TBG Library: DANCES by Nicole Cuffy

Published Aug 18, 2023, 7:00 AM

The Therapy for Black Girls Podcast is a weekly conversation with Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed Psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, about all things mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves.

We’re back with another page-turning addition to your bookshelf. Grab your reading glasses, find somewhere cozy, and get into this week’s TBG library pick, DANCES by Nicole Cuffy. DANCES follows CeCe Cordell, a 22-year-old ballet dancer who is catapulted into celebrity when she is promoted to principal at the New York City Ballet. Even as she celebrates the achievement of a lifelong dream, she is haunted by the feeling that she doesn’t belong, and has to work to unravel the loose threads of a complicated family past. 

For this episode, Nicole joins us to dive into the ways in which she weaved parts of her own life into the book, the double consciousness experienced by Black writers impacted by the white gaze, and how the book tackles broader themes through the lens of ballet.

 

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Welcome to the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast, a weekly conversation about mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves. I'm your host, doctor Joy Hard and Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information or to find a therapist in your area, visit our website at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com. While I hope you love listening to and learning from the podcast, it is not meant to be a substitute for a relationship with a licensed mental health professional. Hey, y'all, thanks so much for joining me for another special TVG Library episode. We'll get right into our conversation after a word from our sponsors. Which friend are you? And your sister circle? Are you the wallflower, the peacemaker, the firecracker or the leader? Take the quiz at Sisterhoodheels dot com slash quiz to find out, and then make sure to grab your copy of Sisterhood Heels to find out more about how you can be a better friend and how your circle can do a better job of supporting you. Order yours today at Sisterhoodheels dot com. We're back this week to provide you with another page turning addition to your bookshelf, Grab your reading glasses, find somewhere cozy, and get into this week's TBG Library pic. Dances by Nicole Cuffey. Dances follow cc Cordell, a twitting two year old ballet dancer who is catapulted into celebrity when she's promoted to principal at the New York City Ballet. Even as she celebrates the achievement of a lifelong dream, she's haunted by the feeling that she doesn't belong and has to work to unravel the loose threads of a complicated family past. Today, I'm joined by Nichole to dive into the ways in which she weaved parts of her own life into the book, the double consciousness experienced by black writers impacted by the white gays, and how the book tackles broader themes through the lens of ballet. If something resonates with you while enjoying our conversation, please share with us on social media using the hashtag TBG in Session or join us in the Sister Circle to talk more about the episode. You can join us at community dot Therapy for Blackgirls dot com. Here's our conversation. Thank you so much for joining me to day, Nicole.

Thank you so much for having me very excited.

To chat with you. So in nineteen eighty one, Tony Morrison famously said, if there's a book that you want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. Could you tell us a little bit about your personal experiences with dance and your quest for literature that accurately portrays black girls experiences with the art form.

Yeah, so that exact quote is why I wrote this book. I was a black dancer, not professionally, but I've always loved classical ballet, and in about twenty fifteen, I was really craving an experience within the realm of fiction of just immersing myself in the ballet world, and a book about a black ballerina at a national touring company in fiction just really didn't exist at the time. And you know, I remember really craving that reading experience for myself and just very clearly remember the moment that that exact quote popped into my head that I realized I was going to have to write this book myself because it simply didn't exist yet. So that's really where I started on my writing journey with this book.

So let's talk about our main character, CC. How similar is she to young Nicole?

Not super similar. Actually we have very different family lives. And whereas CC's drive was for dance, my drive at a young age was definitely not for dance. I was in ballet as a little kid, and you know, when I was a little kid, when I took on a new hobby or a new interest, whether it be ballet or piano or guitar, the kind of consistent theme for me for a little while was that I just wanted to be good at these things. I didn't want to have to learn how to be good at these things. So I did not have the level of commitment that CC has from a young age. That took me a little bit later to develop. But what I will say that we do have in common from a young age and to now is the things that I'm passionate about and the things that CC is passionate about. We are focused and driven. So I did have a drive as a little kid to be a writer of some sort, and I think that's where we have a connection in our personalities the most. But other than that, yeah, we're not super similar.

