Hello, good readers —
It’s over. The year from hell is behind us, or as behind us as something can be when it’s left so many of us with trauma, with scars, with losses that can never be undone. I’ve been struck, in the last few days, how different people’s hopes for this new year have been from the usual sentiments. People normally speak about thriving in the new year, but this time around, I’ve heard a lot of talk about healing. It’s a reminder that even though the calendar year is over, and we’re no longer living in (or through) 2020, we’ll be living with 2020 for a long time.
Still, I hope you get to thrive in 2021. I hope you get everything you want and need and deserve in this new year.
On this day a year ago, I started writing Turning Pointe. I had gone to the local copyworks on New Year’s Eve and picked up 250 printed pages of interview transcripts, medical journal articles, and notes I’d taken on the approximately 50 books I’d read in the summer and fall. Armed with that box of documents, a mug of hot coffee, and a little hotel front desk bell bought for me by the man who I thought would be my husband by now but who, thanks to COVID, is still my fiancee, I sat down and wrote the first 800 words of my book. (I got to ring the bell every time I hit my daily word count. Sometimes, when he was out of the house and couldn’t hear it ding, I’d text him a stream of bell emojis 🛎🛎🛎).
Today, that book is a 96,000-word manuscript, and instead of going to the copy shop, I have to go to UPS to mail back the corrected page proofs, which I’ve been editing by hand for the last few weeks. Bound copies of Turning Pointe will soon be on their way to the people — journalists and ballet dancers — who I hope will write glowing blurbs for the back cover. A few bound copies will also be on their way to me, and I fully anticipate collapsing into a soggy, snotty heap the first time I hold my book in my hands. Don’t worry, I’ll send you a photo.
I want to thank each and every one of you who pre-ordered a copy for yourself or a loved one as a gift this holiday season, and I hope the notes I wrote reached their intended recipients in time.
As we get closer to the publication date (now just four months away), I’ll be doing something a little different with this newsletter, bringing you brief profiles of the people you’ll meet in the book, from dancers and choreographers to teachers and health care providers. There are lots of voices in this book, and so much of what they told me had to be cut for space and time, but that doesn’t mean you should miss out.
But for now, here are some recommendations for dance to watch as you’re snowed in, locked down, or taking your well-earned rest at the end of a long, unfathomably hard year.
Always, always watch Alvin Ailey’s Revelations, if you can — and you can!
Ballet Black’s new digital work, Like Water.
The Royal Ballet performs Enigma Variations (USD3.30, until Jan. 3).
Christopher Wheeldon’s Tony-, Olivier-, and everything else-winning An American in Paris, starring two ballet dancers and featuring one of the best opening numbers you’ll ever see (USD6).
The Royal Ballet’s 2013 production of Don Quixote, with superstar Carlos Acosta (free, until Jan. 6).
That’s it from me this week. Thanks, as always, for reading.
Chloe.