"Behind the Red Velvet Curtain: An American Ballerina in Russia"
Joy Womack from Santa Monica, California is fifteen when she arrives in Moscow to study at
the world-famous Bolshoi Ballet Academy. She dreams of transforming herself into one the
incandescently talented Russian dancers she knows from YouTube. But Moscow, as she learns, is
not the onion-domed fairytale city she’d imagined.
Within weeks of her arrival, the sun fades from the sky and snow fills the streets. Joy’s
Russian teachers demand devotion, sacrifice, a steel spine, and hidden muscles. They encourage
her to perform on fractured bones, shape her body to sylph-like proportions, and meld her brain
to the contours of a harsh-sounding new language at a school where the competition is cutthroat
and only a few graduates will be chosen to dance on the country’s most storied stages.
After years of sacrifice, at the age of 18, Joy achieves the unheard-of, becoming the first
American ballerina to join the Bolshoi Theater. It’s everything she’s ever wanted. Or so she
thinks.
Weeks after her debut on the Bolshoi Ballet Theater’s fabled stage, Joy is plunged into a
new whirlwind of challenges. Her director is brutally attacked with acid, her colleagues are
hauled off to courtrooms, and Russian prisons. She herself faces fear, extortion, and threats. She
begins to wonder whether she’s made a mistake coming to Russia.
To escape the Bolshoi, Joy takes a job at the Kremlin Palace Theater - a diplomatic arm
of the Russian government, in the red-spired heart of the country’s capital. Here she is given star
roles, expert coaching and chances to dance for world leaders, including Russian President
Vladimir Putin. But as her career takes off, she watches Russia begin a descent into xenophobia,
increasing totalitarianism, street protests, political murders and eventually, a genocidal war with
its neighbor, Ukraine.
This is no pink ribbon ballet book. It’s an immersive tale of big dreams, broken bones,
Olympic-style training, mafia violence and first love. It’s the story of a teenage girl tossed
headfirst into a storm of international scandal, violent attacks and the growing threat of war. She
must either sink in her own mistakes and disillusionment, trapped by ambition, or find a way to
reimagine her future when all hell has broken loose.