So are there other things that you feel like you weaved into the story based on your own upbringing and experiences.

Yeah, I would say that a lot of CC's body image stuff is definitely a shadow of my own body image stuff. So a lot of her hyper awareness around what she's eating, a lot of her hyper awareness around what her body looks like and how her body may change depending on what kind of mirror she's looking at. I definitely borrowed from my own experiences as someone with body dysmorphia and an eating disorder. CC's issues around body image and food are not to the extent that mine are, but I definitely did use some of my experience with those things to inform CC's hypervigilance about her body and how it fits into this classical ballet mold.

Another huge theme that we see in the book is family, So we see more about her relationship with her brother, who has a history of addictions. There's a bit of a complicated mother daughter dynamic there. Can you talk a little bit about how these relationships shape CC's world.

Yeah, absolutely, so. I always think of family as the sort of training camp before you sort of enter into the real world. So whatever your family dynamic may be in however you may define family, those really early experiences through certainly your formative years, but I think into young adulthood as well, really establish how you're going to move within the world. You can look at it, it's two different ways. I think either the mold that you came from your family may distort you somehow so that you move through the world in a distorted fashion, or you can look at it like that mold shapes you so that you move through the world in a particular fashion that is unique to you and that family dynamic that you emerged from. So that is definitely true for CC. I think in her case we have a good mix of distortion and shaping happening. And so definitely the way that she moves through the world and moves through her experiences is very much colored throughout by those early experiences with her mother and with her brother most notably.

And how would you say the role of double consciousness really played a role in this book. Can you say a little bit about how she reckons with her blackness in the novel?

Yeah, definitely, So I think this is something that probably any black professional, especially maybe a black creative I say that only because that's the experience I can speak to experiences, this awareness of double consciousness as a concept and how it impacts the way you act in the worlds that you move through. So CC because she is in this predominantly white, neoclassical ballet world, is in a hostile space for black female bodies, and so at the same time, she comes from this very sort of culturally black background. She grows up in Bedstye, Brooklyn. Her mother is very African American identified and is very interested in African American advancement and black issues, and she really does have to navigate both of these worlds simultaneously. She has to know how to exist in a culturally black space, but she also has to know how to exist as a black person in a culturally white in terms of what whiteness has become under the influence of American colonialism. So she does have to understand herself as herself. And I think that a lot of black people have this experience where they understand themselves as certainly informed by cultural blackness, but there's a sense of self that is removed from that political identity of blackness, and it's just who you are as an individual as a person, but because of our marginalized status, we also have to understand ourselves within the context of a white gaze. So we have to know who we are to a predominantly white and therefore predominantly somewhat hostile world. And so Ceci does this all the time. She understands who she is as an artist and what she wants to be as an artist. But because especially now that she's promoted and she's been catapulted into the public eye as a black figure, she has to understand who she is not only within the context of the larger white gaze, but also in the context of the black gazes of the little dancers who are looking up to her because of her position within this historically white world. So she almost has a triple consciousness in that sense. She has to understand herself as herself. She has to understand herself within the context of this hostile white gaze, and she also has to understand herself within the context of the black gays as a figurehead for the black community.

I would imagine, Nicole, that some of this is familiar from your own life. And I'm always curious about writers writing about things that maybe you know are similar to real experiences they've had. Can you just talk a little bit about that.

