Fierce and Delicate: Essays on Dance and Illness (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781952271014)

Memoir about ballet and illness from a creative writing teacher whose career as a ballerina was stopped by rheumatoid arthritis.

Ren e Nicholson's professional training in ballet had both moments of magnificence and moments of torment, from fittings of elaborate platter tutus to strange language barriers and unrealistic expectations of the body. In Fierce and Delicate, she looks back on the often confused and driven self she had been shaped into--always away from home, with friends who were also rivals, influenced by teachers in ways sometimes productive and at other times bordering on sadistic--and finds beauty in the small roles she performed. When, inevitably, Nicholson moved on from dancing, severed from her first love by illness, she discovered that she retained the lyricism and narrative of ballet itself as she negotiated life with rheumatoid arthritis.

An intentionally fractured memoir-in-essays, Fierce and Delicate navigates the traditional geographies of South Florida, northern Michigan, New York City, Milwaukee, West Virginia, and also geographies of the body--long, supple limbs; knee replacements; remembered bodies and actual. It is a book about the world of professional dance and also about living with chronic disease, about being shattered yet realizing the power to assemble oneself again, in a new way.

Author: Ren馥 K. Nicholson
ISBN-10: 1952271010
ISBN-13: 9781952271014
Publisher: West Virginia University Press
Language: English
Published: 05/31/2021
Pages: 168
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.44lbs
Size: 7.90h x 5.00w x 0.60d

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 05/21/2021 pg. 1