Muscle Memory

By Lilly Dancyger

"Muscle Memory devastated me." --Kiese Laymon

When a searing pain starts in Lilly Dancyger's hip at twenty-six years old, she goes to see a doctor, expecting an explanation and a treatment plan. Instead, what follows is an eleven-year search for a diagnosis--and the recalibration of her identity from a fit and healthy bartender and dancer to a person who is in pain. Remembering her chaotic childhood, during which ballet classes were a rare stabilizing force, Dancyger becomes convinced that if she can just get well enough to dance, ballet will help her conquer chronic pain.

Muscle Memory is a quietly seething braided memoir in three acts: part personal account of a lifelong relationship with ballet; part pain narrative; part researched examination of classical ballets. Dancyger exposes the systematic dismissal of women's suffering, tests the linkages between chronic pain and trauma, and looks for answers in The Firebird--a folktale-turned-ballet about the bargains we make to free ourselves.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1957392533
• ISBN13: 9781957392530
• Release Date: April 2027
• Publisher: Autofocus Books
• Length: 110 Pages