Audition (review)

It's Sara's dream come true: she's accepted a scholarship for a year of study at the Jersey Ballet, where she'll also be attending the local private school and boarding with the ballet master. Vermont-raised Sara misses life back on the farm, though, and she struggles to keep up with the new standard expected of her and the keen competition for solo parts and advancement. She also falls head over heels for Fernando, a choreographer as well as a dancer, who's twenty-two to Sara's sixteen, and the two embark on a steamy affair that initiates Sara into sex, into being an artist's muse, and into throwing her heart at something other than dance. Sara's free-verse narration is prosy and naïve but invitingly approachable, and her story has an edge that lifts it above the genre. Her barely legal relationship with Fernando, who is using her in ways she doesn't even understand, is intriguing in its effects on her, as she begins to explore the possibility of her sexuality as power before she realizes just how little power it actually gives her. Ultimately, this is the compelling story of a girl who has to explore her dream of being a ballerina to find out how much it deviates from the reality ("In my fantasy," she notes perceptively, "I never/ Actually/ Dance"). Hard-core dance maniacs will prefer the company details of Flack's Bunheads, reviewed above, but readers looking for some exploration of the thrills and perils of early independence, career commitment, and relationships will be raptly involved in Sara's story.