Yeah, definitely. I think it's been highlighted to me even more lately now that this book has been published, and I've been thinking about how I talk about blackness in my own writing and how I'm positioned as a writer but also as a black writer within a genre of literary fiction that historically has been treated as a white genre, even though there are plenty mentioned one Tony Morrison is I think one of the greatest American writers in American history, and yet she for a lot of her career was pigeonholed into this genre called African American literature as though it's somehow separate from the larger American canon of writing. So definitely, that's always something that I've thought about as I've been working on my career as a writer, wanting to be understood as a writer as an artist first, but also understanding that I am not going to and to a certain extent when it wants to escape that classification of a black writer. I don't want to escape that classification because I am a black writer and culturally that's important to me. But at the same time. I wouldn't want my work to be pigeonholed or somehow considered outside of American experience or not for anybody but black folk, because it features black characters and I am a black person who's doing the writing. So definitely, I've always thought about that as an artist myself, like, how can I focus on my craft focused on being the kind of voice I want to be, while also recognizing that if I'm going to have anybody read my work, there is a certain level of responsibility to cultural blackness that I need to keep in mind and to have an understanding of how my work resonates within a larger white gaze.

Thank you for that. I appreciate you sharing it. So there was so much beautiful writing in the book. What one beautiful statement you made was it is Ballet that chose me, but I chose it back. And sometimes I wonder if it wasn't in part, a small act of rebellion as a black ballerina, what would you say that CC is rebelling against the.

Idea that black bodies are not classical, specifically black female bodies. I think that it's still happening today that a lot of young black girls are being funneled out of classical and neoclassical ballet because their teachers are telling them that their bodies are not the right shape for this art form, that because they have hips or because they have curves, that they'd be better off going into African dance or modern dance, and that the classical neoclaslassical world is not for them. Cecy gets told that early on in her career by the very teacher who tells her that she does have a career as a dancer, later goes on to tell her, yeah, but not a classical neoclassical dancer, because that your body's not right for that. And I was not told this personally because I was not trying to be a professional dancer at a young age. I know professional black dancers who are now dancing professionally in the classical neoclassical spaces who were told that when they were young dancers and had to do something with it, and had to have the wherewithal as a very young person to ignore it, which is hard when you're a child because you don't typically as a child to have those kind of defenses yet, so it almost requires a young girl of color to be exceptional to even have a chance in this world, in the way that it does not require a young white girl to be exceptional to even have a chance. You have to be exceptional in terms of talent and in terms of physical capability, certainly, no matter what your skin tone is. But the mental fortitude that you have to have as a young black dancer is much more elevated than the mental fortitude which you do need to have, but that you have to have as a white dancer, just because you are much more likely to have people telling you that simply by dint of the way you're shaped, you cannot make it in this world. Even if you're not shaped that way yet, you may not have gone through puberty, They're just going to tell you that because you're black, well you're going to have a black woman's body, as though we all have the same body, and therefore you will not be right for classical and neoclassical ballet. So definitely, there is this sense of rebellion that people are going to tell me that people are going to think that, but I am going to prove them wrong. I'm going to be classical. I'm going to be beautiful and delicate and light on the stage. Even if because of the color of my skin, people are less likely to see me that way, And we still see it oftentimes in the classical neoclassical ballet worlds, where black dancers who are dancing with classical and neoclassical companies, who do look like professional ballerinas and who have all the strength and grace that any white dancer has, the critics are still treating them as though their bodies are all wrong for the art form that they are helping to evolve and perfect.

You mentioned this a little bit when you talked about the kind of triple consciousness that Cec almost needed to possess. But there are parts of the book where Cec is portrayed to not understand how influential she is to the younger dancers. Can you talk a little bit more about that, and do you think she was struggling with imposter syndrome? Yes, so Cc.

