Ralph Nader

Washington

Balanchine

To the Editor:

It was never my intention, as suggested by Helen Shaw’s review of my book, “Broadway, Balanchine & Beyond” (June 2), to write a treatise on George Balanchine’s style and technique but to describe instead my personal observations and experiences rehearsing and taking classes with him, and how I interpreted his process as it applied to me.

I saw Balanchine wanting me to be thin not as “mental torture” but instead as a requirement, a directive from “the Boss.” New York City Ballet was his company and he wanted his choreography and his dancers to shine. Even a few extra pounds could distract and detract from the look his dancers needed to have. And this is true in the ballet world today.

In my book, I am talking about the 1960s, when there was no #MeToo movement. Shaw calls Balanchine a “witch,” almost implying that he was some kind of monster. Far from insulting, the Hansel and Gretel story was amusing to me then and it still is now. That was just the way he was.

I was dancing in one of the greatest ballet companies in the world for the recognized genius who was George Balanchine, and I was performing beautiful roles that he created for me. I was in my 20s, loved what I was doing and wanted to dance for no one else.

Bettijane Sills

White Plains

One Small Step

To the Editor:

In her review of my book “Shoot for the Moon” (June 23), Jill Lepore laments that I didn’t choose to include Barbara Cernan, the spouse of the astronaut Gene Cernan. She also mentions the absence of the pilot Jerrie Cobb, who “became the first of 13 women to qualify to become an astronaut.” In addition, Lepore describes my previous two books as “swaggering accounts” that share, along with my story of Apollo, “a vantage that allows no room for, say, women.”