Collusion

January 4, 1999
Novelist and poet Zimroth (Gangsters) recounts her days as an adolescent ballet student and her masochistic relationship with her teacher, F., a famous Russian dancer. The story itself is compelling. F.'s treatment of Zimroth alternates between special kindness (taking her into his office to show her photographs of himself as a young dancer) and particular cruelty (F. hits Zimroth with his cane hard enough to leave bruises). Even without a demanding, often physically abusive instructor like F., serious early ballet study comes off sounding painful and self-punishing: Zimroth describes how to break in pointe shoes and confesses that for years she kept her first pair--caked on the inside with dried blood--as a souvenir. The book's weakness lies in its lack of factual explanation. When Zimroth was 13, her parents insisted on pulling her out of ballet school because of her poor grades. When she reported this to F., he told her she would have to choose between him and her parents. Zimroth chose her teacher but doesn't explain how she got around her parents' original demand. In a similar vein, Zimroth uses a disturbing yet unconvincing framing device in which she compares her relationship with F. to a sexual experience (confusingly, she introduces this as a rape, then immediately recants). Still, Zimroth's memoir is an interesting backstage look at the seamier side of an art form, and it raises interesting questions about artists and mentors and the personal price of success.

March 1, 1999
Award-winning novelist and poet Zimroth (Gangsters, LJ 9/15/96) presents a memoir of her three years of intensive ballet training--beginning at age 12--under the critical eye of her teacher, "F." Zimroth analyzes an unhealthy master-pupil relationship characterized by sadomasochism, violence, eroticism, discipline, and love. Zimroth's home and school life receded, and her world became the circumscribed space of the dance studio, where she committed herself to becoming a great dancer under the demanding tutelage of "F." Zimroth attempts to expose a secret world of ballet, but even with distance from her adolescent years, she is still ambivalent about her early and haunting experiences. Because her story does not mirror that of most ballet students, and because she has not yet resolved her interpretation of events, readers may find the book painfully sensitive, but elusive and annoying, with few personal or far-reaching insights. Not recommended.--Joan Stahl, Natl. Museum of American Art, Washington, DC

Starred review from January 1, 1999
From the moment she saw "Giselle" as a child, Zimroth, winner of the National Jewish Book Award in 1996, knew there was no turning back. She wanted to learn classical ballet--to spin across the floor "en pointe" as if her heels were tipped with wings. In this fiercely honest memoir, she recalls her extraordinary initiation, at the age of 12, into the demanding, bewitching world of dance. Her mentor, a brilliant, quixotic, charismatic ballet master she calls only F, was not only her teacher but also her first love, a love she has never forgotten. Singled out as special by F, a much older, married man, Zimroth soon became, by her own admission, a willing participant in a strange, erotically charged game. In beautiful, seductive prose, Zimroth makes readers privy to the delicate balance of pain and pleasure that ruled her life for two years, until in a fit of childish pique, she tips the balance by defying F's wife and is kicked out of the ballet school. The intimacy of violence, the dancer's desire for perfection, the way that "one human can possess another with barely a touch exchanged" --it's all part of this compelling memoir, which is as strange as it is familiar. ((Reviewed January 1 & 15, 1999))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1999, American Library Association.)