A lyrical and meditative memoir at the injury we inflict within the pursuit of perfection, the ache of dropping our desires, and the facility of letting cross of each.
With a promising profession in classical ballet in advance of her, Ellen O’Connell Whittet was once devastated while a misstep in practice session brought about a profession-finishing damage. Ballet was once the affection of her existence. She lived for her moments underneath the glare of the degree-lighting fixtures–gliding throughout the air, pretending alternatively fleetingly to simply defy gravity.
Yet with a debilitating damage forcing her to rethink her long term, she additionally started to rethink what she had taken with no consideration in her earlier. Underneath each and every highest arabesque was once a foot, disfigured by way of pointe footwear, filled–taped and bleeding–right into a purple, silk slipper. In the back of her ballerina’s frame was once a tender woman ravenous herself into a delicate selection of limbs. Inside her love of ballet was once a hatred of herself for struggling to reach the perfection it demanded of her.
In this uncooked and redemptive debut memoir, Ellen O’Connell Whittet explores the silent struggling of the ballerina–and reveals it emblematic of the violence that ladies quietly shoulder on a daily basis. For O’Connell Whittet, letting cross of 1 intended confronting the opposite–simplest then was once it conceivable to actually take flight.
