"After, when they are hidden in the wings, or behind a curtain, the dancers will grimace like goblins, letting the pain show."īallet may be infamous for its bodily punishments, but Shipstead finds even better material in the psychic costs of an art form fueled by creative rivalries and the relentless pursuit of the fleeting. A secret pregnancy is about to tip her balance toward marriage and the suburbs, and her relief at leaving behind this rarefied world is palpable. Watching from the wings as her former lover, Arslan Rusakov, takes the stage with his newly defected fiancée, Joan finds reason to celebrate what she knows will be her final performance. "Love in a ballet is something that does not exist and then suddenly does, its beginning marked by pantomime, faces fixed in rapture, a dance," Maggie Shipstead explains in the opening act of her new novel, "Astonish Me" (Alfred A.
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