Twins on Toes: A Ballet Debut

School Library Journal

Gr 4-8-This book is like Jill Krementz's A Very Young Dancer (Peter Smith, 1992), grown up. The hook here is that Anderson features 17-year-old twin dancers, Amy and Laurel Foster, and their preparation for the School of American Ballet's Spring Workshop. She recounts their daily experiences as they perform, take classes, and worry about their professional futures. However, she offers little information about and even less insight into the lives of these sisters. She uses little dialogue, choosing instead to make statements about how the girls feel. Twice, she includes the quote, "`In the end, we are individuals dancing for ourselves,' the twins have said,'' but their individuality is never shown, and the author repeatedly refers to them as ``the twins.'' Readers do not come to know which girl is which, nor will they develop any kinship with them. Ancona's photographs, however, capture the expressiveness of the dancers' movements and show the hard work necessary to perform. The photographs of the dancers' hands and the full-page shot of Amy and Laurel's second performance are particularly effective. Krementz's book remains the touchstone for titles on a day-in-the-life of a ballet dancer. Readers will be captivated by Camilla Jessel's Life at the Royal Ballet School (Routledge, 1979) and Gregory's Cynthia Gregory Dances Swan Lake (S.&S., 1990). Twins on Toes is not an introduction, nor is it likely to enlighten advanced students.-Cheri Estes, Dorchester Road Regional Library, Charleston, SC

Carolyn Phelan

The School of American Ballet's Spring Workshop performance provides the focus for Anderson's profile of 17-year-old twins Amy and Laurel, whose lives have revolved around ballet for the past 10 years. The text includes quotations from the twins as well as explanations of why they chose this path, how they perfect their art, and what they aspire to achieve. In well-composed, full-color photographs, Ancona shows readers the dancers' world--the student lounge, the studio, backstage, and onstage at New York's Lincoln Center. Mixing formal and impromptu shots, the illustrations contribute greatly to the overall effectiveness of the book. Aspiring ballet dancers will see the devotion, effort, and glamour of all the dancers, but may also come away with a sense of their narcissism, injuries, insecurity, and isolation as they compete against each other for positions in professional ballet companies. An attractive book with an unexpected seam of realism, all the more welcome in a subject routinely clothed in gossamer.