I chose to read “The Afterlife of a Ballerina,” which discussed prima ballerina Alexandra Ansanelli’s surprising decision to walk away from her career in dance at the relatively young age of 28. As someone who grew up idolizing stories about her in issues of “Young Dancer” at my own ballet studio, I was surprised on an almost punch-in-the-gut level to learn that she has retired.
I was, however, relatively disappointed in the article, which, to borrow from Tool 25 of Clark’s Writing Tools, I found to be more of a report than a story. It follows a narrative structure in that anecdotes are arranged in chronological order interspersed with the author’s own thoughts or research, but it reads like a report. Clark says that you “use [a report] to render information, and [a story] to render experience.” I found this piece to render more information than experience, detailing Ansanelli’s rise far more than what surely must have been an emotionally fraught decision to walk away from her career. I was missing the why, and the how. Perhaps I am projecting too much of my own experiences onto Ansanelli, but when one has trained for years in a very demanding art, walking away is incredibly hard. The author details why this is hard for a dancer in the general sense (most dancers have no other formal skills or training to fall back on), but I would have appreciated learning more about Ansanelli’s particular experiences. I think the basic narrative structure the author chose for this piece could convey such information perfectly well, but just as we have been finding in our food exercises, what truly makes a story is all the personal detail that brings a scene alive.