FROM BOYHOOD TO NUTCRACKER PRINCE:
Peter Boal paints a star-studded picture of what it takes to make it as the Principal Dancer for the New York City Ballet and beyond
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
New York, New York — Peter’s story starts in the pastoral and privileged town of Bedford, New York: a rare enclave 40 miles north of New York City where private schools, country clubs, and families hold their own rules and secrets. Within the town, views of race, morality, and sexuality are unspoken yet evident. Meanwhile, at home, Peter and his family are left to grapple with his father’s alcoholism and untimely death. As a young boy finding his way, Peter soon turns to ballet. Ultimately his passion becomes a beacon, leading him to work at the New York City Ballet as a teenager, living on his own while discovering the pitfalls and pleasures Manhattan has to offer.
Throughout Peter’s deeply personal work, you’ll step onto the club house floor during ballroom dancing lessons in Bedford, into the studios of the School of American Ballet at Lincoln Center, and onto the stage in George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker as Peter performs the title role of the Nutcracker Prince. For all the laughter these stories offer, gravity is everywhere.
Peter’s journey takes us to the start of a storied career as a dancer with the New York City Ballet and leaves us with insights into the unique path of an artist and individual shaped by environment, circumstance, and family.
“A multi-functional memoir. It’s a generous, grateful account of discovering ballet as a career; and it’s about the discovery of friends, sexuality, values, and manners…In Boal’s writing, every word and every sentence matter. Subtle variations of tone take the reader, enchantingly, between charm, pain, and humour, often in the course of a paragraph.”
— Alastair Macaulay,
New York Times, Chief Dance Critic 2007-2018
Illusions of Camelot
Peter Boal – May 2023
ISBN: 9780825309830
Hardcover: $24.95 || Ebook: $14.99
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Beaufort Books is an independent publisher based in New York City. Beaufort publishes a mix of non-fiction and fiction titles, with about 15–20 new titles each year. Since 2007, we’ve published four New York Times bestsellers.
For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact Emma St. John at emma@beaufortbooks.com.
Tags: ballet dancer, ballet memoir, dance biography, dance memoir, illusions of camelot, Memoir, new memoir, New York City, new york city ballet, NYC ballet, NYCB, peter boal, PNW Ballet, PNWB, press release