Body of a Dancer

by Renée E. D'Aoust

2011 Finalist for ForeWord Review's Book of the Year Award in Autobiography/Memoir

The award-winning writer Renée E. D'Aoust draws from her experiences as a modern dancer in New York during the nineties. Her luminous prose spotlights this passionate, often brutal world. Trained at the prestigious Martha Graham Center, D'Aoust intertwines accounts of her own and other dancers' lives with essays on modern dance history. A dancer's body, scarred, strained, and tough, bears witness to the discipline demanded by the art form. Body of a Dancer provides a powerful, acidly comic record of what it is to love, and eventually leave, a life centered on dance.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir

171 pages, Paperback

First published November 8, 2011

About the author

Author of "Body of a Dancer" (Etruscan Press), Renée E. D’Aoust was trained on scholarship as a dancer at Pacific Northwest Ballet and later at the Martha Graham Center for Contemporary Dance. Now as a writer, she has numerous publications and awards to her credit, including a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts Journalism Institute for Dance Criticism at American Dance Festival, support from the Puffin Foundation, and grants from the Idaho Commission on the Arts. Anthology publications include "Reading Dance" (Pantheon), edited by Robert Gottlieb, "On Stage Alone" (University Press of Florida), edited by Claudia Gitelman and Barbara Palfy, and "Animal Companions, Animal Doctors, Animal People" (Ontario Veterinary College/University of Guelph), edited by Hilde Weisert and Elizabeth Arnold Stone. She holds degrees from the University of Notre Dame and Columbia University, and she teaches online at Casper College and North Idaho College.

Reviews

[Sophfronia Scott]

Even if you think you know nothing about dance you probably know, or at least can guess, two aspects of it: 1.) Dancers are body conscious, sometimes to the extreme, and 2.) their bodies experience fantastic pain to bring a dream to the stage.

Renée E. D'Aoust gives these aspects their due in her insightful collection of essays recalling her time in the 1990s as a New York City dancer aspiring to the Martha Graham Dance Company. But what makes this book truly soar is when she goes beyond the physical to capture the emotional ache and consuming desire drawing her and her fellow dancers into their art. A woman obsessed with the Firebird tries to experience, literally, bodily flight; a man throws down a portable dance floor on the city sidewalks to work out his anger and salvation in front of nonplussed crowds; a dancer so tough she's called Bruce Lee performs a last act revealing she's not as strong as everyone thought.

For her own part D'Aoust approaches the writing with the respect and empathy of a survivor--respect because she can clearly recall every ounce of the pain, and empathy because even with time and distance and a changing physique she knows, as she relates in "Dream of the Minotaur," she will never really shuffle off the body of a dancer. However the outside may change, the pulling ache and desire will remain embedded, shaping every cell within her into the next form, the next movement, as suggested willfully by the music of her mind. D'Aoust's frankness of self-observation makes this book an absorbing, intimate experience and I enjoyed the journey.

[Nancy Rossman]

I have often sat in the audience in a dance recital, performance and admired so much the athleticism and grace without much thought to all that goes into it. Of course we have all heard the horrors of the diet regime and then The Black Swan, to showcase the pushy parent and the paranoia. So, I was in awe of all the great descriptive passages to take the "audience" backstage and home to the apartment with aching joints, raw skin, etc. I really had no idea.

And still the author conveys her love of the beauty of it all. Why she did it. Why she stayed, and ultimately why she left. A very personal and read from a real woman, brave and determined to stay until there was nothing left...and to leave with her head up, proud. Bravo!

[Alyson Hagy]

This is the first dance-related memoir I've ever read I was drawn to the book after hearing the author give a bold, funny, dramatic, moving reading from it. For me, successful memoir usually achieves a remarkable balance of voice and structure, and BODY OF A DANCER does that and more. The structure is innovative, and D'Aoust writes lyrically and honestly about the challenges of dance, particularly her time at the Martha Graham School. She's also clear-eyes about the costs of art on the body and soul. A lovely, and unromanticized, book.

[Ginger Marcinkowski]

A haunting insight into the world of a dancer. This young woman's journey gives a reader the behind-the-scenes look at the sacrifices needed to make it in the dance world. No one could walk away from this story without being moved by the beautiful, yet painful story of the people on the back side of the stage. Enjoyed the read!

[Renée]

Foreword Reviews "Book of the Year" Finalist. Published by Etruscan Press, Dec. 2011.

[Roxanne]

This interests me from a yoga perspective, since I've taught yoga to a couple of dancers and the way their bodies work is so utterly different from that of non-dancers.

[Jackson Bliss]

One of the most beautifully written and original pieces of creative nonfiction I've read in my entire life. And that's not hyperbole. If the control, the power, the cadence, and the sheer gorgeousness of the writing itself don't all make you weak in the knees, then the pure conceptuality of this memoir, the conceit, the motif of the body as text and cultural signifier will absolutely hit you in the heart. This is an immediate classic. A memoir that will be used as a point of reference for all future nonfiction.

[Hope Welsh]

Picked this book randomly from a tucked away, dusty fourth-floor bookshelf in the English building that's allegedly a mini-library, but I loved it so much I'm not sure I'll be able to return it. I haven't devoured a book so quickly since I was in middle school. Some of the most riveting writing about what it means to be an artist I've ever read, filled with sentences so crafted with originality they'll never be repeated. Going into the literary canon.

[Brianna]

This book captures the enigmatic and sick truth of being a professional dancer. As someone about to pursue this career it scared the shit out of me, and I appreciate that. If you've ever wondered why we beat our bodies black and blue for art - read this book. It also captures beautifully the internal fight around "giving up" your passion, because at some point we all have to say goodbye.

[Deborah]

https://books.google.com/books/about/...

[Grete DeAngelo]

This book reads like a series of essays about the author's life as a dancer, told in chronological order as "acts." My favorite parts of her memoir were those where she described the effects that dance had on her body and the constant pain and fatigue she endured. She also writes about the mental anguish, even to the point of suicide, that some of the other dancers faced. The most poignant moment for me was near the end when she described attending a performance as an audience member and acknowledging the life as a dancer she walked away from in order to preserve her mental and physical health. I've never been a dancer, but after seeing Black Swan, I became intrigued by what it takes to become a professional. D'Aoust describes it in a way that makes you understand why dance becomes some people's passion and ultimately their undoing.

[Sarah]

This is a wonderful book being a woman, being a dancer, being a New Yorker, and just living in a body.