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Dancing Past the Light: The Life of Tanaquil Le Clercq
A world-famous ballerina’s dramatic life
Dancing Past the Light cinematically illuminates the glamorous and moving life story of Tanaquil “Tanny” Le Clercq (1929‒2000), one of the most celebrated ballerinas of the twentieth century, describing her brilliant stage career, her struggle with polio, and her important work as a dance teacher, coach, photographer, and writer.
Born in Paris, Le Clercq became a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet at age 19 and a role model for aspiring dancers everywhere. Orel Protopopescu recounts Le Clercq’s intense marriage to the company’s renowned choreographer George Balanchine, for whom Le Clercq was a muse, the prototype of the exquisite, long-limbed “Balanchine ballerina.” Enhanced with a wealth of previously unpublished photos, personal letters, and sketches by Balanchine, this book offers an intimate portrait of Le Clercq’s dancing life and her relationship to the man who was both her mentor and husband. It delves into her friendships with other dancers as well, including a longtime rival for her affections, choreographer Jerome Robbins.
Le Clercq contracted polio while on tour in Europe at age 27 and would never dance again. This book offers a rare account of how Le Clercq grappled with a fate considered unimaginable for a ballerina and began to share her love of dance as a writer and dance teacher. It also highlights Le Clercq’s role in the struggles for racial equality and disability rights. Her art was her she and Arthur Mitchell made history as the couple in New York City Ballet’s first interracial pas de deux at City Center in 1955 and later she taught from a wheelchair at his Dance Theatre of Harlem.
With insights from interviews with her friends, students, and colleagues, Dancing Past the Light depicts the joys and the dark moments of Le Clercq’s dramatic life, celebrating her mighty legacy.
Dancing Past the Light cinematically illuminates the glamorous and moving life story of Tanaquil “Tanny” Le Clercq (1929‒2000), one of the most celebrated ballerinas of the twentieth century, describing her brilliant stage career, her struggle with polio, and her important work as a dance teacher, coach, photographer, and writer.
Born in Paris, Le Clercq became a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet at age 19 and a role model for aspiring dancers everywhere. Orel Protopopescu recounts Le Clercq’s intense marriage to the company’s renowned choreographer George Balanchine, for whom Le Clercq was a muse, the prototype of the exquisite, long-limbed “Balanchine ballerina.” Enhanced with a wealth of previously unpublished photos, personal letters, and sketches by Balanchine, this book offers an intimate portrait of Le Clercq’s dancing life and her relationship to the man who was both her mentor and husband. It delves into her friendships with other dancers as well, including a longtime rival for her affections, choreographer Jerome Robbins.
Le Clercq contracted polio while on tour in Europe at age 27 and would never dance again. This book offers a rare account of how Le Clercq grappled with a fate considered unimaginable for a ballerina and began to share her love of dance as a writer and dance teacher. It also highlights Le Clercq’s role in the struggles for racial equality and disability rights. Her art was her she and Arthur Mitchell made history as the couple in New York City Ballet’s first interracial pas de deux at City Center in 1955 and later she taught from a wheelchair at his Dance Theatre of Harlem.
With insights from interviews with her friends, students, and colleagues, Dancing Past the Light depicts the joys and the dark moments of Le Clercq’s dramatic life, celebrating her mighty legacy.
- GenresNonfiction
398 pages, Hardcover
Published September 28, 2021
7 people are currently reading
66 people want to read
About the author
Orel Protopopescu
7 books4 followersI grew up with two older sisters in Hempstead, Long Island, a town considered, throughout the 1950s, to be a model of integration. My mother was a dedicated third-grade teacher in an inner-city school. I devoured all the books she brought me. My father, a lawyer who preferred bridge and backgammon to the law, taught me chess and told stories that made me laugh. He was born in Russia and named me for a Russian city, something that I was often teased about at school. It was the Cold War. We had frequent air-raid drills where we had to crouch down in the hallways with our coats over our heads. I was also teased for being the only kid in school who’d skipped the fourth grade.
Still, I loved my neighborhood, with its people of every color and nationality. Our friends from Jamaica taught us the limbo. Gospel music spilled out of the Baptist church, jazz and rhythm and blues from many houses. I rode my bike everywhere, making up poems in my head. I recently wrote a poem that won a prize in Oberon poetry magazine’s 2006 contest, judged by Louis Simpson. The opening lines paint a picture of me in high school: “Where is the girl who forgot to eat, / who thought nothing of riding a bike / thirty miles to Manhattan after school, / who recited poems in the grass by candlelight, / chanted hymns of praise to trees and stars, / read books as she wrote them in her sleep . . .”
