Theme For Ballet
Vicki Baum
‘.. and variations on the men in her life trace the story of a great danseuse, Katja, wanting to have both ”life and art” and failing time and again as her dancing is the obsession to which other obligations are sacrificed. From the time when as a child- in Vienna- she knew she would become a dancer, there were the years of driving discipline, and always the close companionship of Grisha the boy who teaches her, learns with her, and is the center of her world-never exercised even after his death. Grisha takes to young men and cocaine, and for Katja there is the brief, sensual marriage to Pepito, a matador; and finally, when dancing with Grisha, there is the accident which leads to him death, the near-end of her career, and the meeting with Dr. Ted Marshall whom she marries. The years of this polite, undemanding marriage in which she neglects him- for the theatre- are finally threatened by a much younger girl. Katja storms off to New York for the premiere of a new ballet, and only at its close- a triumph- realizes that Ted is more important…. A more substantial book than Vicki Baum has done in some years (although no better written), this gives a prima ballerina a primadonna performance, and the furor of temperament, of love which is not always a pas de deur, of the driving dedication to a world which also has its squalid aspects, keeps this moving.’ ~ Kirkus
Minor lesbian content.
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Details
| Genre | Pulp; Checklist by Marion Zimmer Bradley |
| Publication Date | 1958 |
| Publisher | Doubleday |
| Format | Hardcover |
| Notes | Also released 1959 by Dell as a paperback. |
| Language | English |
| Rating | NotRated |
| Subject | Ballet companies; Ballerinas; Dance; Dance – Fiction; Homosexuality And Dance |
| BookID | 13085 |
