num_pages: 240
description: From the vantage point of "real life" (as dancers say), Collusion tells the story of a young girl's initiation into the disciplined, exalting world of classical ballet and into a secret love relationship with F., the ballet master whom she adored. "Do you want to be a great dancer?" F. had asked her when she was twelve. She did. And so Collusion tells of how she gave up ordinary life--family, boyfriends, hamburgers, homework, and pop music--for a life dedicated to the promise of artistry. At the center of that new life was always the figure of F.--ironic, moody, demanding, quixotically generous or withholding--who could control her with a sarcastic comment or the flash of his cane across her thigh, but also with the lyrical beauty of his classes and the vision of herself in a perfect arabesque. F. was the first man to partner her, and the first to teach her that love can come in strange in the airborne lifts of Les Sylphides, in brilliant pirouettes, and in measured violence. Collusion describes the secret life of ballet. It is a life in which "normal" values are reversed. Brutality is seen as a gift, fear as devotion, sadism (rightly, in this case) as love. Free of conventional moral judgments, Collusion tells of possession and surrender, of power and submission, of the bond between a young girl and an older man. In spare, emotionally resonant prose, award-winning poet and novelist Evan Zimroth unfolds a mesmerizing story of artistic ambition, power, and love in an unforgettable memoir of adolescence. Collusion portrays a real relationship, one that society dares not speak of, and it does so with admirable honesty and sensitivity.
language: English
title: Collusion: Memoir of a Young Girl and Her Ballet Master
titlecomplete: Collusion: Memoir of a Young Girl and Her Ballet Master
genres: Memoir, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 39
publisher: Harper