My Dance with Op
My Dance with Op

Author: Ladonna Alfano

Publisher: Strategic Book Publishing

Published: 2009-05

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 9781608602612

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Do you believe in miracles? You will after reading La Donna Alfano's MY DANCE WITH OPA. Even though La Donna barely survived the tragic train/car accident that took the lives of her mother, identical twin and baby sister when she was five years old, she had an incredible out-of-body experience that gave her so much peace. She lived with different family members until her father remarried and La Donna's stepmother adopted her when she was eight years old. Her hell began. La Donna went through years of emotional, physical and sexual abuse and she eventually lost all faith in her angels, in God and in humanity. Her life started to plummet while getting into drugs and alcohol and looking for love in all the wrong places. The majority of her thirties were going through therapy trying to find happiness and finding her true self. While she was on the journey of finding her long-lost mother's family, one night she was awoken and driven to write a letter to UNSOLVED MYSTERIES. La Donna wanted to believe in her angels and in a higher power, but she needed proof. La Donna's grandfather, Opa, and her reunion was bittersweet, but their meeting was a wondrous spiritual dance that led her to a new life, a new awakening and a miraculous beginning. La Donna's heart wrenching narration will touch anyone who has ever suffered through heartbreak and /or abuse and gives proof that life can begin again and what's on the other side of healing is truly a miracle. Author Bio: La Donna Alfano is a sculptor and cosmetologist. She lives in Canton, Connecticut. MY DANCE WITH OPA is her first book.

The Violin Conspiracy
The Violin Conspiracy

Author: Brendan Slocumb

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2022-02-01

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 059331543X

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GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK! • Ray McMillian is a Black classical musician on the rise—undeterred by the pressure and prejudice of the classical music world—when a shocking theft sends him on a desperate quest to recover his great-great-grandfather’s heirloom violin on the eve of the most prestigious musical competition in the world. “I loved The Violin Conspiracy for exactly the same reasons I loved The Queen’s Gambit: a surprising, beautifully rendered underdog hero I cared about deeply and a fascinating, cutthroat world I knew nothing about—in this case, classical music.” —Chris Bohjalian, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Flight Attendant and Hour of the Witch Growing up Black in rural North Carolina, Ray McMillian’s life is already mapped out. But Ray has a gift and a dream—he’s determined to become a world-class professional violinist, and nothing will stand in his way. Not his mother, who wants him to stop making such a racket; not the fact that he can’t afford a violin suitable to his talents; not even the racism inherent in the world of classical music. When he discovers that his beat-up, family fiddle is actually a priceless Stradivarius, all his dreams suddenly seem within reach, and together, Ray and his violin take the world by storm. But on the eve of the renowned and cutthroat Tchaikovsky Competition—the Olympics of classical music—the violin is stolen, a ransom note for five million dollars left in its place. Without it, Ray feels like he's lost a piece of himself. As the competition approaches, Ray must not only reclaim his precious violin, but prove to himself—and the world—that no matter the outcome, there has always been a truly great musician within him.

Dance Dance Dance
Dance Dance Dance

Author: Haruki Murakami

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2011-10-10

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 1448103673

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An assault on the senses, part murder mystery, part metaphysical speculation; a fable for our times as catchy as a rock song blasting from the window of a sports car. High-class call girls billed to Mastercard. A psychic 13-year-old dropout with a passion for Talking Heads. A hunky matinee idol doomed to play dentists and teachers. A one-armed beach-combing poet, an uptight hotel clerk and one very bemused narrator caught in the web of advanced capitalist mayhem. Combine this offbeat cast of characters with Murakami's idiosyncratic prose and out comes Dance Dance Dance. 'If Raymond Chandler had lived long enough to see Blade Runner, he might have written something like Dance Dance Dance' Observer

Through the Eyes of a Dancer
Through the Eyes of a Dancer

Author: Wendy Perron

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press

Published: 2013-11-05

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 0819574090

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Through the Eyes of a Dancer compiles the writings of noted dance critic and editor Wendy Perron. In pieces for The SoHo Weekly News, Village Voice, The New York Times, and Dance Magazine, Perron limns the larger aesthetic and theoretical shifts in the dance world since the 1960s. She surveys a wide range of styles and genres, from downtown experimental performance to ballets at the Metropolitan Opera House. In opinion pieces, interviews, reviews, brief memoirs, blog posts, and contemplations on the choreographic process, she gives readers an up-close, personalized look at dancing as an art form. Dancers, choreographers, teachers, college dance students—and anyone interested in the intersection between dance and journalism—will find Perron’s probing and insightful writings inspiring. Through the Eyes of a Dancer is a nuanced microcosm of dance’s recent globalization and modernization that also provides an opportunity for new dancers to look back on the traditions and styles that preceded their own.

