The Brainy Ballerina Book Club
For as long as I can remember, I have loved to read. I dreamed of growing up to be either a ballerina or a librarian. When I was young, I set up my own personal library, each book meticulously labeled by the Dewey Decimal System, and demanded kindly invited my family members to come check out books.
Even though I didn’t end up pursuing library science professionally, reading is still one of my greatest loves. A lifelong learner, I crave new challenges, ideas, and experiences. I am fascinated by other’s stories and am always applying the lessons I learn in books to my own life, both personally and professionally. I truly believe that an insatiable curiosity is one of the hallmark traits of a truly “brainy ballerina”.
Whether you are an avid reader or looking to get into the habit, The Brainy Ballerina® Book Club welcomes you with open arms! We are a community of dance lovers who are eager to expand our knowledge, feed our souls, and make meaningful connections.
There are two ways to get involved. Check out the options below, then choose one or the other or go all in and sign up for both! Either way, I’m happy you’re here!
💛 Caitlin, CEO & Founder of The Brainy Ballerina®
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July/August 2026 Book of the Month
Serenade: A Balanchine Story by Toni Bentley
At age seventeen, Toni Bentley was chosen by Balanchine, then in his final years, to join the New York City Ballet. From both backstage and onstage, she carries us through the serendipitous history and physical intricacies and demands of Serenade: its dazzling opening, with seventeen women in a double-diamond pattern; its radical, even jazzy, use of the highly refined language that is ballet; its place in the choreographer’s own dramatic story of his immigration to the United States from Soviet Russia; its mystical—and literal—embodiment of the tradition of classical ballet in just thirty-three minutes.
Bentley takes us inside the rarefied, intense, and thrilling world Balanchine created through his lifelong devotion to celebrating and expanding female beauty and strength—a world that, inevitably, passed upon his death. An intimate elegy to grace and loss and to the imprint of a towering artist and his transcendent creation on Bentley’s own life, Serenade: A Balanchine Story is a rich narrative by a dynamic artist about the nature of art itself at its most ephemeral and glorious.
Past Book Club Picks
2026
2025
2024
2023
2022
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