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Being a Ballerina Spiral-Bound | 2021-04-06

Gavin Larsen

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Finalist, the Arts Club of Washington Marfield Prize


A look inside a dancer's world

Inspiring, revealing, and deeply relatable, Being a Ballerina is a firsthand look at the realities of life as a professional ballet dancer. Through episodes from her own career, Gavin Larsen describes the forces that drive a person to study dance; the daily balance that dancers navigate between hardship and joy; and the dancer's continual quest to discover who they are as a person and as an artist.


Starting with her arrival as a young beginner at a class too advanced for her, Larsen tells how the embarrassing mistake ended up helping her learn quickly and advance rapidly. In other stories of her early teachers, training, and auditions, she explains how she gradually came to understand and achieve what she and her body were capable of.


Larsen then re-creates scenes from her experiences in dance companies, from unglamorous roles to exhilarating performances. Working as a ballerina was shocking and scary at first, she says, recalling unexpected injuries, leaps of faith, and her constant struggle to operate at the level she wanted--but full of enormously rewarding moments. Larsen also reflects candidly on her difficult decision to retire at age 35.

An ideal read for aspiring dancers, Larsen's memoir will also delight experienced dance professionals and fascinate anyone who wonders what it takes to live a life dedicated to the perfection of the art form.

Publisher: University Press of Florida
Original Binding: Trade Paperback
Pages: 272 pages
ISBN-10: 0813066891
Item Weight: 0.9 lbs
Dimensions: 6.0 x 0.6 x 9.0 inches
"There is power and perfection in this captivating memoir--the power of personal experience and the perfection of writing that carefully captures the life of a dancer. Larsen, now retired, was principal dancer with the Oregon Ballet and guest artist with Ballet Victoria; she also danced with Alberta Ballet and Suzanne Farrell Ballet. Before describing her many positions, however, Larsen starts with an account of her first class at the New York School of Ballet at age eight. She covers the years of study required for every dancer, and along the way introduces readers to memorable teachers and dancers and discusses the roles she inhabited and companies she worked for as a professional dancer. Appended to the memoir are essays on pointe shoes and how to dance with a partner, along with a list of places she has performed. VERDICT: Dancing 'full out' means going all out during practice rather than saving energy for the performance. In this memoir Larsen is writing full out, and we are the lucky audience of her performance. Balletomanes, dance students, and aspiring dancers will applaud this absorbing account."--Library Journal, Starred Review
Gavin Larsen was a professional ballet dancer for 18 years before retiring in 2010. A principal dancer with the Oregon Ballet Theatre, she also danced with the Suzanne Farrell Ballet and Alberta Ballet and as a guest artist with Ballet Victoria. She has written for Pointe, Dance Teacher, Dance Spirit, Dancing Times, Oregon ArtsWatch, Dance/USA's From the Green Room, the Maine Review, and The Threepenny Review, among others. She writes and teaches in Asheville, North Carolina.