The Old Ballerina: Novel

By Ellen Cooney and Ana Huang

Book Overview

In her third novel, Ellen Cooney tells a story about the creative process, and about how art can and must happen anywhere and everywhere, including a small mill town, outside the academy and outside the confines of the art institutions of the city. In a world of corporate homogeneity and the mass-marketization of culture, the story of Mrs. Kamsky is emblematic of the independent voice and the creative spirit, the little artist that could.

Grieving the defection of her protge and recovering from a hip injury, Mrs. Kamsky unexpectedly renews her passion for life and for dance when she teaches a class of teenage boys, including one who's recruited for ballet lessons as punishment for breaking a classmate's leg in anger. Ellen Cooney tells a story about the artistic drive to create, alternately narrated by the central character's closest friends, her loving and demanding students, her discontented protge, and her inquisitive neighbors.
With prose that performs pirouettes and plis, The Old Ballerina tells a story about teaching and learning, the individual and the community, and above all, the healing power of the arts.

"Light and lovely, Cooney's third novel (after Small Town Girl and All the Way Home is about the way one superb ballet teacher, indomitable, aging Irene Kamsky, touches the lives of her students and alters her community. From a dance studio in her ranch-style home, located in a suburb north of a nondescript town, she and her art shape the stories of many characters, each narrating his or her own chapter in this slender novel. Among the unpretentious ballerina's admirers (all refer to her, respectfully, as Mrs. Kamsky_ are her devoted assistant, Margaret Dunlap, who gets the job under false pretenses, but learns to love her employer, doing everything from caring for Mrs. Kamsky's arthritic hip to monitoring her record collection; tortured Lisette, Mrs. Kamsky's legendary student, once a serious ballerina until foot injuries forced her to become a teacher herself, and who drinks to drown her sorrows; and Mrs. Kamsky's current class of "boy ballerinas" who describe, in first-personal plural, their feelings before and after their first public performance. While its plot is sli

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1566890861
• ISBN13: 9781566890861
• Release Date: September 1999
• Publisher: Coffee House Press
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.8" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

A good book by Ellen Cooney

In this novel, Ellen Cooney tells a story about the art of dancing. The Old Ballerina tells a story about teaching and learning. The book tells about how Mrs. Kamsky is recovering from a hip injury while teaching a class of teenage boys. The novel talks about how Mrs. Kamsky is dealing with her hip injury. The book will inspire you to never want to give up at something you love. The Old Ballerina is a book we will never want to put down. The book The Old Ballerina will help anyone realize the importance of learning. The author Ellen Cooney makes you feel as though you are right there watching everything that is going on, by giving lots of details about what is happening and what people and places look like. The Old Ballerina has now become one of my favorite books, because it has lots of excitement and you never know what will happen next.

Ellen Cooney's THE OLD BALLERINA

There's magic at work here as Ms. Cooney reveals both the pleasure and pain that a brush with culture can bring to otherwise mundane lives. THE OLD BALLERINA raises several heavy issues too, but always with a gifted touch that's as light as the wonderful "tinkle tinkle tinkle" music one of its many characters plays.

The Old Ballerina

"The Old Ballerina" is an exquisite portrait of a ballet studio run by a crippled old dancer in a crippled old New England town, It's about real people with real troubles finding sanctuary abd community in a world of honor and discipline and music. The writing is poetic, yet simple and clean, a series of melodies that flow with breathtaking grace, then linger and endure. Though the lives of the characters are hard, the book is about triumph. It is transcendent. I loved this book, a sanctuary in itself.

Lyrical Beauty that Captures the Essence of Being an Artist

A gorgeous piece of work that captures the essence of what it means to be an artist in ways that are fluid, graceful, and lovely--just like the art of dance. Told in numerous points of view, the author does a remarkable job of capturing each distinctive voice--which run the gamut from an 8-yr-old girl to a machinist--and managing to produce a novel that is much more than the sum of its disparate parts. The prose is lush, pure poetry. At its heart, the novel asks the question: what does an artist do when his/her instrument of creating art is taken away? It is the kind of novel you savor and want to read again as soon as you reach that last page.

A review of THE OLD BALLERINA by Ellen Cooney

Told from many different points of view, the narrative shifts, throughout this literary masterpiece, add remarkable depth to the character of Mrs. Kaminsky, the old ballerina. Hers is a profound and rich study of human resilience likened to all creative individuals, even when they face limitations that hinder expression, but never their dedication and love for the art. Intertwined are the frailities which beset even the most gifted.THE OLD BALLERINA is neither character driven or plot driven; being narrative driven creates the feel of a bird in flight that periodically touches the ground while he's soaring, but this is a bird that never lands. Literary novels also provide a glimpse into the mind of the author; THE OLD BALLERINA is an example of this at its finest. An appreciation for the artistry of Ellen Cooney is beautifully expressed by a linear, well-calculated placement of chapters and hence, the rich contribution of each voice. While every point of view Ms. Cooney uses is easily identifiable, it's not until the last sentence that the language of this gifted author, coupled with the personality of each character, is like that bird soaring high into the heavens, his belly full, the horizon now yours.