Turning Pointe: How a New Generation of Dancers Is Saving Ballet from Itself

Backorder (temporarily out of stock)
4.9/5.0
21,000+ Reviews
Bookshop.org has the highest-rated customer service of any bookstore in the world
Product Details
Price
$18.99  $17.66
Publisher
Bold Type Books
Publish Date
Pages
320
Dimensions
5.6 X 8.27 X 0.84 inches | 0.62 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9781645036715

Earn by promoting books

Earn money by sharing your favorite books through our Affiliate program.

Become an affiliate
About the Author
Chloe Angyal is a journalist from Sydney, Australia. She is a senior editor at VICE News and her writing about politics and culture has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and elsewhere. She lives in the Iowa City area.
Reviews
"Groundbreaking.... Shining a frequently unflattering but hopeful light on the future of the art."--Ms. Magazine
"In this captivating debut, journalist Angyal mounts a thorough examination of classical ballet's fraught history of racial, sexual, and class bias and the reckoning from within that's pushing to change it... Timely and thought-provoking, this book is a must for ballet lovers and anyone interested in the cultural conversation."--Publishers Weekly
"Incisive and unsparing.... an important read for ballet lovers and an essential part of any conversation moving forward."--Boston Globe
"Angyal's reporting is thorough and compelling, and some of the stories she relates are heartbreaking.... Required reading for anyone who loves ballet and cares about its future."--Library Journal
"A vigorously reported critique of common policies and practices in the ballet world."--Kirkus Reviews
"Angyal, a journalist and former dancer, raises the curtain and goes backstage to reveal why this beloved cultural tradition is imperiled."--Booklist
"Turning Pointe: How a New Generation of Dancers is Saving Ballet from Itself is a painstaking, and often painful, assessment of the troubling racialized, gendered, and classed lessons of classical ballet. Angyal's sharp analysis invites us to wonder how ballet might expand if it did not require broken toes, torn ligaments, starving dancers, or pink tights. This is the book for all of us who loved ballet but found it did not love us back."
--Melissa Harris-Perry, Maya Angelou Presidential Chair at Wake Forest University and cohost of System Check
"This is the book I desperately needed as a teenage ballerina, when I mistakenly thought there was something wrong with me rather than ballet's culture. Having read it, I want to buy copies for every aspiring dancer, as well as the gatekeepers who most need to read it. Angyal reports with urgency and precision about what draws young dancers to ballet, and how it needs to change to keep them there. Turning Pointe is a long-overdue reckoning for an art form that excludes and injures its dancers as much as it dazzles them."--Ellen O'Connell Whittet, author of What You Become in Flight
"The best art is not an escape for the audience, but a journey. It uses beauty incisively, and that is what Chloe Angyal's writing does. In her essential observations about her beloved ballet, she reminds us of the necessity of thinking critically, especially about that which we love the most."--Jamil Smith, journalist and contributor to Believe Me
"There's no question: Turning Pointe is a groundbreaking book that stands to shift the nature of ballet as we know it. The depth of reporting is astounding, inspiring, and necessary: Chloe Angyal doesn't just explore ballet, she examines it, holding up magnifying glasses and mirrors to the inequities and systemic issues that have persisted for too long, the innovation unfolding in studios and on stages, and the shattering of rigid tradition that today's ballet can't let stand. With Angyal's obvious passion for the art form and thoughtful, immersive conversations with sources from across the ballet world at the heart of this book, Turning Pointe is a must-read for any current or former dancer, dance parent, or individual who is interested in a vibrant, inclusive future of a classical art form. Turning Pointe reads like a reckoning--one that can truly change ballet for the better."--Rainesford Stauffer, author of An Ordinary Age
"Angyal's Turning Pointe is a vital industry manifesto for a new era in ballet."--New York Journal of Books
"If you want an immaculately researched and piercing look at ballet and its costs, look no further. Truly, I inhaled it. Heavy stuff, but told with so much skill and energy."--Brandon Taylor, author of Real Life
"Turning Pointe isn't always an easy read, but it's an important one. And it's one whose message is, ultimately, of hope."--Seattle Times