cover image Every Step You Take: A Memoir

Every Step You Take: A Memoir

Jock Soto. Harper, $24.99 (240p) ISBN 978-0-06-173238-6

Following his mother's death and his 2005 retirement as a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, Soto probes his past for meaning in order to confront the challenges of inventing a new chapter in his life. At age four, a spellbound Soto saw ballet star Edward Villella on the Ed Sullivan Show and, mimicking Villella's leaps, told his working-class Native American mother and Puerto Rican father that he wanted to be a dancer%E2%80%94and they took his request seriously. By five, Soto began his ballet training in Phoenix, Ariz.; at 13 he entered the famed School of American Ballet, in New York City; and at 16 George Balanchine invited him to join the New York City Ballet, where Soto danced until he was 40. As he became a fixture in a hip, glamorous world and embraced his gay sexuality, Soto distanced himself from his father's disapproval of homosexuality and found surrogate parents and mentors in two of NYCB's leading dancers, Peter Martins and Heather Watts. He also had a fruitful professional collaboration with choreographer Christopher Wheeldon that survived their romantic liaison. Although there are patches of awkward, unfocused writing, Soto, now a teacher at SAB, offers inspirational insights into a dancer's creative process. 8 pages of b&w photos. (Oct.)