Gavin Larsen said she first felt herself to be a writer in an artist residency in New Mexico in 2015. She was there, not as a dancer, but to work on a book about her dance career. And she was surrounded by musicians, writers and visual artists who knew nothing about ballet.
“They were full of questions,” she said. “And then I really said, ‘Oh my god, people are interested in ballet who are not ballet dancers.'”
Larsen puts this theory to the test in Being a Ballerina: The Power and Perfection of a Dancing Life, now published by the University Press of Florida. Her poignant book, narrated in first and third person, is both a personal account and a universal account of the life of a professional ballet dancer. It’s not what you might have learned from the horror film “Black Swan” or the recent sex and drug series “Tiny Pretty Things” held at a ballet academy.
During her own student days at the School of American Ballet, Larsen learned lessons that she would carry throughout her dance life, including the moment she realized that being uninteresting as a dancer was worse than being wrong. Larsen writes: “The dancer-beast that was stuffed inside her came out roaring. She would let it push her now, but also train it, watch it grow, and ride it for the rest of her life. “
Ballet is tough, and Larsen doesn’t gloss over her experiences, including dancing with the Pacific Northwest Ballet, the Alberta Ballet, the Suzanne Farrell Ballet, and the Oregon Ballet Theater, from which she retired as headmistress in 2010. She describes the tiredness of reaching the three-quarters mark in George Balanchine’s “Allegro Brillante” as “like trying to type after going outside without mittens on the coldest winter day”.
Despite the pain, Larsen’s words convey the glory of the body in motion from the perspective of what she calls an everyday ballerina or a blue collar ballerina. “My own abstract ballet career isn’t that interesting,” she said. “I wasn’t an international star. I did not come from difficult circumstances. I didn’t have any unusual hurdles or obstacles to overcome in order to make it. “
There are many like her. Rebecca King Ferraro and Michael Sean Breeden, retired ballet dancers who host the Conversations on Dance podcast, identify deeply with the book. (You interviewed Larsen twice.) “She writes it for dancers,” King said. “Maybe that’s an assumption, but it feels like it was written for us and that an audience and an audience can still enjoy it.”
Who doesn’t love a biography of a star like Allegra Kent or Edward Villella, two great New York ballet dancers? However, their experiences are rarely widespread. At one point in Larsen’s book, part of it is taken away from her. “She has to scratch herself back and like to find this resilience in herself,” said Breeden. “It’s so relatable. It’s everyone’s story. “
“Being a ballerina” is about commitment. It has its roots in Toni Bentley’s “Wintersaison: Ein Tänzerjournal” (1982), an intimate glimpse into the life of its author at the City Ballet. But it can also be seen as a companion piece to the latest documentary series “On Pointe”, which followed students at the School of American Ballet, in which Larsen studied from 1986 to 1992.
Larsen is 46 years old and lives in North Carolina, where she teaches at the Asheville Ballet Conservatory. She recently spoke about why she wanted to put her life on paper, the connection between writing and dancing, and how great it can be to be ordinary. Here are edited excerpts from that interview.
One reason you wanted to write this book was to dispel ballet myths. What bothers you about the way it is portrayed in popular culture?
It’s just so wrong. It highlights the parts that are arrogant and not important to dancing. They are only tools. The drama of dancing is dancing itself – the relationship between dancers and their craft and what they do with their body and soul. And all of us who have lived this life realize that we live with this drama every day.
Is that why you want to address people outside of the dance world?
One of my beliefs is that the more you know about something, the more interested you are. So I want to keep talking about it. And that’s why I want this book not to be seen as something for dancers, even though I love the way it resonates with other dancers.
I think this is a way for a non-dancer to look at their own inner passion. Perhaps that will light the same inner flame within them or light a pilot light that has become inactive.
You almost called the book “The Everyday Ballerina”. Why do you like this description?
I’ve danced some fabulous ballets and fabulous roles. Yet there are hundreds more like me – maybe thousands. We could be exceptional in one way: you have reached the highest level of your career and you have those high points on stage. But at the end of the day we’re all a gang. We’re all a crew, we’re all a group of ballerinas. For the non-dancing audience, you hear the word ballerina and think, “Oh my god, superstar.” In certain moments maybe, but not the next moment. And that’s what I wanted to express. Everyday life, the habit of being extraordinary.
Is writing a different way of dancing?
Absolutely. I think it is just as liberating as it is to be a great, brave and courageous dancer. You have to be brave on stage to be an effective performer, and to be an effective communicator in words is the same thing. I could be all alone at the computer and just pour it out. I wouldn’t let myself wonder who could read it. It felt like being on stage. It felt like I was doing my biggest, boldest Grand Jeté. Throw it out there! And then you go back to the sample and shape it and refine it and work on your technique. They are working on your delivery.
You cannot edit a performance at the same time.
There is no time buffer when dancing. The moment you do it, people see it. But having that buffer with writing felt a lot like being on stage with an audience. They can’t touch you. With this book it is done. My words are out there. It’s like going on stage: as soon as the curtain rises and the music starts, nobody can stop you. It’s just you
