BOOKS

The Everyday Dancer

Deborah Bull
2011

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.

A unique perspective from behind the footlights, The Everyday Dancer is a vibrant and compelling picture of a life in the day of a dancer.

'So forget Degas and his pastel picture-book perfection. This is the snapshot you will see, if you peep into the window as class at the Royal Opera House is about to start: no rococo gilt, no wooden floors, and no tulle skirts, but a late twentieth-century architect's sparse vision of a calm, austere landscape marred – or perhaps improved? – by brightly coloured bodies, positioned at regular intervals around the edges of a vast, airy space. Each one is poised, left hand on the barre, attention half focused on the teacher who seems to be making hand signals to accompany a short volley of franglais. “OK girls: two demi, one grande, port de bras, rise, balance and change position. First, second, fourth and fifth. Two bars in. And . . .' Let class begin.'