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JaneL

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  1. JaneL
    Thank you so much, that's really lovely to hear! I'm glad you enjoyed it and I hope your great nieces will too!
  2. JaneL
    I also really liked Circus Shoes - not so much dancing but lots of acrobatics/gymnastics.
  3. JaneL
    Hi Petalviolet, Oh wow, thank you! I hope she enjoys it! And happy birthday to your daughter Jane
  4. JaneL
    Alison, thanks for linking to my thread about my Ballet Stars series. The first book, Ballet Stars: Perfect Pirouette is out now and the second one, Amazing Arabesque comes out in two weeks (but may already be in some shops). Other ballet books for children/teens: Summer's Dream by Cathy Cassidy Jean Ure (as others have mentioned) Mal Lewis Jones had two series, one set in a vocational school and one series called Dance Club, set in normal school with children who did dance classes outside school but also set up a school dance club - and solved mysteries too! Though I think these may be out of print now. I wrote a blog post about my top 5 middle grade (i.e. for children aged 8-12) books about ballet here
  5. JaneL
    Hi Thanks so much for reading my books! I'm so pleased you enjoyed the first one and I hope you like the second one just as much. I've just finished working on the third book and I'm excited for you to read that one too when it comes out in August! Jane x
  6. JaneL
    Thank you, thequays!
  7. JaneL
    Ooh that sounds good, Fiz. I haven't heard of that before! Not written quite so long ago, although undoubtedly very dated now as they were pre-internet, but I loved Mal Lewis Jones' Dance Club series. She had another lovely series set in a vocational ballet school but I can't remember what it was called. All I remember is there was a character called Odette. There was also an American series called Scrambled Legs about a group of girls who were forced to take ballet lessons and hated it but became great friends so they carried on dancing so they could hang out together.
  8. JaneL
    And what you manage to forget: it took me a good while to figure out the significance of October 1st! That book doesn't ring a bell so I think it must be one I haven't read - it wasn't one of Lorna Hill's Wells series was it?
  9. JaneL
    I did. Morera plays Manon much more innocently (especially in act 1) than anyone else I've seen, which I think is probably not true to the book but did make for an emotional performance. I felt very sad about what her society had turned her life into and it did make me think a lot about the different ways the role can be looked at. Is Manon a victim of the people around her? Or does she bring her problems on herself? Morera I think played it more towards the victim side of things (and I do think Manon is a victim of an unjust society in which there is a huge gap between rich and poor) - but I think, in the book at least, she also contributes to her own downfall because she's naive and thoughtless as well as selfish - and that's the way other dancers have portrayed the role. I didn't really get that so much from Morera - I felt she was very trusting of her brother and the people around her, and naively thought she could go off with GM and then go back to Des Grieux and there would be no bad consequences for anyone. That's not to say that was a bad way to play it - as I said, it did make me feel very sad at the end (and also want to call her parents and tell them she was getting in with a bad crowd!). Anyway, Morera threw herself into the pas de deux and I could really see the development of her feelings for Des Grieux from their first meeting all the way through to the end of the act 3 pas de deux. Kish danced beautifully but I'm afraid I didn't really believe Des Grieux cared much about Manon or what was happening. It was a bit 'quiet' I think, if that makes sense.
  10. JaneL
    Thanks Alison Hahaha, I read some old writing recently and CRINGED. All very cliched and I was shockingly bad at dialogue. But I was only about 16. Some of it still exists on the internet but most of it's lost because it was saved on a floppy disk (!!!) and I don't think there's any way back to That Site... it must be nearly 10 years since I was there. I have to say I am in total heaven getting to write about ballet AND boarding school - those were my favourite types of books when I was a child.
  11. JaneL
    Thank you Pups_mum and Danceislife! The main character and her two best friends are girls but there are boys in the class that they're friends with too and I hope that I'm portraying it as normal for boys to be doing ballet, even if they are mostly in the background as the main parts of the stories will focus on the three girls. Danceislife - Proper Little Nooryeff is by Jean Ure, who wrote a lot of ballet stories. I LOVED that one (and also Hi There, Supermouse and especially Star Turn - the first in the series about Karen and Jessamy).
  12. JaneL
    James, I think it will all be available again once it's all finished - I don't know if there's a way to go 'backwards' through the live stream at the moment.
  13. JaneL
    The Australian Ballet also told us that the whole thing will be available for 48 hours after San Francisco finish.
  14. JaneL
    I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this (not sure it really counts as ballet news! And I thought that most of the members with young children are probably posting in this section). Anyway please move it if this is the wrong place (or if showing off isn't permitted!). Having said that, I am pretty much posting this just to show off: I'm writing a series of children's fiction set in a ballet school! The three books will be published next year by Usborne. More info here, plus a cringey/cute photo of me as a six year old in a tutu! http://usbornepublishing.tumblr.com/post/98878063205/ballet-stars-on-worldballetday Maybe some of your little dancers will like them when they're out next year. For now, I'm having the BEST time writing them
  15. JaneL
    When was the reorchestration done, capybara? I don't know whether I would have seen it before that. I would guess I first saw Manon almost 10 years ago.
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