Turning Pointe
How a New Generation of Dancers Is Saving Ballet from Itself
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Narrated by:
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Casey Holloway
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By:
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Chloe Angyal
About this listen
A reckoning with one of our most beloved art forms, whose past and present are shaped by gender, racial, and class inequities - and a look inside the fight for its future
Every day, in dance studios all across America, legions of little children line up at the barre to take ballet class. This time in the studio shapes their lives, instilling lessons about gender, power, bodies, and their place in the world both in and outside of dance.
In Turning Pointe, journalist Chloe Angyal captures the intense love for ballet that so many dancers feel, while also grappling with its devastating shortcomings: the power imbalance of an art form performed mostly by women, but dominated by men; the impossible standards of beauty and thinness; and the racism that keeps so many people of color out of ballet. As the rigid traditions of ballet grow increasingly out of step with the modern world, a new generation of dancers is confronting these issues head on, in the studio and on stage. For ballet to survive the 21st century and forge a path into a more socially just future, this reckoning is essential.
©2021 Chloe Angyal (P)2021 Hachette AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“A vigorously reported critique of common policies and practices in the ballet world.” (Kirkus Reviews)
“Turning Pointe: How a New Generation of Dancers is Saving Ballet from Itself is a painstaking, and often painful, assessment of the troubling racialized, gendered, and classed lessons of classical ballet. Angyal’s sharp analysis invites us to wonder how ballet might expand if it did not require broken toes, torn ligaments, starving dancers, or pink tights. This is the book for all of us who loved ballet but found it did not love us back.” (Melissa Harris-Perry, Maya Angelou Presidential Chair at Wake Forest University and cohost of System Check)
“This is the book I desperately needed as a teenage ballerina, when I mistakenly thought there was something wrong with me rather than ballet’s culture. Having read it, I want to buy copies for every aspiring dancer, as well as the gatekeepers who most need to read it. Angyal reports with urgency and precision about what draws young dancers to ballet, and how it needs to change to keep them there. Turning Pointe is a long-overdue reckoning for an art form that excludes and injures its dancers as much as it dazzles them.” (Ellen O’Connell Whittet, author of What You Become in Flight)
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- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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It was the team finals of women's gymnastics in the 2012 Olympics, and McKayla Maroney was on top of her game. The 16-year-old US gymnast was performing arguably the best vault of all time, launching herself unimaginably high into the air and sticking a flawless landing. When her score came, many were baffled: 16.233. Three-tenths of a point stood between her and a perfect score. If that vault wasn't perfection, what was?
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Book's great--reader's performance is TERRIBLE
- By AB on 12-14-18
By: Dvora Meyers
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The Black Male Handbook
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- Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins
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An NAACP Image Award nominee, The Black Male Handbook is an impassioned call to end the problems facing today's Black men. Author and activist Kevin Powell offers insights on steering away from violence and toward a more responsible manhood. A new climate is rising in the Black community. Despite a shared thirst for cutting-edge opportunities and fresh directions, today's hiphop generation is still plagued by many long-standing problems.
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Awesome and very useful book.
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Viral Justice
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- Narrated by: Ruha Benjamin
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Long before the pandemic, Ruha Benjamin was doing groundbreaking research on race, technology, and justice, focusing on big, structural changes. But the twin plagues of COVID-19 and anti-Black police violence inspired her to rethink the importance of small, individual actions. Part memoir, part manifesto, Viral Justice is a sweeping and deeply personal exploration of how we can transform society through the choices we make every day.
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Fantastic book!
- By Avie Kearney on 05-21-23
By: Ruha Benjamin
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Life in Motion
- An Unlikely Ballerina
- By: Misty Copeland
- Narrated by: Lisa Reneé Pitts
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
As the only African-American soloist dancing with the prestigious American Ballet Theatre, Misty Copeland has made history. But when she first placed her hands on the barre at an after-school community center, no one expected the undersized, anxious 13-year-old to become a groundbreaking ballerina. Life in Motion is a story of passion and grace for anyone who has dared to dream of a different life.
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Has Copeland heard this narration? Has Audible?
- By Debbie on 08-02-15
By: Misty Copeland
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Chalked Up (Updated Edition)
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- Narrated by: Eileen Stevens
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- Unabridged
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Dreams of becoming the next Nadia Comaneci led Jennifer Sey to become a gymnast at the age of six. Her early success and love of the sport propelled her and her family to great sacrifice so that she could become a National Team member and one of America’s elite gymnasts by age 11. But as she set her sights higher, Jennifer began to change, setting her mental and physical health aside in the name of winning.
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Interesting inside look at gymnastics
- By Jon Hunt on 08-19-24
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It Was All a Dream
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Reniqua Allen tells the stories of Black millennials searching for a better future in spite of racist policies that have closed off traditional versions of success. Many watched their parents and grandparents play by the rules, only to sink deeper and deeper into debt. They witnessed their elders fight to escape cycles of oppression for more promising prospects, largely to no avail. Today, in this post-Obama era, they face a critical turning point. Interweaving her own experience, Allen shares surprising stories of hope and ingenuity.
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Great statistics and facts
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It's Not About Perfect
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When she retired at age 19, Shannon Miller did so as one of the most recognizable gymnasts in the country. The winner of seven Olympic medals and the most decorated gymnast, male or female, in US history, Shannon tells a story of surviving and thriving. A shy, rambunctious girl raised in Oklahoma, Shannon fell in love with gymnastics at a young age and fought her way to the top.
