Alice Robb

An incisive exploration of ballet’s role in the modern world, told through the experience of the author and her classmates at the most elite ballet school in the country: the School of American Ballet.

Growing up, Alice Robb dreamed of becoming a ballet dancer. But by age fifteen, she had to face the reality that she would never meet the impossibly high standards of the hyper-competitive ballet world. After she quit, she tried to avoid ballet—only to realize, years later, that she was still haunted by the lessons she had absorbed in the mirror-lined studios of Lincoln Center, and that they had served her well in the wider world. The traits ballet takes to an extreme—stoicism, silence, submission—are valued in girls and women everywhere.

Profound, nuanced, and passionately researched, "Don’t Think, Dear" is Robb’s excavation of her adolescent years as a dancer and an exploration of how those days informed her life for years to come.

As she grapples with the pressure she faced as a student at the School of American Ballet, she investigates the fates of her former classmates as well. From sweet and innocent Emily, whose body was deemed thin enough only when she was too ill to eat, to precocious and talented Meiying, who was thrilled to be cast as the young star of the Nutcracker but dismayed to see Asians stereotyped onstage, and Lily, who won the carrot they had all been chasing—an apprenticeship with the New York City Ballet—only to spend her first season dancing eight shows a week on a broken foot.

Theirs are stories of heartbreak and resilience, of reinvention and regret. Along the way, Robb weaves in the myths of famous ballet personalities past and present, from the groundbreaking Misty Copeland, who rose from poverty to become an icon of American ballet, to the blind diva Alicia Alonso, who used the heat of the spotlights and the vibrations of the music to navigate space onstage. By examining the psyche of a dancer, "Don’t Think, Dear" grapples with the contradictions and challenges of being a woman today.

On Loving and Leaving Ballet

Don't Think, Dear

Science journalist and lucid dreamer Alice Robb explores fresh, revelatory research to uncover why we dream and how we can improve our dream life.

While on a research trip in Peru, science journalist Alice Robb became hooked on lucid dreaming. With practice, she mastered the uncanny phenomenon in which a sleeping person can realize that they're dreaming and even control the dreamed experience. Finding these forays both puzzling and exhilarating, Robb dug deeper into the science of dreams at an extremely opportune moment: just as researchers began to discover why dreams exist. They aren't just random events; they have clear purposes. In essence, we cannot learn without them, nor can we overcome psychic trauma.

Robb draws on fresh and forgotten research, as well as her experience and that of other dream experts, to show why dreams are vital to our emotional and physical health. She explains how we can remember our dreams better—and why we should. She traces the intricate links between dreaming and creativity, and even offers advice on how we can relish the intense adventure of lucid dreaming for ourselves.

"Why We Dream" is a clear-eyed, cutting-edge examination of the meaning and purpose of our nightly visions and a guide to changing our dream lives in order to make our waking lives richer, healthier, and happier.

The Transformative Power of Our Nightly Journey

Why We Dream

‘Don’t think, dear’ said Balanchine. ‘Just do.’ For centuries, being a ballerina has been synonymous with being beautiful, thin, obedient and feminine. It is the crucible of womanhood, together with the harassment, physical abuse and eating disorders endemic at top schools. Can we abide this in a post #MeToo world? Weaving together her own time at America’s most elite ballet school with the lives of renowned ballerinas throughout history, Alice Robb interrogates what it means to perform ballet today. She confronts the all-consuming nature of the form: the obsessive and dangerous practices to perfect the body, the embrace of submission and the idealisation of suffering. Yet ballet also gifts its dancers ‘brains in their toes’, a way to fully inhabit their bodies and a sanctuary of control away from the pressures of the outside world. Perhaps it is time to reimagine its liberating potential.

Alice Robb

About

Books

Join the club