Based on interviews conducted with four former classical ballet dancers, I wrote the following paper for my Folk Narrative course at Western Kentucky University. The paper identifies the traditional narrative structure each of the dancers relied on to tell stories about significant injuries they sustained while dancing. It demonstrates how the dancers find meaningful ways to describe such traumatic experiences.
I presented an edited version of this paper at the 2020 Annual Meeting of the American Folklore Society.
Georgia Ellie Dassler 