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Loved it!
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By: Shannon Miller
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Beauty Sick
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Today's young women face a bewildering set of contradictions when it comes to beauty. They don't want to be Barbie dolls but, like generations of women before them, are told they must look like them. They're angry about the media's treatment of women but hungrily consume the very outlets that belittle them. They understand that what they see isn't real but still download apps to airbrush their selfies.
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No conclusion
- By Amazon Customer on 01-15-21
By: Renee Engeln
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Letters to a Young Artist
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- Narrated by: Anna Deavere Smith
- Length: 4 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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From "the most exciting individual in American theater" ( Newsweek), here is Anna Deavere Smith's brass-tacks advice to aspiring artists of all stripes. In the manner of Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, Deavere Smith mentors her young artist over a period of five years, sharing her hard-won wisdom about the challenges and rewards of the artistic life.
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Great advice for artists of any age.
- By S. Barker on 10-30-17
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Your Turn
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- Narrated by: Julie Lythcott-Haims
- Length: 20 hrs and 21 mins
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What does it mean to be an adult? In the 20th century, psychologists came up with five markers of adulthood: finish your education, get a job, leave home, marry, and have children. Since then, every generation has been held to those same markers. Yet so much has changed about the world and living in it since that sequence was formulated. All of those markers are choices, and they’re all valid, but any one person’s choices along those lines do not make them more or less an adult.
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Not the book that was advertised
- By M. Rogers on 04-13-21
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Girl Gurl Grrrl
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Black women have never been more visible or more publicly celebrated. But for every milestone, every magazine cover, every new face elected to public office, the reality of everyday life for black women remains a complex, conflicted, contradiction-laden experience. An American journalist who has been living in London for a decade, Kenya Hunt has made a career of distilling moments, movements, and cultural moods into words. Her work takes the difficult and the indefinable and makes it accessible; it is razor sharp cultural observation threaded through evocative and relatable stories.
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Inspired
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Excellent Sheep
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Excellent Sheep takes a sharp look at the high-pressure conveyor belt that begins with parents and counselors who demand perfect grades and culminates in the skewed applications Deresiewicz saw firsthand as a member of Yale's admissions committee. As schools shift focus from the humanities to "practical" subjects like economics and computer science, students are losing the ability to think in innovative ways.
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skip the book read the essay
- By Amazon Customer on 05-07-15
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a great book poorly read
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What listeners say about Turning Pointe
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Katherine Murphy
- 04-29-24
Liberal leaning book about ballet
I am an adult who started taking ballet classes a few years ago. I was aware of some of the issues surrounding this dance form (body image/eating disorders, and the cost-prohibitiveness of learning to dance) but was less aware of other aspects (the "whiteness" of ballet, the issues with boys both in the studio and outside of it, and the role of men in creating ballets and running companies). At times the author leaned into liberal social justice ideology, but there were topics that needed to be addressed.
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Overall
- Mariana P
- 07-17-21
Mind-blowing and eye-opening
As a ballet dancer, I can say that this book needs to be heard by everybody. Dancers and non-dancers have helped to perpetuate injustices and racism in the ballet co8and it needs to be stopped altogether.
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- Samantha F.
- 09-29-23
Wonderful- please read if you’re learning ballet
So important to listen/read this if you’re learning or teaching ballet. Can’t recommend enough.
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- laurie
- 09-02-21
I knew ballet was messed up...
I've been dancing ballet for 32 years and I knew that ballet was a messed up system but I was not aware it was this messed up. I don't have the hips or the feet and now after reading this book I'm okay with that. I've been striving to get back on pointe, and now that is gone. I will never dance in pointe shoes again. I knew it was sexist and racist but again not at the level that was discussed in this book. at the end of the book it asks if the author would be willing to let their children dance ballet. My answer is a resounding "No." Not until ballet gets its sh!t together. A wonderful read and I will read it again.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Daryl James
- 11-28-21
Interesting but idealistic
A lot of the moral conditions raised against racism, sexism, and binary gender conformity as imperatives for ballet to survive sound like whining that won't make a difference if the final outcome doesn't produce a more popular and commercially viable artform and product. I totally agree that Ballet must remain socially relevant if it is to remain a popular artform and not just as staple of middle-upper class white ladyhood, but I don't see Ballet ever fully abandoning it's central position to bougoise white ladyhood, which makes all of these aspirations to make Ballet politically correct ring hollow.
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2 people found this helpful
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- J. Gibbs
- 11-08-21
imporrant read
This book is especially important for parents of young dancers to read. It tells the darker side of the history of ballet and paints a bright future along with specific steps emerging dancers and artists can take to encourage a healthy and more vibrant evolution of ballet!
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- Jennifer E. Santos
- 11-17-23
Disappointing
Hey, I’m not very far into listening to this book, but I have to say that firstly, the narrator should have taken time to learn the proper pronunciation of ballet step in the name of ballet luminaries like Danilova. Secondly, as someone who has spent most of my life, since the age of four in the Ballet world, and I am now facing my half century birthday, a lot of the complaints the author had sound like frustrated, ballet dreams, and a few from a dancer that never fully matured or continued with the
art form.
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