Body of a Dancer reviews have appeared, or are forthcoming, in the following publications: American Book Review, Ballet-Dance Magazine, Bark, Ballet Review, Bonner Daily Bee, Fourth Genre, The Idaho Librarian, Mid-American Review, North American Review, Notre Dame Review, Rain Taxi, Redwood Coast Review, The Pacific Northwest Inlander, Shelf Awareness, The Spokesman-Review, Trestle Creek Review, Under the Sun, Wilderness House Literary Review, Word Riot, and elsewhere.

Review Excerpts:

"Body of a Dancer fills a void in the dance literature that has existed for far too long.... As D'Aoust reveals in her wonderful memoir, the "Body of a Dancer" is also shaped by an entire life led both inside and outside the studio.”

- Heather Desaulniers, Ballet-Dance Magazine       Read the review.

“The severe, competitive, and often disheartening New York dance scene is rich subject matter for this page-turning book of essays. Far from an exercise in narcissism, many of the essays are portraits of other dancers, and sometimes peripheral individuals.... This book is at once relatable and yet very specific to the life of a dancer, with the elements of joy and grief captured in brief vignettes. D’Aoust describes these feelings in heartbreaking passages, showing that we all dream of a big life though few of us are willing to face the pain required.”

1. -Ellie Dworak, The Idaho Librarian        Read the review.
   

“For all the pain and suffering, however, her years in competitive New York dance also taught her ‘in so many ways to be freer than you ever have in your life,’ she writes. ‘You're over thirty, and you don't give a damn what anyone thinks of you. You like the cackle lines around your mouth and eyes.’ That kind of wisdom may be worth the blood on the studio floor.”

- Bruce Jacobs, Shelf Awareness           Read the review.

“A book about modern dance should inhabit this very pull between gravity and flight, between grit and grace. It is the beauty and problem of the form, and D’Aoust stands at the intersection taking the better impulses from both.”

- Jonathan Frey, Bark            Read the review.

“When memoir works, it gives the reader a razor thin slice of life, serves it up on a prepared slide and examines it through the microscope of the memoirist’s eye. Renée E. D’Aoust’s memoir, Body of a Dancer, not only works but gives the reader an unfalteringly honest and brutally clear-sighted vision of the nature of an artist’s passion.”

- Peter Grandbois, Word Riot         Read the review.

Read the full review in "Book Notes" by Jim Kershner at The Spokesman-Review.

Read "Inlander Picks" by Jordy Byrd at The Pacific Northwest Inlander.

Articles & Interviews:

Listen to the In Her Room podcast -- interviewed by Sara Blackthorne.

Read the feature article by David Gunter at the Bonner Daily Bee.

Read an interview with D'Aoust by author Janet Skeslien Charles.

Read an interview with D’Aoust by H. L. Hix on “Metaphor as a Means of Creating Change.”

Read an interview with D’Aoust at The Collagist about an essay called “The Air Must Circulate” published in The Collagist.

Read Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (on a postcard): #165 Renée E. D’Aoust.

Advanced Praise for Body of a Dancer:

“Renée E. D'Aoust's captivating memoir beautifully articulates the dreamlike freedom of dance and the inevitable pain that comes to those who pursue perfection with every waking breath. With exquisite description, absolute honesty, and a clear, compelling voice, Body of a Dancer offers an unforgettable account of one artist's bittersweet journey. A powerful story of art and passion.”
-Dinty W. Moore, author of Between Panic & Desire
www.dintymoore.com

"In this compelling, gracefully written memoir, Renée E. D'Aoust, a former Martha Graham trained dancer-turned-writer gives us a candid, incisive look at the transitory and sometimes transcendent joys, exhilarations and camaraderie, as well as the fierce competitiveness, bouts of insecurity, and determination that mark the pursuit of our most impassioned hopes and dreams. In addition to being a deeply human story, Body of a Dancer is a valuable addition to the existing literature on/about the world of modern dance."
-Michael Steinberg,
Founding Editor of Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction
Author of Still Pitching, 2003 ForeWord Magazine/Independent Press Memoir of the Year
www.mjsteinberg.com

“Renée E. D'Aoust's writing is sharp and funny, twisting and turning through the mind's eye like the many dancers she so adroitly conjures. Her sentences thrum with life, propelled by felicities of tone, rhythm and pacing. The woman throws a mean sucker punch.” -Claudia La Rocco

“Fascinating, horrifying, unfalteringly honest, Renée E. D'Aoust's Body of a Dancer is a remarkably clear-eyed descent into New York's surreal world of modern dance peopled by the obsessed, dispossessed, sexy, suicidal, brutal, broke, and absurd, where piercing self-doubt and ambition give way to luminous instants of transcendence, and where the body is a site of pain and beauty and discipline and joy, a home you can never fully inhabit and never fully leave.” -Lance Olsen, author of Calendar of Regret lanceolsen.com