Little Movements

A Novel

De: Lauren Morrow

Narrado por: Ashley J. Hobbs

A “lyrical debut” (USA Today) about a Black woman who is finally given a chance to pursue her dream of becoming a renowned choreographer, only to find that it comes at a tremendous personal cost

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE FALL: People, Oprah Daily, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Woman’s World, Christian Science Monitor, Bustle

“Lauren Morrow’s smart, incisive and hilarious debut is an ode to the creative process and to people everywhere who feel the pull to take a risk and try something new.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune

Layla Smart was raised by her pragmatic Midwestern mother to dream medium. But all Layla’s ever wanted is a career in dance, which requires dreaming big. So when she receives a prestigious offer to be the choreographer-in-residence at Briar House, an arts program in rural Vermont, she leaves behind Brooklyn, her job, her friends, and her husband to pursue it.

Navigating Briar House and the small, white town that surrounds it proves difficult—Layla wants to create art for art’s sake and resist tokenization, but the institution’s director keeps encouraging Layla to dig deep into her people’s history. Still, the mental and physical demands of dancing spark a sharp, unexpected sense of joy, bringing into focus the years she’d distanced herself from her true calling for the sake of her marriage and maintaining the status quo.

Just as she begins to see her life more clearly, she discovers a betrayal that proves the cracks in her marriage were deeper than she ever could have known. Then Briar House’s dangerously problematic past comes to light. And Layla discovers she’s pregnant. Suddenly, dreaming medium sounds a lot more appealing.

Poignant, propulsive, and darkly funny, Little Movements is a novel about self-discovery, about what we must endure—or let go of—in order to realize our dreams.

A Journey of Self-Disvovery

Having just retired from a long, fruitful, and personally fulfilling career running a college dance department, I devoured this book, a richly and accurately drawn story of a dance artist on a journey of self-discovery. As a woman of mixed racial heritage, I found this book and its story both extremely current and historically accurate as author and dancer Lauren Morrow delves into the world of African American choreographer Layla Smart, who is offered a residency at a prestigious institution in Vermont called Briar House. This unexpected honor isn’t all it appears to be. Briar House has historically celebrated the work of white artists, and needs to at least appear to be in step with the tenor and spirit of the time. Additionally, the town is home to a powerful organization called the Green Mountain Men, who aren’t all that thrilled to have a Black artist in residency at their beloved institution. These tensions underpin a story of an artist confronting loss and the expectations not only of those she loves, but of those in power who want to ensure she will deliver a dance about Blackness. Never mind that Layla’s body of work is abstract, more along the lines of Tricia Brown and other postmodernist and contemporary choreographers than American dance great Alvin Ailey’s masterpiece “Revelations,” which explores and celebrates the experience of growing up poor and Black in 1930s and 40s rural Texas.

This is a theme I have never seen explored as central to the internal struggle of any character arc in any novel. It raises so many issues and questions as we consider the ethics of trying to strong-arm an African-American choreographer into making a dance about the Black experience, and
ponder if a white artist would ever be asked to create a dance about the experience of being white.
Following this reasoning, African American choreographers would have no artistic freedom of expression or opportunity for rebellion, the main tenants and imperative of American modern dance, Layla’s genre of expression.

I loved this book for two main reasons. First, as a dance artist, I’m thrilled to read a story in which dance plays a central, integral role in the identities of the main character and her richly-drawn dancers. The descriptions of both the creative process and the long, exhausting hours devoted to the creation of an evening-length work as well as the toll such endeavors take on human bodies is accurate and authentic.

I also greatly appreciated the descriptions of Layla’s dance background, especially her early love of ballet, an art form that has historically engaged in exclusionary practices and open racism toward BIPOC peoples, and certain body types. These experiences cause Layla to broaden her dance horizons and approaches to self-expression through movement.

Also important to note is the accurate depiction of Black dancers in the professional industry whose experience is that they have trained and worked in almost exclusively white environments.

Second, I loved the depiction of Layla’s inner life as an artist, daughter, friend, and wife, the deep connections she has built with those close to her, and the struggle she engages in to forge her own, individual path in the face of the expectations she encounters.

Finally Ashley J. Cobbs’s reading is pitch perfect as an artist of integrity, a woman who has lived through terrible losses, and the wife of a man-child whose selfish actions contribute greatly to the protagonist’s personal evolution within the book.

This is a smart, beautifully crafted, well-written and intensely felt novel that ultimately is about taking a risk to achieve a dream, and the courage to see it through regardless of personal cost. Alvin Ailey once said something very profound: “Dance is for every body.” So is this book, which engages us at a human level and expresses a universal theme—finally taking a chance on ourselves.