My Dance with Justice
My Dance with Justice

Author: Lydia Rose McSweeney

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2024-01-10

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13:

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I love God and I know he loves me, so why can’t I move beyond my past? Many have psychological fractures due to abuse and trauma that can cause conflicts between what they know is true about God and their lived experience. This book explores the importance of psychological justice by delving into the author’s multiple encounters with death, grief, trauma, betrayal, sickness, and abuse. Walk with her and draw out the theological and psychological ways God has passionately brought psychological justice to her life. Tracing the threads of one’s story can open a door of hope leading to a deeper and more congruent grace-filled walk with God the Father, our wonderful Savior Jesus, and the ever-present Holy Spirit. The author’s prayer is that her vulnerability might give readers courage to find their own voice and begin to map out their own story.

Turned Out By a Certified Boss
Turned Out By a Certified Boss

Author: Shameka Jones

Publisher: Sullivan Group Publishing

Published: 2018-08-15

Total Pages: 191

ISBN-13: 1648403379

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Sage is the ideal girl—young and intelligent with many goals and ambitions. Graduating high school two years early, she follows her heart and ambitions to DC to attend college while staying close to her first love. Two years in, she’s heartbroken when her boyfriend does everything but give her a faithful and honest love. Refusing to let his infidelities break her, she vows never to let another get close enough to break her heart. It’s a perfect plan that has her feeling strong, independent, and on top of her game, until she comes face to face with a temptation she can’t resist. Her mind tells her to run the other way, but her heart has her hooked on a vibe she can’t let go. Will she risk it all for another shot at love? Theophilus London, better known as Op, is determined to change the course of his life. Recently returning to school to finish a degree in business, he vows to stay as far away from the family business as possible because he wants so much more than the street life. When a family situation takes an unexpected turn for the worse, Op sees the opportunity to use book smarts to run his family’s street empire like no other. Turns out that school is kicking Op’s butt, and just when he’s ready to throw his hands up and go with plan B, a fine, tempting reinforcement falls right into his lap, making him want to major in the mastery of all things Sage. When their pasts refuse to let them go, they find themselves fighting for the freedom to explore their new love, fighting to shake the very people that broke their hearts in the first place. One wrong step traps Op in a lose-lose position that leaves Sage questioning everything she thought she knew about him. Meanwhile, Sage falls into a setup that she never saw coming until it was too late. Can two broken hearts mend each other? Will Op and Sage be able to put the pieces of one another back together without fumbling them? Will the complete truth resolve all their problems or make an unusual situation even worse? These questions and more will be answered in the first part of the Turned out by a Certified Boss trilogy.

In the Dream House
In the Dream House

Author: Carmen Maria Machado

Publisher: Graywolf Press

Published: 2019-11-05

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1644451026

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A revolutionary memoir about domestic abuse by the award-winning author of Her Body and Other Parties In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado’s engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming. And it’s that struggle that gives the book its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope—the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman—through which Machado holds the events up to the light and examines them from different angles. She looks back at her religious adolescence, unpacks the stereotype of lesbian relationships as safe and utopian, and widens the view with essayistic explorations of the history and reality of abuse in queer relationships. Machado’s dire narrative is leavened with her characteristic wit, playfulness, and openness to inquiry. She casts a critical eye over legal proceedings, fairy tales, Star Trek, and Disney villains, as well as iconic works of film and fiction. The result is a wrenching, riveting book that explodes our ideas about what a memoir can do and be.

Chance and Circumstance
Chance and Circumstance

Author: Carolyn Brown

Publisher: Knopf

Published: 2009-12-23

Total Pages: 656

ISBN-13: 0307575608

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The long-awaited memoir from one of the most celebrated modern dancers of the past fifty years: the story of her own remarkable career, of the formative years of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and of the two brilliant, iconoclastic, and forward-thinking artists at its center—Merce Cunningham and John Cage. From its inception in the l950s until her departure in the l970s, Carolyn Brown was a major dancer in the Cunningham company and part of the vibrant artistic community of downtown New York City out of which it grew. She writes about embarking on her career with Cunningham at a time when he was a celebrated performer but a virtually unknown choreographer. She describes the heady exhilaration—and dire financial straits—of the company’s early days, when composer Cage was musical director and Robert Rauschenberg designed lighting, sets and costumes; and of the struggle for acceptance of their controversial, avant-garde dance. With unique insight, she explores Cunningham’s technique, choreography, and experimentation with compositional procedures influenced by Cage. And she probes the personalities of these two men: the reticent, moody, often secretive Cunningham, and the effusive, fun-loving, enthusiastic Cage. Chance and Circumstance is an intimate chronicle of a crucial era in modern dance, and a revelation of the intersection of the worlds of art, music, dance, and theater that is Merce Cunningham’s extraordinary hallmark.