RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
It's 1977, and an 11-year-old dancer named Mira is struggling to find her place in the competitive world of New York City ballet. Dance is her escape from her parents' failing marriage. But instead of a sanctuary, Mira finds the opposite - a dark threat intermingled with her dreams of being a star ballerina. Sari Wilson gives us a glimpse into this world in her new novel. It's called "Girl Through Glass." Sari spent her own childhood dancing and, like her protagonist, found it exhilarating in the beginning.
SARI WILSON: I began not feeling that pressure. I really fell in love with the world of ballet. It just captured my girlhood imagination. And I fell in love with the spaces, the studios. I fell in love with the rituals and the routine. I fell in love with the people who seemed, to me, completely other than any other people I could meet.
MARTIN: Ballet people?
WILSON: Ballet people.
MARTIN: (Laughter).
WILSON: Exactly, ballet people. And it was my life. And I hit puberty, and then this - sort of the dark side of things revealed themselves. And I struggled through for a long time, and then finally left that world after a second career-ending surgery. And then I spent a long time trying to figure out what had happened. And this book was really my investigation into that.
MARTIN: I'd like to ask you to read a little bit from the book. This is a passage that's about 150 pages in and it's a lovely, although dark, kind of portrait of this young girl and what she desperately wants as she aspires in this world of ballet. Would you mind reading that section?
WILSON: Oh, I'd be happy to. Thanks. (Reading) Mira nods. She's going to be a ballet dancer. She feels it. Her bones will knit together in new ways. Her torso will lengthen. Her hands will grow strong, her fingers blunt, and her feet rough and calloused as tree bark. You will see the tendons in her neck, and her elbows and her knees easily hyperextend. Her hip ligaments will become so loose that whenever she sits on the floor, her legs will roll outward and her heels will touch. Her breasts, when she grows them, will remain as small foothills with no real valleys. She feels Maurice's eyes on her, pricking her skin, buttressing her. How simple it all seems. She will stay this way forever. Her head is shining. She is buzzing with light.
MARTIN: In that paragraph, you reference this character who is so important to Mira. His name is Maurice. Tell us about him.
WILSON: He emerged out of my fascination with some of the storybook characters in ballet. So for example, Drosselmeyer from "The Nutcracker," he's a fascinating figure if you really look into the story. He's kind of both good and bad, light and dark. And then there are also in ballet lore these balletomanes, who are legendary for their passion.
MARTIN: And explain what it is they - what is their role in the world of ballet?
WILSON: I think their role is to believe passionately in ballet and ballet represented by the female ballerina mostly, the prima ballerina. And so much so that they, like, deify them. And there are all these stories - I don't know if they're true or not, but, like, of making soup out of the pointe shoes of famous prima ballerinas and then drinking it.
MARTIN: Whoa.
WILSON: So I think it's a fascination with that level of passion, and...
MARTIN: ...That sounds obsessive, yeah.
WILSON: Yeah.
MARTIN: Are they professional mentors? Are they just fans who kind of latch themselves onto young dancers?
WILSON: Well, I have to say that there was no Maurice my life or even a Maurice figure in my dance experience. He really is a purely fictional character. And I think, however, there are many adults who come through the life of a child dancer who - in my case, they were perceived as sort of these mysterious eyes that would come into our classes and they would watch us. And then certain things would happen or maybe not happen, or you might be picked for this role or asked to audition for this. And most of them were men. And so I think he personified this sense of a young female body in space being watched. And things happened because of sort of the power of your body at a very young age.
MARTIN: We don't want to give the story away, but I will say that Maurice develops a horribly inappropriate relationship with this young girl Mira. There is a power dynamic at play here, too. Understanding that this abusive kind of situation didn't happen to you, but did you witness that power relationship when you were a dancer?
WILSON: Yes. There is a kind of sadism or masochism that can develop between the people who control the bodies of dancers or who are having their creative vision come through the bodies of dancers. And as a dancer, you must give up a certain aspect of your own will. And there's a beauty in that, and I wanted to capture that, but it's also very dangerous. And sometimes, that trust is abused.
MARTIN: There was no Maurice figure in your life, but what in your past were you trying to reconcile?
WILSON: I did suffer from an eating disorder, and I think a kind of body dysmorhpia that persisted. Yet, I was still very connected to my dance past, and I missed it passionately after I left. And I became a writer and I finally thought, I need to investigate that because it won't leave me alone. And so I think I allowed these characters to take me to places where my childhood fears and fantasies had persisted unconsciously. And, you know, I finally came to this place where I understood that your experience of the past can be both dark and light. So there could be a deep beauty in my past, as well as pain and a destructive quality, and that they can exist side by side. And we can call that humanity, we can call that light, we can call that literature. And it was OK.
MARTIN: Sari Wilson, her debut novel is called "Girl Through Glass." Thanks so much for talking with us.
WILSON: Thanks so much for having me.