Flack, S. (2011). Bunheads. NY: Poppy.
There’s just something about a ballerina story. At its basest level, it’s similar to the gymnast’s story, and it’s similar to any story of a young girl who dedicates not only her mind but her body to a very particular form of perfection. In comparison to the sensational and dramatic Black Swan, Sophie Flack’s first novel is tame; Bunheads is the story of nineteen-year-old Hannah, a member of the Manhattan Ballet Company’s corps. As a dancer with MBC, Hannah trains and performs in eternal competition with her fellow corps members to be chosen for featured or solo roles. When Hannah finds herself attracted to a local college student and their burgeoning romance is threatened by her lack of availability, she begins to wonder if the insular and all-encompassing world of dance is the one in which she wants to remain.
Told from the first person perspective (and authored by a former member of the New York City Ballet), Bunheads neither romanticizes nor sensationalizes its protagonist’s packed schedule of rehearsals and performances, friendly and not-so-friendly competition among dancers, and the ever present pressure to maintain a dancer’s physique. The novel’s matter-of-fact tone is one of its achievements, particularly as we readers are taken on tours of Hannah’s packed days during which the narrator never comments as to the exhaustion these “typical” days must breed. This lack of complaint encourages our own complacency; we are only woken up to the demands of Hannah’s life as a dancer as she, too, begins to question it (and thus allows us to do so, too).
While Flack’s novel is certainly no Best Little Girl in the World, like most books about young women in ballet, it does note the physical and mental demands of the profession. As these demands–in real life–would already be too much for us non-dancers, their depiction in narrative–and even one as un-hystrionic as Flack’s–always seem a bit overwrought. And I think it is the extremity of this life that, when depicted for us regular folk, always boils down to a “dance-and-kick-your-ass-every-day-or-live-among-the-commoners-and-eat-whatever-you-want” conflict. And I love that conflict, as realistically or as hackneyed as it is ever portrayed.