I think it's important to remember is in her very early twenties. She's still quite young. And I think what happens sometimes when you achieve the kind of success that Cec has achieved and you're still quite young, is you don't really understand what you look like to people who are frankly just a little bit younger than you, because you kind of still feel like that. I mean, I remember being twenty two. I still felt like a teenager, even though I wasn't anymore. So the idea that I might be some sort of influence to somebody who is maybe just a decade younger than me felt really really strange for me, especially if in CC's case, where it's new, she just got promoted, she just got catapulted into the public eye in this really big way, so she has a lot of adjusting to do as a very young woman to this idea that there are young girls who were like she was just a few years ago who are now looking to her to be some sort of guide or some kind of influence. And I imagine that would feel really uncomfortable for somebody in CC's position, because she's still very much trying to figure herself out and trying to deal yes with imposter syndrome. And I remember hearing somebody it's actually on TikTok, somebody on TikTok made a really really good point. It's always stuck with me about imposter syndrome, which is that if you are a person of color in predominantly white spaces, then your imposter syndrome is not so much imposter syndrome because you are, in fact, in a impostor. These spaces were not designed for you to succeed in. You were not meant to do well in these spaces, so you are the impostor. So your imposter syndrome is very much valid. And I think that's the case for CC as well. She is an impostor in this world, and there are going to be people who look at her differently or who criticize her differently than her white counterparts, because this is not a world in which people ever envisioned black women being centered or put into principal positions. So she is an impostor here and so therefore her imposter syndrome is quite valid. So she, I think, is reckoning with that realization and trying to balance what this is going to mean for the rest of her career that she's always going to have to be fighting for a place for herself and for people like her in this world because it wasn't designed for people like her. And at the same time, because she's doing that, she's going to be this role model for younger dancers, whether she wants to be or not.

Another thing that kind of came up as a theme is that there are a lot of strains in multiple characters of the book. So there are a lot of artistic decisions made at the dance company that maybe she doesn't agree with. You talk about, like the wear and tear on her body, and so something that feels like it comes up is this idea of agency as it relates to her as a character. Can you talk about why it was important for you to portray that.

Yeah, definitely, because I think this is something that a lot of dancers in particular struggle with if they are dancing within the confines of a company and they're not freelancer or something. There is this constant, career long battle with this idea of creative agency, and a lot of dancers really struggle with this actually because this is a creative profession. I'm in a creative profession, but no one's telling me what to write or how to write in a different voice that's different from my own, or how to represent myself as a writer as an author, or how to make myself come across on the page. All of those decisions are up to me, and I think in many creative professions that is the case, but dance is kind of an exception to that. If you are dancing as a professional within a company, then your creativity is allowed to operate, but within the confines of that company's repertoire. So you are told what to dance, you are told what roles to play. You don't really get to decide, Okay, I'm going to do Swan Lake, but I'm not going to do Giselle. You don't really get to make those decisions. You get casted, and the casting is just the casting, so you might not get some roles and you might get some other roles that maybe you feel less identified with or less comfortable with as a dancer, if someone makes a ballet on you, so if a choreographer comes in and uses you as inspiration and creates a new ballet with you in mind, you might have a little bit more input, but the choreographer still gets the final say. So there is this kind of push and pull with agency, especially in classical and neoclassical ballet, which is a little bit more stringent than modern or contemporary might be. So you have to find places where you can express your creative agency. So For some dancers, that means that they do things on the side, so they negotiate within their contract that they're allowed to do some freelance work, or that they're allowed to do guest appearances with other companies. For some dancers, that means that they have other creative outlets. I know a lot of dancers who have side hustles as bakers or visual artists, or they create their own clothing lines, because these are the areas where they can more freely express their creativity without anybody dictating to them how they can do it. There's this wonderful movement actually of a collection of dancers who are creating this project that features queer personalities on the stage. Because oftentimes in the new classical and neoclassical ballet worlds, dancers who fall within the LGBTQ community are asked exclusively to dance roles that do not express that identity. They are asked to dance roles that express heterosexual love only. Classical ballet in particular is incredibly heteronormative, and that makes sense if you consider the history, but it has not evolved yet. Black dancers for a long time. Thankfully, this is changing, were asked to wear flesh colored tights, which really meant pink tights, which is not flesh colored for most people of color, And so in that way, they're almost asked to go into whiteface in this weird way. And thankfully, the conversation that we've been having about people of color in ballet has been advancing enough that those things are starting to change. But there are lots of other areas in ballet where dancers are asked to act out a personality that is very removed from their actual personality on the stage and to not exercise that creative agency within the company's repertoire. So there is this constant battle of okay, where do I claim my creative agency? Where do I get to have some say over how I move this body and how I express myself with this body? And CC I think definitely grapples with that in one way or another throughout her story.

