Ballerina: Sex, Scandal and Suffering Behind the Symbol of Perfection

Former Globe and Mail dance critic Kelly (Paris Times Eight) traces a history of ballet’s hidden dangers, a stunning array of afflictions that have lurked amid an ideal of transcendent beauty. In the 19th century, not only did chronic poverty force many of the Paris Opéra’s corps de ballet to become prostitutes of wealthy patrons, but frequently ballerinas became human torches when their flimsy tutus caught fire. Notable among the latter were two half-sisters of Oscar Wilde; seven young ballerinas who combusted together in a Philadelphia theater; and celebrated French Romantic ballerina Emma Livry, who died eight agonizing months after colliding with an open flame at the Paris Opéra. Russian great Anna Pavlova contracted pneumonia on tour yet insisted on dancing her signature role, the Dying Swan, in January 1931, dying of double pleurisy three days later. Kelly castigates the 20th century’s most celebrated ballet choreographer, George Balanchine, for creating a plague of eating disorders (she’s not the first to make this charge) and for having a “tyrannical hold” over his ballerinas. Kelly also condemns Baryshnikov, as director of American Ballet Theatre in the 1980s, for firing ballerinas for not being young or thin enough. Though Kelly stumbles as an analyst of 21st-century ballet, she’s fresh and adept when summoning the art’s spellbinding yet harrowing earlier centuries. Illus. Agent: Hilary McMahon, Westwood Creative Artists. (Oct.)