{"id":4276,"date":"2021-12-03T06:18:18","date_gmt":"2021-12-03T14:18:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=4276"},"modified":"2021-12-03T06:18:18","modified_gmt":"2021-12-03T14:18:18","slug":"rachel-kapelke-dale-the-ballerinas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/rachel-kapelke-dale-the-ballerinas\/","title":{"rendered":"Rachel Kapelke-Dale: The Ballerinas"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This is a delicious swoon of a book.\u00a0 It\u2019s not a mystery though there are some (very) low level crimes involved, but it\u2019s mostly a story about ballet, female friendship, and the efforts women make to be heard and acknowledged in their lives, professional and personal.\u00a0 The central character is Delphine Legere, and as the book opens, she\u2019s a young student at the Paris Opera Ballet (POB), an elite dance training school.\u00a0 Delphine and her best friend, the tempestuous Margaux, are challenged by the arrival of the beautiful American student, Lindsay.<\/p>\n

As the three grow together, advancing up into the corps de ballet and beyond, Kapelke-Dale focuses on the hard work and pure ambition it takes to form a ballerina.\u00a0 While the outer layer of the ballerina is beautiful, soft, and (in general) pink, the hard-working interior is another story.\u00a0 The girls work their bodies to within an inch of their lives, always striving to be better \u2013 to be perfect.<\/p>\n

Delphine\u2019s mother is a genuinely famous ballet star \u2013 her rank is the highest at the Opera, Etoile.<\/em>\u00a0 As a mother she\u2019s remote and aloof, and her main message to her daughter, other than to be a perfect ballerina, is never to get pregnant.<\/p>\n

Of course, as the girls grow, life and the different limits of their talents intervene.\u00a0 There are boys.\u00a0 There are the ambitions to make it beyond the corps \u2013 to become a principal.\u00a0 While Margaux and Lindsay advance slowly within the Opera hierarchy, Delphine chooses a different route: choreography.\u00a0 She ends up in Russia with a domineering boyfriend and a shakily advancing career as a choreographer at the iconic Mariinsky theater.<\/p>\n

While she\u2019s left Paris apparently on purpose, the main thrust of the book happens as Delphine returns as a choreographer, staging a ballet she\u2019s calling Tsarina, <\/em>about the last Empress of Russia\u2019s relationship with Rasputin.\u00a0 As she returns to reunite with her old friends, it\u2019s clear there\u2019s something not quite right.\u00a0 There\u2019s an incident referred to and not revealed until late in the book that shaped all three women.<\/p>\n

As Delphine gets to work with Lindsay, who she\u2019s chosen as the star, she\u2019s sees Lindsay is all wrong for the part.\u00a0 Margaux has become bitter, a working alcoholic in the ballet ranks.\u00a0 The there of them have many things to work through.\u00a0 All of them are in their mid thirties, a time when their bodies as dancers are beginning to give out (retirement is mandatory at 42), and a time when they are assessing their life choices and the things they\u2019ve been and done to one another.<\/p>\n

This is certainly a ballet story \u2013 I loved all the dance details, from choreography to the brutality of toe shoes \u2013 but it\u2019s primarily a story where three women learn to speak up for themselves and figure out what they truly desire from life.\u00a0 It\u2019s a blast of a book especially if you\u2019re a dance fan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a delicious swoon of a book.\u00a0 It\u2019s not a mystery though there are some (very) low level crimes involved, but it\u2019s mostly a story about ballet, female friendship, and the efforts women make to be heard and acknowledged in their lives, professional and personal.\u00a0 The central character is Delphine Legere, and as the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[718,720,512,11,334,719,722,447,723],"class_list":["post-4276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-ballet","tag-choreography","tag-female-friendship","tag-international","tag-paris","tag-paris-opera-ballet","tag-rachel-kapelke-dale","tag-st-martins-press","tag-the-ballerinas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4276"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4277,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4276\/revisions\/4277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}