You know, it is an interesting tension because it feels like this is one of those areas where like uniformity is really important, right, Like everybody needs to wear their hair pulled back, and I don't typically see ballerinas with a bunch of louder boulder makeup it's pretty neutral and that kind of thing. So it is interesting to think about what does it look like to have agency in a space that really appreciates in affirms everybody looking the same way, right, Yeah. Yeah. It also reminds me of these tiktoks as you mentioned TikTok, Like I see a lot of ballerinas and ballerina moms doing a lot of coloring of their shoes. Yes, right, because of course those don't even come in a variety of colors, so they're using like a lot of makeup and foundation to make them fleshtone right right.

Thankfully, Again, there are some companies that are starting to change that, like I believe block now has actually flush colored point shoes for a variety of shades of skin. But the fact that that's only happened within the past like five years or so is crazy when you think about it.

More from our conversation after the break, So I do want to have you give us a little bit of a lesson in education on some ballerina terms. I mean, if you can nicoles, because you use some of these in the book, and so I want to make sure people have the correct information. So I'm going to give you a word, and can you give us the definition of what this is? Yes, and I hope you helped me with the pronunciation as well. So the first one is lad dancer.

Yes, la dancer, So that's a male dancer. We often think of female dancers in ballet as ballerinas and in quill use sets. Fine, it's not incorrect, but technically the term ballerina is reserved for a female dancer who has reached the top tier of a company. So ballerina is a principal dancer. A female ballerina who has not reached that stage is called la dansuss So the female form of the dancer, and the dancer is a male who has not yet reached the pinnacle of the ballet company.

Got it okay? And so that was la. Is there a difference in la dancer?

Yeah? So these are French terms, and in French your articles are gendered. We don't have that in English, we just have the A and, But in French and many other romance languages, not all of the other romance languages, your articles are gendered. So la is a feminine article and le l e is a masculine article.

Got it okay? What about pod character.

Poda character, So a poda character is basically a character dance. So oftentimes these are just little dances within a larger story ballet that don't have anything to do with the story at all. They're just there as a little diversion. They're just fun, they're usually comedic, and yeah, they're just there. A good example is the dance between Puss and Boots and the White Cat at the end of The Sleeping Beauty, this classical ballet. It doesn't have anything to do with the story, but it's just a fun dance and it's usually danced comedically. Got it?

Okay? What about reverence?

Reverence is basically the same word in English reverence. It's just what we do at the end of a ballet class to show respect to the teacher. So it usually involves like a quick little bow, or you might simply applaud, but it's just some gesture that you give toward the dance teacher at the end of a ballet class to show them respect and to thank them.

An entree.

Entree is your entry, so this is your grand entrance, usually of your protagonists in a story ballet.

Thank you for that quick little education on some of those terms. I appreciate, no problem. So I want to talk a little bit more about your writing process. Can you talk a little bit about the ways that crafting a work of fiction is similar to dance.

I would think that crafting a work of fiction is similar to dance in terms of the organization, at least the way that I do it. So typically, the way that a ballet is built is you're always thinking about steps. So Balanchen's, the father of American neoclassical ballet, famously once said that there are no new steps, there are only new combinations. So basically what that means is that you're not inventing anything new, You're just organizing into something creative. And I think that's definitely what happens in writing. I'm not necessarily making up new words. I'm not creating a new language here. I'm working with the tools that I'm given to create a voice of my own or a voice of a character that I've built, and to use that to create a story. So when you're building a ballet, you're going to start once you have your music with the steps, so you need to know what shapes you're trying to make, both with the dancer's bodies, but also on the stage. Oftentimes choreographers are not only thinking about what they want the audience to see, but also sometimes they're thinking about the vertical line. So if you imagine, like a camera hovering above the stage, what would that camera see. Oftentimes audience isn't thinking about that, but the choreographer is. And then what you're doing is you are trying to basically work out what's possible. So a lot of choreography, especially if neoclassical works, is experimental. You get into the studio, you try it out, and you figure out what works and what doesn't. And in that way, I think it can be really similar to writing. I have an idea of what I want to do in terms of character and in terms of story, and then I start writing and some of those things may work on the page and some of them may not. So as I'm writing, even though I typically work with a detailed outline, I know how the story is going to end. When I start actually writing, Often the way that I get from point A to point B, even though I've already mapped it out, it may deviate just because it needs to for one reason or another. It might not work the way I thought I was going to work or the character kind of evolves as I begin writing them.

