Memoir Dance

Includes audiobook-exclusive bonus pep talks from Laurieann! A-list choreographer Laurieann Gibson guides creators of all kinds to embrace their passions and achieve success, providing a practical road map to never giving up on your dream. Have you felt stuck like you’re just running in place...

In August 1982, a 30-year-old woman, Jane Goodwin, was found murdered in her Newark, New Jersey apartment. Her killer had strangled Jane until she passed out. Then, reportedly, he ripped open her blouse, posed her with her breasts exposed, and repeatedly stabbed Jane in the chest. He left no fingerprints or DNA-just a shattered, grieving family. Over the next 19 years, three other women were attacked in a similar fashion. Police eventually caught their assailant, Edwin “Ned” Snelgrove, a promising college grad with an uncontrollable desire to hurt women.

A riveting cautionary tale about the ecstasy and dangers of loving Marvin Gaye, a performer passionately pursued by all—and a searing memoir of drugs, sex, and old school R&B from the wife of legendary soul icon Marvin Gaye. After her seventeenth birthday in 1973, Janis Hunter met Marvin...

Viscount Horatio Nelson (1758-1805), known as ‘The Hero’ during his own lifetime was both an inspiring commander and an innovative tactician, becoming a rear admiral after defeating the Spanish fleet at the Battle of Cape St Vincent. He was also responsible for the great victories of the Nile (1798) and Copenhagen (1801). Revered by his officers and men, he was renowned for both his arrogance and his scandalous love affair with the beautiful Emma Hamilton.

Scratching River braids the voices of mother, brother, sister, ancestor, and river to create a story about environmental, personal, and collective healing. This memoir revolves around a search for home for the author’s older brother, who is both autistic and schizophrenic, and an unexpected...

Joan Baez shares poems for or about her contemporaries (such as Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, and Jimi Hendrix), reflections from her childhood, personal thoughts, and cherished memories of her family, including pieces about her younger sister, singer-songwriter Mimi Fariña. Speaking to the people, places, and moments that have had the greatest impact on her art, this collection is an inspiring personal diary in the form of poetry.

The Masked Dance is a candid personal reflection on the psychological, religious, and cultural influences at the core of domestic violence. Monica vividly conveys her spiritual battle against the entanglements of the abuse cycle while unveiling the latent messages that cultivate emotional and physical violence against women. This book opens urgently needed conversations about Christian culture and what its hidden messages say about the value of a woman’s soul versus the value of her marriage.

Janka was a Polish Jewish girl, and Alberto, a Spanish Greek Jewish man. This tale reveals how love and hearts of kindness came out of the horrors of the concentration camps. In 1949, they came to Australia, bringing two cultures, 13 languages and their toddler Nina, to forge a new beginning. These two people would never have met and fallen in love, if they hadn’t survived the attempted extermination of a race in the death chambers of Europe. They knew and taught their children, that we cannot move on without forgiveness.

From Academy Award–winning actress and bestselling author Shirley MacLaine, a collection of imaginative ruminations: “Fun and thoughtful by turns and told in MacLaine’s feisty, funny voice, this should appeal to fans and doubters alike” (Booklist). Beloved actress and bestselling author...

Kara Tippetts's story was not a story of disease, although she lost her battle with terminal cancer. It was not a story of saying goodbye, although she was intentional in her time with her husband and four children. Kara's story was one of seeing God in the hard and in the good. It was one of finding grace in the everyday. And it was one of knowing "God with us" through fierce and beautiful friendship.

Arguably the greatest choreographer who ever lived, George Balanchine was one of the cultural titans of the twentieth century—the New York Times called him "the Shakespeare of dancing." His radical approach to choreography—and life—reinvented the art of ballet and made him a legend. Written with enormous style and artistry, and based on more than one hundred interviews and research in archives across Russia, Europe, and the Americas, Mr. B carries us through Balanchine's tumultuous and high-pitched life story and into the making of his extraordinary dances.

Joan Crawford's remarkable forty-five-year motion picture career is one of the industry's longest. Signing her first contract in 1925, she was crowned an MGM star four years later and by the mid-1930s was the most popular actress in America. In the early 1940s, Crawford's risky decision to move to Warner Bros. was rewarded with an Oscar for Mildred Pierce. This triumph launched a series of film noir classics. She teamed with rival Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, proving that Crawford, whose career had begun by defining big-screen glamor, had matured into a dramatic actress.

A Syria-born dancer offers his deeply personal story of war, statelessness, and the pursuit of the art of dance in this inspirational memoir.

A prodigy from his youth in Russia, Vaslav Nijinsky came to international fame as a principal dancer in Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. In December 1917, Nijinsky—by then the most famous male dancer in the Western world—moved into a Swiss villa with his wife and three-year-old daughter and began to go mad. When psychosis struck, he imagined himself as married to God. Although he lived another 30 years, he never regained his sanity.

When Lauren Kessler was 12, her ballet instructor crushed not just her dreams of being a ballerina but also her youthful self-assurance. Now, many decades and three children later, Kessler embarks on a journey to join a professional company to perform in The Nutcracker. Raising the Barre is more than just one woman's story; it is a story about shaking things up, taking risks, and ignoring good sense and forgetting how old you are and how you're "supposed" to act.

Learn how to thrive in intense, competitive environments with these secrets from one of America's premiere ballerinas--and get a sneak peek at what her life is really like. Ballet may look glamorous and effortless to audience members, but it requires grueling discipline. It's a competitive and...

From the most brilliant and audacious choreographer of our time, the exuberant tale of a young dancer’s rise to the pinnacle of the performing arts world, and the triumphs and perils of creating work on his own terms—and staying true to himself Before Mark Morris became “the most...

As an Emergency Medicine consultant in one of the busiest departments in the United Kingdom, Dr. Jonny Acheson loved his job. Fueled by adrenaline, he treated and cared for some of the sickest patients who came through the doors. In 2016, when he was forty-one, he was diagnosed with Parkinson's, a progressive neurological condition for which there is no cure. He found it increasingly difficult to multitask in his fast-paced world. The environment that he thrived in made his symptoms worse. Parkinson's challenged his professional identity as an emergency doctor, and he didn't know what to do.

In Get in the Boat, Darlene Fuchs shares the powerful and poignant story of her father Richard's experience as a caregiver to his wife Gail during her decline into dementia. This memoir, based on the journals of Richard Sonnichsen, is a heart-wrenching yet inspiring exploration of the enduring power of love, faith, and resilience in the face of life's most difficult challenges.

This program includes sections recorded by Steve Aoki while on tour. The music. The mix. His life. "Sometimes I think my whole life can be seen through shades of blue..." — Steve Aoki Blue is the remarkable story of Steve Aoki, the superstar DJ/producer who started his career as a vegan...