Ever since Siena was six years old and living in San Juan, Puerto Rico, she dreamed of dancing – leaping and twirling, skipping
and spinning. The book,
To Dance, is a magical memoir of a
ballerina’s journey from a little dance studio in Boston, Massachusetts, to the school of American Ballet (founded by George Balanchine), to the stage at Lincoln Center in New York City. It took 12 years of hard work. Siena trained with legendary Russian dancers. She stood backstage watching Mikhail Baryshnikov perform. She danced until the age of 18, when a terrible ankle injury cut her career short. The author teamed up with her husband, Mark Siegel, whose illustrations in watercolor and ink show every detail, from the drama of her turbulent life at home to the drama of the performances onstage. Their idea to use a
graphic novel to tell Siena’s story was truly inspirational. While her words are captivating, the true emotion of the dance is displayed in the sequences of images in which there are no words at all. Just the dancers leaping and twirling, skipping and spinning in a “fleeting moment of magic.”