So is there anything about CC that surprised you from when you initially major outline to the final draft of what the book became.

Yeah, surprised, maybe not, but definitely there were changes along the way. So in my first ever draft of this book, Cec was actually a little bit older. She was twenty four, and even though it's only a difference of a couple years, it didn't feel right for her to be in her mid twenties. She felt younger to me than that. Even though she does make a series of very mature decisions for someone hurt age throughout the book, at her core, she was a younger woman. So that was something that I went back and changed because it was more true to the character that I had written.

So this is your debut novel. If you could go back in time, what advice would you give yourself before starting the book?

Huh? I think I would tell myself to start it sooner. So I think I mentioned that this idea first came to me in twenty fifteen, and I'm normally not great with dates, but the reason that I remember this date is because it was probably about May or June of twenty fifteen that the idea for this book kind of started gelling in my mind. And I wanted to write a story about the first black female principle at the American Ballet Theater. And I wanted to write about the American Ballet Theater because it's a classical company while the New York City Ballet is a neoclassical company. And I just am a little bit more knowledgeable about classical ballet. Became more knowledgeable about classical neoclassical through my research, but at time, that's where my expertise really lay. Now, the issue that I thought I faced was that even though this is fiction and I would be writing about a fictional American Ballet Theater, and I ended up writing about a fictional New York City Ballet. I knew that Misty Copeland was at the American Ballet Theater at the time. She was a soloist, and I remember thinking to myself, if I can just get this book out before they promote her, then I'm going to be okay. And I thought I had a lot of time because I was like, it would be unprecedented, it would be crazy if they promoted Misty Copeland as a principal at the American Ballet Theater. There's never been a black female principle at that company. Well that was June, and in August they did promote her, and so I was like, well, now I can't write this book again. I would have been writing about a fictional version of the American Ballet Theater, but I thought it would be too big a suspension of disbelief to completely ignore Missy Copeland's existence. If I were writing about a black female, Everyone's going to think I was writing about Missy Copeland if I wrote that book now that she had been promoted. So I concluded that I just couldn't write this book. And it probably took me a good year before I realized. I was like, you idiot, just said it at the New York City Ballet. Me either make up a new company or move it to a different company in New York. And eventually I just moved it. But I could have come to that conclusion. I don't know why that I got so stuck there. I think that Misty Copeland's promotion was so momentous and so exciting that it really rocked me in terms of how I was thinking about the classical neoclassical ballet world, and it gave me, I think, probably one of the biggest cases of writers black that I've ever experienced, and that it stopped me in my tracks for a full year before I was able to work my way around the new shape of the classical neoclassical ballet world. I would say, start sooner, I would go back and maybe not let that completely derail me as much as it did. Right.

I think it's impossible for something that being to not knock you off your block a little bit, right, because you just weren't expecting it.

Right.

I'm curious if there are other things that changed about your writing or where the story went after Misty was promoted.

