BookBrowse Reviews Dances by Nicole Cuffy

Nicole Cuffy's novel Dances reckons with how people are held by but also transform the spaces they inhabit, physically and otherwise. As the first Black ballerina to be promoted to principal dancer in the New York City Ballet, narrator Cece Cordell is hyperaware of how she must push her body to conform to this predominantly white atmosphere in which the only reference point many seem to have for her existence is the (real-life) dancer Misty Copeland, for whom she is sometimes mistaken. But when a friend who has started her own dance company pressures Cece to join, convinced she will be more comfortable in a less traditional setting, Cece resists. Her dream of ballet has always been specific to the NYCB and its classic reputation. In other words, the place where she feels she most belongs is engineered to reject her; even if it has already, to an extent, accepted her. But as she points ...