By the middle of the 1960s, our family alone was integrating our street and I had a keener awareness of the inequalities in American life. I joined the Long Island Congress of Racial Equality and picketed Hempstead Town Hall wearing a sign that said, “Slums Are the Shame of Hempstead.” You can see that fifteen-year-old me in a book Lillian Smith wrote about the civil rights movement: Our Faces, Our Words. Today, I’m still an activist.
When I was sixteen, my mother died of cancer. By then, my father had lost his job. That was a terrible time. But in my senior year, I won a debating contest and ended up as a delegate to the New York Herald Tribune World Youth Forum. We were taken all over Europe, meeting heads of state. I met the Bolivian delegate and, after graduate school, married him.
We have two daughters, born in 1978 and 1982. They are two reasons I began writing for children. Before, I’d worked as a storyteller and a writer and producer of educational films.
I started my teaching career at my kitchen table, leading a writing club for my older daughter and her friends. Soon, my first two picture books were published. The second, The Perilous Pit (illustrated by Jacqueline Chwast), was a New York Times Book Review Best Illustrated Children’s Book of 1993. My book of translations of Chinese poetry (coauthored by Siyu Liu), A Thousand Peaks: Poems from China, was selected for the New York Public Library’s Books for the Teen Age 2003 list. Two Sticks (illustrated by Anne Wilsdorf) appeared on Farrar, Straus and Giroux’s Spring 2007 list. This humorous picture book in rhymed verse grew from the music of my childhood, as did my forthcoming book, Thelonious Mouse, which I look forward to working on with my editor, Melanie Kroupa.
Of all the reviews of my writing and teaching, the one I treasure most came from a former student, Christine Slatest, now an English teacher. A poem she wrote in fifth grade appears in my book Metaphors & Similes You Can Eat and 12 More Great Poetry Writing Lessons. Christine wrote, “My interest in writing poetry began in Mrs. Protopopescu’s workshops. Her visits to my elementary school changed my life.” An author/teacher can’t hope for more than that.
Still, I loved my neighborhood, with its people of every color and nationality. Our friends from Jamaica taught us the limbo. Gospel music spilled out of the Baptist church, jazz and rhythm and blues from many houses. I rode my bike everywhere, making up poems in my head. I recently wrote a poem that won a prize in Oberon poetry magazine’s 2006 contest, judged by Louis Simpson. The opening lines paint a picture of me in high school: “Where is the girl who forgot to eat, / who thought nothing of riding a bike / thirty miles to Manhattan after school, / who recited poems in the grass by candlelight, / chanted hymns of praise to trees and stars, / read books as she wrote them in her sleep . . .”
By the middle of the 1960s, our family alone was integrating our street and I had a keener awareness of the inequalities in American life. I joined the Long Island Congress of Racial Equality and picketed Hempstead Town Hall wearing a sign that said, “Slums Are the Shame of Hempstead.” You can see that fifteen-year-old me in a book Lillian Smith wrote about the civil rights movement: Our Faces, Our Words. Today, I’m still an activist.
When I was sixteen, my mother died of cancer. By then, my father had lost his job. That was a terrible time. But in my senior year, I won a debating contest and ended up as a delegate to the New York Herald Tribune World Youth Forum. We were taken all over Europe, meeting heads of state. I met the Bolivian delegate and, after graduate school, married him.
We have two daughters, born in 1978 and 1982. They are two reasons I began writing for children. Before, I’d worked as a storyteller and a writer and producer of educational films.
I started my teaching career at my kitchen table, leading a writing club for my older daughter and her friends. Soon, my first two picture books were published. The second, The Perilous Pit (illustrated by Jacqueline Chwast), was a New York Times Book Review Best Illustrated Children’s Book of 1993. My book of translations of Chinese poetry (coauthored by Siyu Liu), A Thousand Peaks: Poems from China, was selected for the New York Public Library’s Books for the Teen Age 2003 list. Two Sticks (illustrated by Anne Wilsdorf) appeared on Farrar, Straus and Giroux’s Spring 2007 list. This humorous picture book in rhymed verse grew from the music of my childhood, as did my forthcoming book, Thelonious Mouse, which I look forward to working on with my editor, Melanie Kroupa.