It's funny because the conversation around black women in ballet started to change and because of Misty Copeland's promotion, and that's a good thing, but it's also kind of a frustrating thing because although Misty Copeland is the first black principle at the American Ballet Theater, she is not the only black dancer in the classical neoclassical ballet world who's out there trying to have these conversations. There were black women before Misty Copeland who were trying to have this conversation. Misty Copeland herself acknowledges this and is very great about giving credit where credit is due, but there are dancers before her who were trying to have these conversations and dancers after her who continue to try to have these conversations. But because of her promotion, the acceleration of that conversation changed. So I wanted to write about a black female principle because there weren't that many of them in these large ballet companies, especially in the classical world. But when mister Copland got promoted, those conversations started to change, which meant that the conversation that I was having with this piece of fiction had to change. And so I think that was also part of why it may have derelled me for as long as it did, is I needed to rethink how I was going to enter into this conversation, because I had thought initially that I was entering into a conversation that nobody was having, really, or at least nobody was having in sort of the mainstream ballet world. But now this conversation was happening in the mainstream ballet world. So I had to think about that and shift my focus a little bit due to that. Mm hmm.

Thank you more from our conversation after the break. So, when writing gets frustrating or you have roadblocks like the one that you just talked about, who is your support system? Who are you making a call to.

I am a very sort of lone wolf writer. I tend to work through these things completely internally. I do have a support system. My mom is someone that I might bounce ideas off of occasionally, especially when talking about human behavior. My mom is a psychologist, so if I'm writing about anything related to human behavior, psychology, mental health, I'll run those ideas by her and ask for her input. But even still, I present them to her like, Hey, I have a friend who maybe is going through this thing. What would you say about that? Or can you tell me a little bit more about clinical depression? You know, I won't give her the specifics. I don't know why I've always been this way, but I tend to hold those details really close to my heart when in the process of writing. I tend not to enjoy talking too much about what I'm writing while I'm still writing it. When I hit writer's block, what I've learned over time is that writer's block is real, just a natural part of the process. It's going to happen. It's not super avoidable, and I don't think it's necessarily a good thing or a bad thing. It's just neutral. And usually what it means is that I just need to step back for a minute and find a way to reconnect with what I need to reconnect with. So sometimes it's as simple as I need to go take a walk in nature. I just need a break, I need to get away from my desk. Sometimes it can be that I need to hear somebody else's voice besides my own. So I might need to go read somebody else's work. Maybe if I'm writing about ballet, I might go read another book of fiction about ballet, just to get some inspiration from somebody else who's completed this type of project before. Sometimes it's that I need to emerge from the world that I've immersed myself in, because I do get quite immersed into my research. So sometimes that can be a little bit overwhelming, and that can cause writer's black. So maybe I need to look at something unrelated to ballet for a little while. Maybe I need to go look at a documentary about I don't know, clowns, something that is completely unrelated to what I'm currently writing about. But usually the writer's block for me only last for about a day, and that something will in the attempt to emerage from writer's block. Usually that comes with the jolt of inspiration and I'm back to being pretty prolific the next day.

So how do you balance writing about the dance world with more complex topics like some of the ones you've talked about, so abortion, body, image, race, What benefit do you think readers get from reading about those kinds of intersections.

I really wanted to write something that felt true to me about a dancer when I first thought of this book. Not only did a book about a black ballerina not exist yet in the realm of fiction, but a lot of the fiction that did exist about ballet was this very sensationalized, oversimplified version of the dance world. So this wasn't true of every book that was written about ballet, but there are a lot of books about ballet that were about dance series being really cutthroat and sabotaging each other, and everybody has anorexia or bolimia or some combination thereof, and there are so many reasons why I object to that being the only narrative out there about dancers. Oh I forgot. One of the more important cliches is that all the male dancers are gay. I really tried to push back against that narrative because it's very untrue. But I think that for me, this does the art form a disservice because it turns it into a soap opera, and it's not a soap opera. These are very serious artists. These are very serious athletes. Part of what makes their work so incredibly beautiful is because these are people who are dedicating their entire lives to this career in order to succeed in this way in this world, and for female dancers in particular, because of their dedication, their careers are quite short because of what dance does to the body. So all of this running around and putting glass in each other's point shoes, nobody has time for that, and no one has the energy for that in the ballet world. So I really wanted to represent the ballet world in a much more nuanced and complex way. So I think what I wanted readers to get out of me dealing with the intersection of those things is that complexity and that nuance, because I think it just makes dance all the more beautiful. I really wanted readers, even if they had never seen anybody perform a single ballet step, I really wanted them to understand the beauty of this career and the tragedies of this career. I mean, it's complicated. Everything in human experience, for the most part, is complicated, and I really wanted to help that come through in this work. I mean, I hadn't seen anybody talking about a black principle dancer. I hadn't seen many people talk talking about what it's like to be a black woman in a hostile white space and talking about a black woman's body in a way that wasn't sexualized or mammified for lack of a better term.

