I suspect that when most people in the world hear the name Appalachia, they do not think of ballet, ballet dancers or teachers, or people whose lives have been transformed by ballet. I have to admit, as a native Appalachian who is well versed in most topics about Appalachia, that I also knew little about ballet in the home region to which I have devoted a great deal of my professional career and nearly all of my writing career since my late teen years. But I did know that the father of the famous television actor Richard Thomas had grown up in Paintsville, Kentucky, and had become a professional ballet dancer in New York City where his more famous son Richard Thomas the younger grew up. I had even attended one performance of "The Nutcracker" in Lexington, Kentucky, in order to expose my young daughter to the experience. But I was not widely aware of the role ballet has played in Appalachia for hundreds of young women, and a few young men, until my good friend Edwina "Eddy" Pendarvis told me a couple of years ago that she was working on a book about ballet in Appalachia. That book is now in print and I had written on this blog earlier in late July about having attended a reading and book signing in Huntington, West Virginia, where Edwina Pendarvis read afew selected passages from this book and some of her earlier poetry in a joint reading with another of our mutual friends, Kirk Judd.
At that reading, Eddy was gracious enough to gift a copy of her book to my wife Candice although we would gladly have paid full price for it based on our previous readings of Eddy's work in other areas including both poetry and Appalachian Studies. The book was published by the Jesse Stuart Foundation in Ashland, Kentucky, where Eddy has been an avid and frequent contributor to the work of the foundation as both an author and sometime editor. My wife Candice & I decided to read the book together as we often do with books on subjects or by authors who interest both of us. Reading the book has been a joy and a fountainhead of information about a subject in which my prior information was deficient. We learned a great deal about both ballet and ballet in Appalachia. I can happily recommend the book to you whether you are a student of either ballet or Appalachian Studies.
Eddy interviewed and wrote about the ballet experiences and wider lives of twenty-four women who have been involved in ballet in Appalachia and, in some cases, in the wider world of ballet. All of the women either live or have lived in Appalachia in the past although not all of them are native Appalachians and some did not experience their involvement with ballet in Appalachia. But the common factors in all their lives have been the paired experiences of ballet and life in Appalachia. All of the women have taken ballet lessons and, at some time, have lived in the region. A small number of them have gone on to professional careers in ballet either as dancers or in other areas of ballet promotion and production including Eddy's only sister.
The book also examines ballet in comparison to martial arts and it should be stated for the record that Edwina Pendarvis took ballet as a child and studied Taekwando in which she holds a black belt. This is an interesting comparison to make and fortuitously tied in with another recent experience of mine in which several people, including myself, became engaged in a social media exchange about having taken typing in high school. Several of us in that discussion were male and nearly all of us males stated that we had received lifelong benefits from having taken the class. All the subjects in Eddy's book stated the same thing about having studied ballet even if they had not gone on to pursue careers in the art of ballet. It is my considered opinion that most people who pursue some difficult subject, art, or recreation for an extended period do receive such benefits especially if our pursuit of it is lengthy, the pursuit involves a subject which requires a great deal of work and discipline, or if we have to make some form of sacrifice to pursue that subject. Such efforts teach us discipline, compliance, and persistence.
Nearly all of the subjects in Eddy's book have gone on to become markedly successful women and a few of them have succeeded in multiple fields of endeavor. As I said earlier, more than one of these women went on some form of profession involving ballet. Several others became educators at a high level including a few who received doctoral degrees and taught college. Others became social activists working on a daily basis to help make the world a better place. In fact, I need to correct myself about that previous sentence and say that, in one way or another, all two dozen of these women have made the world a better place. They are also a diverse group with at least two who were born and/or raised outside the USA and later moved to America and Appalachia. They are also racially and ethnically diverse with a few African Americans, one biracial person, and several who practice some form of spirituality which could be said to be outside the American mainstream.
There is one chapter in the book which is devoted to a brief examination of the statistical data about the women, their upbringing, and some of the responses they have had to their ballet experiences. Unlike most statistical analyses I have seen this short chapter is informative and well worth the brief amount of time it requires to read. The concluding section of the book is devoted to brief biographical sketches of all the women and is one of the most satisfying sections to read since it brings into full focus just how successful the women have been in their lives both in and apart from their involvement in ballet. I recommend this book wholeheartedly to anyone, and especially to anyone who is mired in the sadly erroneous opinion that Appalachia is a backward place lacking in both the arts and sophistication. It actually informs the reader of several instances when individuals from Appalachia have not only improved their lives with ballet but have gone on to become important contributors to the greater world of ballet outside Appalachia.
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