DDP Featured in Turning Pointe by Chloe Angyal

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 twenty-first century and forge a path into a more socially just future, this reckoning is essential.

Dance Data Project®’s research is featured in the book. Of the importance of our research, Ms. Angyal said, “The Dance Data Project has been doing the essential work of gathering information about the state of gender equity (or lack thereof) in the ballet world. Diagnosing the problem is the only way to begin solving it, and I was glad to include their data in my book.”

The book is published by Bold Type Books and can be purchased wherever books are sold. Learn more about it here.