Of all the reviews of my writing and teaching, the one I treasure most came from a former student, Christine Slatest, now an English teacher. A poem she wrote in fifth grade appears in my book Metaphors & Similes You Can Eat and 12 More Great Poetry Writing Lessons. Christine wrote, “My interest in writing poetry began in Mrs. Protopopescu’s workshops. Her visits to my elementary school changed my life.” An author/teacher can’t hope for more than that.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 10, 2024
At 26,Tanaquil Le Clercq (Tanny) was a prima ballerina and married to Balanchine. The polio vaccine had just been released and she was in line to get one. But the line was long and she stepped out. The company was just about to begin a European tour which was exhausting. Tanny contracted polio in Copenhagen and never walked again. But Tanny was a person who decided to be happy. Although Balanchine cared for her for many years, ultimately he fell into his old pattern of falling in love with his latest, youngest muse. The marriage didn't last, but Tanny went on to teach ballet. In addition to her sunny disposition, she had a talent for friendship. I really loved reading her story. She wrote a book about her cat, Mourka and a cookbook that featured recipes and essays about dancers. One of the most interesting parts was her relationship with Arthur Mitchell and her years teaching ballet (from a wheelchair, of course) at the Dance Theater of Harlem. She lived to be 71.
October 27, 2021
This excellent biography begins right at the height of great American ballerina Tanaquil Le Clercq's fame in 1957. She is about to leave for her fateful European tour with her husband, George Balanchine.
This first chapter alone is so riveting and so well-written that it drew me in to the world of ballet and the genius of both Tanaquil and Balanchine.
Highly recommended! And as a PS, the tragedy that befell Tanaquil is strangely prescient of our own times.
This first chapter alone is so riveting and so well-written that it drew me in to the world of ballet and the genius of both Tanaquil and Balanchine.
Highly recommended! And as a PS, the tragedy that befell Tanaquil is strangely prescient of our own times.
December 12, 2022
This is a beautifully written and researched book about one of the iconic Balanchine ballerinas, Tanaquil LeClercq. I was fortunate enough to have attended several of her performances from the mid-1950s to the end of her career, and she was my instant favorite from the first time I saw her. LeClercq is beloved by ballet aficionados for her beautiful form, range of skills, amazing extension, and dramatic presentation. She could dance with wild abandon and also with steely control. Protopopescu takes us inside the life of this artistic genius, whose life trajectory from child prodigy to world-renowned superstar, tragic victim of polio, and finally, handicapped person who accepted her fate with dignity and grace. I was particularly impressed with the author's description of LeClercq's generosity--as an artist, a friend, a co-worker, and a teacher.
January 15, 2023
Le Clercq, Dancer’s Life through her Ballet Roles
A Balanchine dancer and wife is understood through the ballets she danced and those choreographed for her specifically to her talent as an ethereal and light footed dancer. Good insight into her psyche before and after polio well told through letters and memoirs/diaries of her closest friends sprinkled throughout the narrative. Author’s research quite extensive. So loved her perspective on life to be happy and live for the moment. Such a full life with multiple interests such as photography and traveling.
A Balanchine dancer and wife is understood through the ballets she danced and those choreographed for her specifically to her talent as an ethereal and light footed dancer. Good insight into her psyche before and after polio well told through letters and memoirs/diaries of her closest friends sprinkled throughout the narrative. Author’s research quite extensive. So loved her perspective on life to be happy and live for the moment. Such a full life with multiple interests such as photography and traveling.
January 11, 2025
read this book for dance/school project so that’s why it took so long
really inspiring read. i love Tanny and found myself relating to her in many ways.
as for the writing, sometimes it felt less focused on Tanny or just all over the place and sometimes more of a Balanchine/Robbins biography rather than hers. but otherwise i feel as though i got a good overlook of Tanny and her life and strength.
really inspiring read. i love Tanny and found myself relating to her in many ways.
as for the writing, sometimes it felt less focused on Tanny or just all over the place and sometimes more of a Balanchine/Robbins biography rather than hers. but otherwise i feel as though i got a good overlook of Tanny and her life and strength.
August 12, 2023
Wonderful and sad book. Even though she looked tragedy in the eye and went ahead full force within her posibilities, one is left to Wonder what she could have continued to achieve had it not been for that horrible illness.
January 13, 2022
I loved reading about this brave lovely woman. If you are intrigued by this woman and her life, you might enjoy reading a novel about her, called "The Master's Muse," by Varley O'Connor.
April 13, 2022
I am so lucky I randomly picked this up at the library. So interesting and captivating. I almost never read biographies, but I really enjoyed this one.
July 3, 2022
Very interesting biography of a ballerina I'd never heard of, the third wife of George Balanchine, co-founder of the New York Ballet.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews