Dances: A Novel

Promoted to the principal at the New York City Ballet, Cece Cordell, a young black woman, still feels like she doesn’t belong, and, despite her dream achievement, is faced with a choice that may derail her career.
Promoted to principal dancer at the New York City Ballet, Cece Cordell, a young black woman, still feels like she doesn't belong, and, despite her dream achievement, is faced with a choice that may derail her career, sending her on a pilgrimage to find her missing older brother and reclaim the parts of herself lost in the pursuit of her art.
A ballerina at the height of her powers becomes consumed with finding her missing brother in this “striking debut” (Oprah Daily).At twenty-two years old, Cece Cordell reaches the pinnacle of her career as a ballet dancer when she’s promoted to principal at the New York City Ballet. She’s instantly catapulted into celebrity, heralded for her “inspirational” role as the first Black ballerina in the famed company’s history. Even as she celebrates the achievement of a lifelong dream, Cece remains haunted by the feeling that she doesn’t belong. As she waits for some feeling of rightness that doesn’t arrive, she begins to unravel the loose threads of her past—an absent father, a pragmatic mother who dismisses Cece’s ambitions, and a missing older brother who stoked her childhood love of ballet but disappeared to deal with his own demons.Soon after her promotion, Cece is faced with a choice that has the potential to derail her career and shatter the life she’s cultivated for herself, sending her on a pilgrimage to both find her brother and reclaim the parts of herself lost in the grinding machinery of the traditional ballet world.Written with spellbinding beauty and ballet’s precise structure, Dances centers around women, art, and power, and how we come to define freedom for ourselves.