Shadow Dancing

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 216 pages
• Published by: Disc-Us Books October 1, 2000
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 1584440740
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1584440741
• Book Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.5 inches
• Weighs: 12.8 ounces

Product Review
Emma Kate is an innocent, buffered by small-town values and instincts, the love of stable parents, and a seriousness that comes from having known illness and death in her family. The major strength of the novel is her portrayal as a sympathetic, credible heroine as she explores her feelings about the ballet and people with different values and backgrounds than her own. --Barbara Kussow, Ohioana Quarterly

Pinard uses words as a paintbrush to transform everyday life into warm vibrant colors and sensations. Her fiction often drifts into the melodic tones of song. --Adam Tamashasky, Dayton Daily News

The world of dancing and its demands realistically portrayed, February 8, 2001 Emma Kate is a teen ballerina who has left her small midwest home to join a ballet school in New York City, against her father's wishes. There she confronts her talents, their limits, and three male mentors who each make very different demands on her life. Can she change her name, dance style and very soul to please them all? The world of dancing and its demands - especially its emotional challenges - is realistically portrayed in Shadow Dancing, a fine novel for older teens and adults alike. --Midwest Book Review

Product Description
Emma Kate Thomas, a seventeen-year-old ballerina from a small midwestern conservatory, leaves her parents and partner behind when a world-famous director entices her to New York. But her imagined waltz to centerstage turns tango as soon as she arrives. Three male mentors vie to become her partner each exacting his price and she forges a family of immigrant women to prop her sagging spirit. As stagelight strikes, Emma Kate sees her shadow, recalls the defining moment of her childhood buried under the patchwork of her parents' love, and rediscovers the "dance" she'd learned in the heartland. Shadow Dancing vividly captures the world of ballet as seen from a young aspirant's eye.

Reader Reviews
It was a little strange reading a novel by someone I know. Several times I put the book down wondering how that woman who stood up in front of the classroom gained so much knowledge about so many things and made it sound so real. Nancy is a teacher of Creative Writing. (I passed her course so this isn't really necessary.) I admit my male machismo played a part in my hesitancy to pick up and read a book about a ballet dancer. There was also my lack of knowledge for ballet, and other personal prejudices. (I have two left feet permanently imbedded in wet clay and I don't speak French.) The story took me deeper than I ever thought I would go into the mind of a dancer and her profession. And I enjoyed it. And I learned. I also gained a greater insight into Nancy's ability as a writer. The few snippets of her writing she let out in class only gave a small clue to the scope of her talent. I especially admire her characters and their development. She did what she tells her students to do; dig into the cracks and find the diamonds in the dirt. The quality and consistency of the writing carried through the entire book. She left no loose ends, doing a great job on the ending. That took guts. It's a surprise and yet true to the whole story. Although she wrote about a dancer, I can see the same story in most professions, male and female.