Book description
The Everyday Dancer is a new and honest account of the business of
dancing from a writer with first hand experience of the profession.
Structured around the daily schedule, The Everyday Dancer goes behind
the velvet curtain, the gilt and the glamour to uncover the everyday
realities of a career in dance. Starting out with the obligatory daily
'class', the book progresses through the repetition of rehearsals, the
excitement of creating new work, the nervous tension of the half hour
call, the pressures of performance and the anti-climax of curtain
down. Through this vivid portrait of a dancer's every day, Deborah
Bull reveals the arc of a dancer's life: from the seven-year-old's
very first ballet class, through training, to company life, up through
the ranks from corps de ballet to principal and then, not thirty years
after it all began, to retirement and the inevitable sense of loss
that comes with saying goodbye to your childhood dreams.
Deborah Bull was a Principal Dancer with The Royal Ballet, noted
for her performances in the works of Forsythe and MacMillan. She is
now Creative Director of the Royal Opera House as well as a writer and
broadcaster. She has written and presented several programmes for BBC
TV and radio, including the award-winning 'The Dancer's Body'. She is
the author of The Vitality Plan (1998), Dancing Away (1998) and (with
Luke Jennings) The Faber Pocket Guide to Ballet (2004).
