Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

$0.00 for first 30 days

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.
Swan Dive cover art

Swan Dive

By: Georgina Pazcoguin
Narrated by: Georgina Pazcoguin
Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £11.99

Buy Now for £11.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
activate_primeday_promo_in_buybox_DT

Listeners also enjoyed...

Turning Pointe cover art
Yes, My Accent Is Real cover art
Obviously cover art
The Ballerina Mindset cover art
Being a Ballerina cover art
The Indigo Girl cover art
Steeple Chasing cover art
The One You Want to Marry (And Other Identities I've Had) cover art
Book of a Thousand Days cover art
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows cover art
Jane Eyre cover art
The Color Purple cover art
Baby, Don't Hurt Me cover art
If You Would Have Told Me cover art
Yours Cruelly, Elvira cover art
A Little Bit Wicked cover art

Summary

Award-winning New York City Ballet soloist Georgina Pazcoguin, a.k.a. the Rogue Ballerina, gives listeners a backstage tour of the real world of elite ballet - the gritty, hilarious, sometimes shocking truth you don’t see from the orchestra circle.

In this love letter to the art of dance and the sport that has been her livelihood, NYCB’s first Asian American female soloist Georgina Pazcoguin lays bare her unfiltered story of leaving small-town Pennsylvania for New York City and training amid the unique demands of being a hybrid professional athlete/artist, all before finishing high school. She pitches us into the fascinating, whirling shoes of dancers in one of the most revered ballet companies in the world with an unapologetic sense of humour about the cutthroat, survival-of-the-fittest mentality at NYCB. Some swan dives are literal: even in the ballet, there are plenty of face-plants, backstage fights, late-night parties, and raucous company bonding sessions.

Rocked by scandal in the wake of the #MeToo movement, NYCB sits at an inflection point, inching toward progress in a strictly traditional culture, and Pazcoguin doesn’t shy away from ballet’s dark side. She continues to be one of the few dancers openly speaking up against the sexual harassment, mental abuse, and racism that in the past went unrecognized or was tacitly accepted as par for the course - all of which she has painfully experienced firsthand.

Tying together Pazcoguin’s fight for equality in the ballet with her infectious and deeply moving passion for her craft, Swan Dive is a pause-resisting one-of-a-kind account that guarantees you'll never view a ballerina or a ballet the same way again.

©2021 Georgina Pazcoguin (P)2021 Macmillan Publishers International Ltd

Critic reviews

"Swan Dive is to ballet what Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential was to restaurants, a chance to go behind the serene front of house to the sweaty, foul-mouthed, psychofrenzy backstage." (Daisy Goodwin, Sunday Times)

What listeners say about Swan Dive

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    2
  • 4 Stars
    2
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    2
  • 4 Stars
    2
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    2
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.