Swan Dive: The Making of a Rogue Ballerina by Georgina Pazcoguin

 He [Peter Martins] used this production as a vessel to promote most of the cast (alas, not moi).  I had not been promoted for my contibutions, and all I had left was a bruised ego and this mess of trauma I'm still trying to work through.  I had my legs splayed and breasts fondled onstage by my colleagues.  I threw my body down the stairs repeatedly.  I had my anatomy once again shamed, this time for not being curvy enough.

--Georgina Pazcoguin, Swan Dive (Henry Holt and Company, 2021)

Being a ballerina is not for every girl or woman; reading Swan Dive causes one to believe that it is something one does because one has to do it:  the life is all-consuming and the financial rewards are limited for most dancers (about $65,000 a year for corps members in NYC Ballet) and one's career as a dancer ends somewhere between 30 and 40 years old and only lasts that long if one can avoid serious injury.

It can be a wild ride, both good and bad, for a ballet dancer, as Pazcoguin makes clear in this detailed book about her life as a dancer with NYC Ballet.  Pazcoguin is of mixed race (her dad is Filipino and her mother Italian)from Altoona, Pa. and started out at the Allegheny Ballet Academy, eventually doing an audition in Pittsburgh and getting a scholarship to the School of American Ballet at 14, leading to the corps of NYC Ballet and eventual promotion to soloist, while butting heads constantly with artistic director Peter Martins over everything from casting to moonlighting on Broadway.  She gradually began to feel that she was not getting the roles she deserved, in part because of her race, and helped to initiate Final Bow for Yellowface to promote diversity in ballet.

Pazcoguin is particularly foulmouthed for a ballerina, at least as we have seem them in the memoirs of such principal dancers as Suzanne Farrell and Merrill Ashley, but perhaps it's time for the pendulum to swing the way corps members talk to each other and express their anger and frustration.  Pazcoguin is full of highs and lows, the highs being when she is actually dancing roles she loves (such as Anita in West Side Story) and when she spends time with her fellow dancers sharing feelings, the lows when she is injured, miscast, or having to talk to the dour and authoritarian Peter Martins.  Martins quit in 2018 after accusations of harassment and abuse surfaced and as Swan Dive ends Pazcoguin is hopeful about her role with the new regime at NYC Ballet, but she now has a real estate license and is ready, if necessary, for her next season.