So what do you feel like you learned about yourself in writing the book?

I think for years, I've always been a huge lover of ballet, even when I was a little kid in a quick ballet classes. Because I wasn't immediately good at ballet, I never lost my love for the art form. I would always watch ballets. I loved looking at dancers and looking at what they could do, and looking at the differences between dancers, like they're playing the same role, but look at how differently they're dancing it. I loved that. Eventually, that love brought me back to the practice of ballet as a teenager, and I continued that through college. I had the opportunity to dance under the wing of a very famous ex balanchine dancer who was the first to tell me that I was good at this and that I was good at ballet, and I've continued taking classes as an adult. But because I was never a professional dancer, for a really long time, I struggled with calling myself a dancer, and it didn't really matter who told me that I was. I've had dancers who are working professionally saying, no, you dance, you're a dancer, but it never felt right because I wasn't a professional. I didn't look like them, I wasn't up on stage performing for people. But I think part of what the writing of this book did for me was connect me to this idea that maybe I am a dancer. Not professionally, that's not my career, but maybe that is part of who I am. Because writing this book, especially the dance scenes was a very physical process for me. I mean anytime there is dance being discussed in this book, when I was writing those scenes, I was either really very closely studying those particular steps if it was part of a ballet that already exists, but if it's combinations that I was making up for the page, I dance those combinations. I would be writing and I would get up and I'd be like, let me just see if this makes sense. And I, you know, really was just naturally called to feel that in my body and to understand what these steps would feel like. And so I think doing that really connected me and made me a little bit more comfortable at least with identifying as a dancer, if not a professional dancer.

I love it. Thank you so much for sharing that, Nicole. So where can we stay connected with you? What is your website as well as any social media handles you'd like to share? And where can we grab a copy of the book.

So you can grab a copy of the book, And where books are sold on Amazon? I say, support your local bookshops. It's there too for a lot of places. But I am bad at social media, but I am on Instagram, my Instagram is Nick two Cole and Ikk the Number two co l E. I'm also on Twitter, not being good at Twitter at Nicole the Cuffee and Yeah Kry.

We will be sure to include all of that in the show notes. Thank you so much for sending home time with us to day, Nicole. I appreciate it, Thank you, thank you. I'm so glad Nicole was able to join us today to chat about Dances. To learn more about her work, or to grab your copy of Dances, visit the show notes at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com slash dances and don't forget to text two of your girls right now and encourage them to check out the episode. If you're looking for a therapist in your area, visit our therapist directory at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com slash directory. And if you want to continue to digging into this topic or just be in community with other sisters, come on over and join us in the Sister Circle. It's our cozy corner of the Internet designed just for black women. You can join us at community dot Therapy for Blackgirls dot com. This episode was produced by Frida Lucas, Elise Ellis and Zaria Taylor, editing was done by Dennis and Bradford. We'll be back next week with another regular episode of the podcast. Until then, take good care of yourself. Which friend are you and your sister circle? Are you the wallflower, the peacemaker, the firecracker or the leader? Take the quiz at Sisterhoodheels dot com slash quiz to find out, and then make sure to grab your copy of Sisterhood Heels to find out more about how you can be a better friend and how your circle can do a better job of supporting you. Order yours today at Sisterhoodheels dot com.

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