Dancing Through It: My Journey in the Ballet Author: Visit Amazon's Jenifer Ringer Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0670026492 | Format: PDF
Dancing Through It: My Journey in the Ballet Description
From Booklist
Dancing has always been essential to Ringer. As a child, a student, and a principal dancer for the New York City Ballet, dance and her strong faith in God were at the center of her life. And she has danced with the best over the course of her extremely successful career while also becoming a wife and mother. With ballet dancers, body image can become an obsession, and like so many others, Ringer suffered from anorexia and bulimia—until she ended up gaining enough weight to be fired from the company. Perseverance, prayer, family, and church helped her to get past these issues and return to the company. Then, just when she finally came to terms with her body type, a New York Times critic suggested that she was fat, creating a publicity storm that drove her to the talk shows. Ringer now offers a frank and open account of her demanding dance life, revealing seldom-seen technical aspects of this rigorous art form. A sure hit for balletomanes and everyone concerned about body-image issues. --Danise Hoover
Review
“Jenifer Ringer’s book is an honest and exhilarating look into the life of a young dancer, with both the excitement of achievement and the desperate anxiety given proper treatment. This is a must-read for anyone entering the dance community, but even more broadly, for any young person passionately following their dream. Jenifer was fortunate to have help in conquering her eating disorder and other demons, and this book may be a help to those wrestling with their own issues. Besides, for those of us who wish we could dance, knowing about it from the inside is a rare privilege.” —Kathy Keller, coauthor of THE MEANING OF MARRIAGE
“As a dancer, Jenifer Ringer offers quintessential musicality, brilliant technique, infectious humor, and a good old dash of gorgeous. As a writer, she offers all of this and more, providing us with a rare opportunity to look behind the curtain and understand the pressures, challenges, and rewards faced by this remarkable individual. Dancing Through It is one of the most candid and insightful books about classical ballet I have ever read. An honest portrait of the rarefied world of the New York City Ballet, Jenny’s writing will make you tear up, roar with laughter, and reflect on the myriad pressures and rewards of being a dancer and an artist. Long before you’ve put this book down, you will want to shout ‘Brava’ once again for this treasured ballerina and gifted author.” —Peter Boal, artistic director, Pacific Northwest Ballet
“One of New York’s most beautiful dancers, Jenifer Ringer brings idealism, humor, and a raw, searing honesty to this poignant memoir. I had a hard time putting the book down, and I teared up several times.”
—Wendy Perron, author of THROUGH THE EYES OF A DANCER, and editor at large, DANCE MAGAZINE
See all Editorial Reviews
- Hardcover: 288 pages
- Publisher: Viking Adult (February 20, 2014)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0670026492
- ISBN-13: 978-0670026494
- Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Jenifer Ringer has been my favorite principal at New York City Ballet for years. I first saw her as an apprentice 25 years ago, and have since followed her career avidly. She is not a pyrotechnic dancer, but she has it all - she has refinement, delicacy, beauty - she is joyous. This book is the appropriate culmination of her life as a dancer, and I hurried to read it and report on it. She has written it herself with editorial assistance, the perfect combination. (There has been at least one prominent biography by a dance legend that was overwritten and lacking editorial guidance.)
Jenny describes her early days as a student at School of American Ballet, being taught - and corrected - by the finest ballet teachers - Suki Schorer, Susan Pilarre, Stanley Williams, Alexandra Danilova. Jenny is from the post-Balanchine generation, so she coached with Balanchine stars like Karin von Aroldingen.
Poignantly she writes of her first experience dancing in the corps of Serenade - "It almost seemed that with every new step I learned, my heart had to grow bigger."
She writes of being chosen as Waltz Girl for the SAB Workshop, then suffering a broken bone in her foot and having to be sidelined for six weeks. She describes the training at SAB: "Even a moment of stillness couldn't be just a pretty, static pose; we needed to look and feel ready to move at all times, and there were supposed to be invisible lines of energy radiating from our extremities."
She vividly describes Serenade, a challenging writing assignment as it is so other-worldly. She clearly sets forth the roles she has danced in such great ballets as Dancing at a Gathering. She describes the backstage of hair and makeup and a tutu that fits - a maternity tutu?
March 16th review in NY Times By APOLLINAIRE SCHERR- (See Below)
[...]
When Jenifer Ringer, who retired last month from New York City Ballet after 24 years, watched Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan,” she laughed at this thriller on the forces of ballet darkness. But her memoir, “Dancing Through It: My Journey in the Ballet,” does not skimp on what she calls “the crazy side of ballet.” With quiet eloquence and self-deprecating humor, Ms. Ringer suggests how a profession as idealistic as it is hierarchical and competitive might drive a talented young woman to self-destruct.
“We were teenagers,” Ms. Ringer, now 40, writes of her cohort of 16-year-olds just admitted to City Ballet. “It would take a while for us to realize that the world we were entering might well prove impossible to survive.”
For the first few years, she was too exhilarated to care about the endless workdays, spent learning complex ballets at breakneck speed. She didn’t mind cramming for a coveted demi-soloist role on two hours’ notice, being pitted against friends for parts, or weathering directors and choreographers’ tempers. And she had no cause to notice the shroud of secrecy surrounding dancers’ “pain or exhaustion” or whatever vulnerability might compromise the ballets’ presentation.
But her body, outgrowing the willowy Balanchine ideal, soon gave her cause. Anxious that her new hips and thighs would doom her, she began to starve herself, then stuff herself more and more, devouring sci-fi novels and mounds of pasta each night in her apartment alone. By civilian standards, she counted as merely chubby. At City Ballet, though, the extra pounds would cost her roles and, after many warnings, her job (for a year, anyway).
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