The Old Ballerina
Reading Group Guide

PLOT OUTLINE:

In her third novel, Ellen Cooney tells a story about the creative process, and about how art can and must happen anywhere and everywhere - including a small mill town, outside the confines of the art institutions of the city. The story of Mrs. Kamsky is emblematic of the independent voice and the creative spirit - the little artist that could.

Grieving the defection of her protégée and recovering from a hip injury, Mrs. Kamsky unexpectedly renews her passion for life and for dance when she teaches a class of teenage boys - including one who's recruited for ballet lessons as punishment for breaking a classmate's leg in anger. Ellen Cooney tells a story about the artistic drive to create - alternately narrated by the central character's closest friends, her loving and demanding students, her discontented protégée, and her inquisitive neighbors. With prose that performs pirouettes and pliés, The Old Ballerina tells a story about teaching and learning, the individual and the community, but above all, the healing power of the arts.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1. Who is the main character of the novel? Is it Mrs. Kamsky? Lisette? Davey? Robin? Is The Old Ballerina a lament for the aging dancer, looking backward, tracing the disappointments of the past and passing them on to her students? Or is the novel moving forward, an announcement of the future, a celebration of the protégée and the promise and innocence embodied in the changing of the guard?

2. What does The Old Ballerina say about art? What does it mean that a writer is writing about another art form?

3. Through the fragmented use of first-person narrative, Cooney presents the concept of a "boy ballerina" from a variety of perspectives. What do these different perspectives contribute to the larger dialogue surrounding issues of gender, sexual orientation, and artistic expression?

4. Both Mrs. Kamsky and Lisette have visions (i.e. The Fall of Troy and the Tinman) that sustain them by transforming life experience into art. What problems arise from imparting these visions to their students? When does a teacher's vision move from education to egoism?

5. In light of its untraditionally inconclusive or unfinished quality, what has the novel accomplished? Does the novel resolve itself? What conclusions can we draw from a novel that seems to have no conclusion? What does this unfinished character of the novel imply about the nature of storytelling in general (i.e. conclusions are a myth, endings are the same as beginnings, etc.)?

REVIEWS:

"The Old Ballerina is an enchanting book about masters and pupils, real life and the imagined life, and what it means to dance. At the center of this fresh and charming novel stands the goddess, Mrs. Kamsky, the old ballerina to die for." - Jane Hamilton, author of A Map of the World and The Short History of a Prince

"Light and lovely, Cooney's third novel is about the way one superb ballet teacher - indomitable, aging Irene Kamsky - touches the lives of her students and alters her community. . . . Cooney's small novel is a valentine to the transformative power of art." - Publishers Weekly

BIO:

Ellen Cooney was born in 1952 in Clinton, Massachusetts. She is the author of Small Town Girl and All the Way Home, and her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Literary Review, Story, Glimmer Train, and many other journals. She has taught creative writing at Harvard; Boston College; and the Seminars at Radcliffe, and currently teaches in the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies at and MIT.

The mission of Coffee House Press is to promote exciting, vital, and enduring writing of our time; to delight and inspire readers; to increase awareness of and appreciation for the traditional book arts; to contribute to the cultural life of our community; and to enrich our literary heritage. We fulfill our mission by publishing books that advance the craft of writing; books that present the dreams and ambitions of peoples who have been under-represented in published literature; and books that help establish a new common ground for all readers.