Don't Think, Dear: On Loving & Leaving Ballet

"An incisive exploration of ballet's role in the modern world, told through the experience of the author and her classmates at the most elite ballet school in the country: the School of American Ballet. Ballet is an art full of hyper-feminine trappings, but beneath the ornate costumes and exaggerated stage makeup, traits like thinness, stoicism, and submission are valued above all else. Journalist Alice Robb spent years immersed in that universe as a child, but as an adult, she couldn't shake the feeling that the same laws that governed the dance world still applied in the regular one. Certain bodies hold more value than others, and men oftentimes hold the most power of all. Pain is best left concealed, along with sexuality, in all of its messiness. Obedience and conformity are rewarded, while standing out comes at a cost. Profound, nuanced, and obsessively researched, Don't Think, Dear, is Robb's excavation of her adolescent years as a dancer, and an exploration of how those days informed her life for years to come. As she grapples with the pressure she faced as a student at the storied School of American Ballet, she explores the fates of her former classmates as well. From sweet and shy Emily--whose body was deemed "thin enough" only when she was too ill to eat--to the precocious and talented Meiying--who despite her success, had to contend with the fact that she was the only Vietnamese-American in the school. Altogether, their stories are ones of heartbreak and resilience, of reinvention and regret. Along the way, Robb weaves in the myths of famous ballerinas past and present, from the groundbreaking Misty Copeland, to the controversial George Balanchine. Ballet does not exist in a vacuum, it is a laboratory of womanhood, a test-tube world in which traditional femininity is exaggerated. By exploring the psyche of a dancer, Don't Think, Dear grapples with the contradictions and challenges of being a woman today. It's also a story about chasing your dreams, however complicated, and learning when to let them go"--