Dance International

"... a unique book ... sets out with one big question: "How does ballet happen?" ... I dove in, and right from the start was taken with the writer's factual yet imaginative style and his way of making us think about aspects of the realm of ballet that we'd possibly never thought about before ... It's the pages and pages about the dancers as individuals and as a collective that make Mr. Manes' book a necessity for balletomanes worldwide."
--Philip Gardner, Oberon's Grove

About the Author:

Stephen Manes wrote long-running columns about technology and co-authored the biography Gates. His many books for young readers include the award-winning Be a Perfect Person in Just Three Days!

About this edition

• Publisher: Cadwallader and Stern
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0983562806
• ISBN 13: 9780983562801
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 910