Reviews for Dancer

The average rating for Dancer based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-03-02 00:00:00 Justin Imhof The book Dancer is an amazing book. It talks about a girl, Stephanie, who doesn't get the lead part in Sleeping Beauty at her dance studio. Soon she stops believing in herself, until she meets the most wonderful person in her life, Miss Winnie. Miss Winnie intorduced Stephianie to her gorgeous nephew, Vance, who also happens to be a dancer. They start taking private lessons from Miss Winnie and soon Stephanie starts falling for Vance. The only thing Stephanie is leaving out is reality. Can she have the two worlds of dance and life collide?

Review # 2 was written on 2018-05-03 00:00:00 Viggo Austbo Three stars for what I got out of this but four for overall quality. It's a little sad to read this and think how much hasn't changed in the almost twenty years since this was published: there are a very few prominent black ballerinas now, but as a black dancer whose family doesn't have much money, a 2018 version of Stephanie would still have to face a reality of a whitewhitewhite dance world in which being good enough wouldn't be good enough. A 2018 version of Stephanie would probably still be dancing in pale pink toe shoes, too. This isn't a criticism of either the book or the author, obviously, but it means that there's more urgency to Stephanie's parents' request that she look beyond dance for her future. It's nice to see the balance of elements here: the emphasis is on dance, followed by race, but we also see bits of romance and competition and class and fitting in and friendship and growing up. I'm glad this one's still on the library shelves.