The Dance of the Mothers

The private lives of three women in a 1950s California university town change tragically and irrevocably when they enroll in a modern dance class, where their self-expression moves them toward an emotional precipice

In this provocative, affecting second novel, Dillon, whose recent After Egypt was a joint biography of Isadora Duncan and Mary Cassatt, effectively portrays the inner lives of three California housewives in the 1950s and reminds us of the emotional complexity of what seem the most average existences. Anna, Leona and Aleida join a modern dance class in the small town where their husbands work in the fledgling computer industry. As their reasons for enrolling in the class unfold, dance becomes a metaphor for their ways of moving through their lives, explaining how they have ended up where they are and will get where they are going. Anna, the central character, with a husband, two children and a house in the suburbs, follows the ideal '50s lifestyle, but lacks the vocabulary to express and thus acknowledge her dissatisfaction. Leona relishes stability, but finds her world turned upside down one night at an ordinary cocktail party. Aleida, beautiful and cunning, seeks revenge on a world that has withheld the power, fame, money she believes she deserves. Dillon's delicate touch with the subtle changes these women experience gives their stories the immediacy and impact of dance itself.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A poetic hieroglyph from the author of other such unusual works--including last year's After Egypt, an impressionistic biography of Mary Cassatt and Isadora Duncan. Dillon's interest is in the emotional and symbolic lives of women, not plot or even specifically drawn characters; so here it seems possible that the three women the author focuses on are all aspects of womanhood at large. They are wives in a California town in the 50's who attend a dance class taught by the too- intense Ninta. Aleida, ``the world expert on needing and wanting,'' takes part because she's tired of being a loser and wants to stand out, which she eventually does by starting a class of her own and stealing away Ninta's pupils. Anna is the only one who stays, because on some subterranean level she understands the theoretical underpinnings of Ninta's abstraction-based method; she feels pulled between stillness and motion, apart from herself and her emotions. Fat and clumsy Leona surprises everyone by claiming the solo dance in a community theater production; though she doesn't perform it well, she's the source of the fertility symbolism here--fertilizing her garden with blood from the lab where she works, then becoming pregnant after leaving her husband. What it all means precisely is hard to say, which is why many will find the book muddy and enervating. But it does produce a cumulative wail of grief arising from the rigors and limitations of simply being a woman. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Are motion and stillness opposites? A modern dance class challenges this notion and others held by Aleida, Leona, and Anna--three characters personifying movement, stillness, and the middle ground, respectively. These women feel pressured to exchange ideals of the 1950s for those of the 1980s. With the modern dance class as a first step, they are propelled into entirely new lives. This well-written story underlines the similarity of opposites: movement and stillness; conventional and extraordinary; change and stasis. Dillon is convincing and original, with a compelling, evocative style. Recommended.
- Joanna M. Burkhardt, Univ. of Connecticut at Torrington Lib.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.