Ballet Stories

The magic of ballet is evoked in these enchanting stories presented with many musical excerpts from the works themselves. Jenny Agutter, who before turning to acting was a dancer, presents the stories of two French ballets - Giselle and Coppelia - and the three great ballets by Tchaikovsky, in engaging style. A perfect introduction to the ballet.

This lovely collection will make little ballerinas dance for joy! Inside, they’ll find eight of the most beautiful ballet stories, including Swan Lake, Coppélia, The Firebird, and of course, that perennial holiday favorite, The Nutcracker. It’s the perfect way to prepare a child for seeing a performance - or to keep the magic going afterward.

For more than 400 years, the art of ballet has stood at the center of Western civilization. Its traditions serve as a record of our past. A ballerina dancing The Sleeping Beauty today is a link in a long chain of dancers stretching back to 16th-century Italy and France: Her graceful movements recall a lost world of courts, kings, and aristocracy, but her steps and gestures are also marked by the dramatic changes in dance and culture that followed.

The Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew series stars three best friends determined to solve mysteries in their small hometown. This time Nancy and her best friends George and Bess are ready to perform a ballet version of Cinderella. They've been practicing their dance moves for months. But when Cinderella's glass slippers disappear, preparations for the show come to a halt. Now Nancy and friends must find the missing footwear before the curtain can go up.

Watch the curtain rise on these dramatic and beautiful ballets. The stories in this collection feature magic and comedy, drama and adventure, and are accompanied by a brief history of classical ballet, as well as historical details of the composition, choreography and early performances of each ballet.

It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the 10th annual Hunger Games. In the Capitol, 18-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to out charm, outwit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute. The odds are against him. He’s been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low.

Pauline, Petrova, and Posy love their quiet life together. They are orphans who have been raised as sisters, and when their new family needs money, the girls want to help. They decide to join the Children's Academy of Dancing and Stage Training to earn their keep. Each girl works hard following her dream. Pauline is destined for the movies. Posy is a born dancer. And Petrova? She finds she'd rather be a pilot than perform a pirouette.

The celebrated ballerina and role model Misty Copeland shares the secrets of how to reshape your body and achieve a lean, strong physique and glowing health.

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 pieces in this collection, written between 1956 and 1961 and including short fiction, a radio play, and a stunning early novel, offer startling insights into Cohen's imagination and creative process. Cohen explores themes that would permeate his later work, from shame and unworthiness to sexual desire in all its sacred and profane dimensions to longing, whether for love, family, freedom, or transcendence.

Marissa has always loved dancing. But lately, she feels clumsy and awkward when she dances, and she feels bigger and taller than the other girls. She doesn't even bother trying out for the Rose Fairy ballet. But someone else thinks Marissa has what it takes to play the Rose Fairy!

Miss Luisa's School of Dance is a magical place. There are dancers and music...and bunnies that talk and do ballet! No one knows the bunnies are there. Then, Millie arrives. She's new to ballet class and doesn't know all the moves. But when all the other dancers are gone, she discovers the Ballet Bunnies! They can help Millie find her dancing feet - so long as she can keep the Ballet Bunnies a secret!

A snowy road trip. A cozy cabin. An impossible romance. All Elle wanted was to dance the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy and get a paycheck big enough to cover her Manhattan rent. If only the gig had been so simple. When a snowstorm traps her in a remote cabin, Elle is stuck with a man she vowed to hate. Spending some time curled up by the fire with a charming, handsome man could have been perfect. Too bad he’s her womanizing dance partner Zach. As the snow swirls around them, sparks begin to fly. But even a winter wonderland can’t erase a painful past. With time before their performance ...

A Madman - An Engineered Pandemic And The Teenage Ballerina Determined To Stop Him**AUTHOR'S NOTE: This story was previously published as the serialized novelette Fronnie Fairchild, Apothecary Apprentice on Kindle Vella.** In the tiny fishing hamlet of Barcher Bay, ballet prodigy Fronnie Fairchild is pulled into a cat-and-mouse game between her grandfather and a secret eugenics cabal focused on cleansing the world with a deadly, selective pathogen. To stop this unthinkable evil, Fronnie forms a touring dance troupe as a cover while she travels the world in search of the materials ...

When young Marie Stahlbaum's favorite Christmas toy, the Nutcracker, comes alive, she realizes that she is about to start the adventure of a lifetime. After defeating the evil Mouse King in battle, her handsome Nutcracker whisks her away to a magical kingdom populated by dolls.

A quiet dancer. A charming single dad. A summer that could change everything. Serena Reyes has always preferred the background—whether at the ballet barre or in life. As a soft-spoken librarian and adult beginner ballet dancer, she’s content cheering on her friends from the wings. But when she’s asked to step in and teach a beginner ballet class at Arabesque Academy, she finds herself in a role she never imagined: being seen. Enter Eli Turner, a recently divorced single dad with a daughter enrolled in summer ballet camp—and a smile that somehow manages to unravel Serena’s ...

Welcome to Angel Falls, a deep-south small town in the heart of L.A. (That’s Lower Alabama, y’all.) Injury shatters Casey Alexander’s dream of becoming a prima ballerina, so she opens a dance studio in her home town of Angel Falls. Among her students are the daughters of her high-school sweetheart Ben and his wife Melody, Casey’s ex-best friend. Witnessing Ben and Melody’s happy-ever-after on a weekly basis fuels her determination to find someone of her own to love. But eligible men are scarce as hen’s teeth in the quaint little town on the backside of nowhere. Until a sexy ...

"The naked ballerina held her breath, closed her eyes, and sat down in the bathtub filled with ice water." After suffering an injury onstage, Iris sees that her career as a ballet dancer is over. Her roommate won't believe it, her boyfriend doesn’t understand ballet, and the other man in her life may be the worst thing to ever happen to her. Unable to see a future without dance, Iris makes every mistake and bad choice that she can. From behind-the-scenes at a world-class ballet company to behind the bar at a music venue in Lower Manhattan, IRIS is a haunting and heartbreaking novella.

At age seventeen, Toni Bentley was chosen by Balanchine, then in his final years, to join the New York City Ballet. From both backstage and onstage, she carries us through the serendipitous history and physical intricacies and demands of Serenade: its dazzling opening, with seventeen women in a double-diamond pattern; its radical, even jazzy, use of the highly refined language that is ballet; its place in the choreographer’s own dramatic story of his immigration to the United States from Soviet Russia.

Growing up, Alice Robb dreamed of becoming a ballet dancer. But by age fifteen, she had to face the reality that she would never meet the impossibly high standards of the hyper-competitive ballet world. After she quit, she tried to avoid ballet—only to realize, years later, that she was still haunted by the lessons she had absorbed in the mirror-lined studios of Lincoln Center, and that they had served her well in the wider world. The traits ballet takes to an extreme—stoicism, silence, submission—are valued in girls and women everywhere.