Pointe Work: Ten Reasons Why and When

by Dawn C. Crouch

Wondering if your technique is ready? Want to take the next step, but not sure what to expect your first year on pointe? How much effort is required to produce the best results? An expert ballet instructor for over forty years, Dawn C Crouch knows how to mentor the vulnerable newbie pointe student. Excellence on pointe stands at the heart of every ballet production and speaks directly to a student’s future roles as a dancer. Pointe work improves balance, flexibility, and artistic expression. Ultimately, strong pointe work relates to better performance. Pointe Work - Ten Reasons Why and When is a detailed examination of the preparation, training, and bold attitude required to embrace and master this demanding but fundamental ability. Including a brief history of pointe and its importance to ballet, Ms. Crouch then explains the key elements of readiness to help students, parents, and teachers understand the preparation, time commitment, and training necessary to wear the “red shoes.” Pointe Work - Ten Reasons Why and When is the empowering second book in the Garage Ballet series, a must-have manual to ensure your successful transition to the greater demands placed on the body by pointe work.

80 pages, Paperback

Published August 21, 2020

About the author

I’m from New Orleans, where ghosts and devils are part of everyday life, so it is only natural to write fiction and nonfiction based on true stories. Most little girls dream of growing up to be a ballet dancer. However, I have always wanted to be a writer, and I am the author of five nonfiction and three fiction books so far…

But I received my early ballet training from Lelia Haller, one of the first Americans to dance in the Paris Opera, before continuing with Houston Ballet under James Clouser and Nicholas Polejenko. I am grateful to have studied with Danilova, Balanchine, Martha Graham, Eric Hawkins, David Howard, and other legendary teachers. I’ve taught at ballet schools throughout the southeast for over forty years.

The Garage Ballet Series is a collaborative mother-daughter effort. My two daughters, Dominique Crisler and Caroline Ruder, assisted with classes and danced through college level at Northern Illinois University and the University of South Carolina. They now advise and edit my nonfiction ballet books.

Garage Ballet aims to mentor students, teachers, and parents through easy-to-understand explanations of ballet techniques and training. I passionately believe the study of ballet yields life skills of proven value for every student, from PreBallet to Preprofessional to Adult. Ballet does Help Everything! Writing included!

I am the mother of two sons as well and have been married to the same Emergency physician through it all. So conversation at my dinner table may range from culinary comparisons to debates on different interpretations of the same role in a ballet performance to pure medical macabre.

But I remember... Life can change in an instant. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina obliterated our home and belongings in the space of a single Monday morning.

I was blown with my two youngest, still at home from Gulfport, MS, to Huntsville, AL. At the same time, my husband, one of nine ER docs in the only Emergency Department operating within a ninety-mile radius, stayed behind. We survived the storm, but the separation and arduous task of rebuilding almost did us in. Lesson learned. Things can always be worse!

My first novel, Against The Wind, a YA coming-of-age catastrophe thriller, is based on our encounter with the storm.

I began work on The Last Plague long before Covid, but the eerie undertone of the prescient tale resonates with the pandemic. The novel is a sci-fi dystopian glance into a near future where medicine runs amok with bioengineered clones, weaponized viruses, and a forbidden love story.

Dead Children’s Playground takes its title from a hidden playground in Huntsville and a Rocket City urban legend. Huntsville is a beautiful and strange place where in the early 60s, rural Appalachia collided with Nazi Germany.

My writing will always be peppered with stories from my convoluted, crazy, and unique life as a daughter, wife, mother, dancer, teacher... person.

Please visit dawncrouch.com for fiction updates and Garageballet.com for new releases, titles, and helpful videos.

Reviews

[Noreen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received this book from goodreads. It is an excellent book for parents, students, and teachers of ballet. I enjoyed reading about the history of ballet and the personal experiences. It contains excellent advice for the serious dancer. I really enjoyed reading it even though I never studied dance.

[Russell Sanders · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having thoroughly enjoyed and been informed by Dawn C. Crouch’s prior book in her Garage Ballet series, I eagerly awaited this second edition Pointe Work. I was not disappointed. Writing with ease and skill, this slim volume, as was the previous one, is chocked full of information. Like a great conversation, of which this has the feel, Crouch informs the benefits, the pitfalls, and the logistics of students going on to pointe work—that time when a ballerina puts on her first pair of pointe shoes, rises to her toes, and learns to dance effortlessly, giving the impression she is gliding across the floor. Parents with young dancers will benefit most from this book. As Crouch points out, all too many times parents want their daughters to begin pointe work when the girls are not ready, for dancing on your toes is what is expected in ballet, something that was not always the case in ballet history. Crouch’s knowledge, as a ballerina and a teacher, of dance history, the mechanics of dance, and the anatomy of the dancer is invaluable as she guides dancers into pointe work, not only in her classes, but in this book. Anyone who is interested in ballet will find this enlightening, but definitely parents of young dancers would be wise to read Pointe Work: Ten Reasons Why and When.

[Dominique Crisler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great reference book for parents and teachers of young ballet dancers! Loved the personal stories and quotes throughout the book! Especially liked the exercises to help a young dancer be ready for pointe!

[Ron Frampton · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book that explains the physical abilities that are needed to be a dancer

[Stacey Whitmire · Rating 5 out of 5]

excellent read

Even if you are a senior citizen not planning to go on pointe. I so enjoy her writing! Read it!