The Nutcracker Chronicles: A Fairytale Memoir

Perfect for The Nutcracker holiday market and fans of work/life balance books, this memoir of a ballet dancer-turned-literary curator shares the real-life journey of a dancer, wife, and mother.

The Nutcracker Chronicles, a modern twist on the beloved holiday ballet, intertwines the story of Clara and her nutcracker prince with the true-life stories that unfold backstage.

The curtain rises on Ballet El Paso's production of The Nutcracker, where young Janine Kovac is cast as Fritz, the boy who breaks the nutcracker. Her director is Ingeborg Heuser, a German woman who once performed for Hitler and who peppers her teaching with insults like, "Why can't you just dance like a pretty girl?" At least it's better than "You look like a cow on ice skates," which is what the other girls hear daily.

Onstage, Janine wins the battle and embarks on a voyage through a snowy forest to the Land of the Sweets, where she serves as spectator to a beautiful dance. She also travels offstage, leaving El Paso to study at San Francisco Ballet before landing a job in Iceland and returning to California, where she rises through the ranks from soldier to snowflake to candy soloist. Eventually, however, she is relegated to watching other people dance--her husband, her children, her students--and her claim to the spotlight is replaced by the quest to find joy in her new roles.

Author: Janine Kovac
Publisher: She Writes Press
Published: 11/12/2024
Pages: 216
Binding Type: Paperback
ISBN: 9781647427924


Review Citation(s):
Foreword 08/16/2024

About the Author
Janine Kovac enjoyed a twelve-year career as a professional ballet dancer in Iceland, Italy, San Francisco, and her hometown of El Paso, Texas. Outside of the ballet world, her distinctions include UC Berkeley's Glushko Award for Distinguished Research in Cognitive Science, an Elizabeth George Foundation Fellowship from Hedgebrook, and the Calderwood Fellowship for Journalism from MacDowell. Janine is the author of Brain Changer: A Mother's Guide to Cognitive Science and Spinning: Choreography for Coming Home, which received a National Indie Excellence Award. In addition to dancing in The Nutcracker, she's rehearsed The Nutcracker, she's choreographed sections of The Nutcracker, and, most of all, she's sat through The Nutcracker. Janine lives with her family in Oakland, California.