Reviews
Gary Alan Fine
Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University
"Passionate Work is compellingly written, deeply researched, and analytically sophisticated. Horowitz provides the deepest sociological analysis of the work lives of middle-level ballet dancers that has yet been written. With its unique focus on these dancers within a world of organizations and reputations, this book permits us to think through a significant and esteemed (if occasionally problematic) cultural domain with deep data and a novel perspective."
Marina Harss
Author of The Boy From Kyiv: Alexi Ratmansky's Life in Ballet
"This is a well-researched, clear-eyed account of the nuts and bolts of what a career in dance entails. Horowitz takes dancing, and dancers, seriously, and regards the profession as a passionate occupation but also as work, with everything that entails: effort, time, financial investment, and often, disappointment. Passionate Work answers many questions about what it means to be a dancer, including some we didn't even know we had."
Lynn Garafola
Author of Legacies of Twentieth-Century Dance, Professor Emerita of Dance at Barnard College
"Horowitz illuminates the working lives of dozens of contemporary ballet dancers, both those employed in companies and the freelancers she calls "portfolio dancers," masterfully depicting what it is to be a professional dancer in an age of labor precarity. Through their voices we experience their daily struggle to build a career, balance creativity, collaboration, health, and friendship. and maintain a viable sense of self against all odds."
Pierre-Michel Menger
Author of The Economics of Creativity, Professor of Sociology at Collège de France
"An illuminating study of dancers' careers, their uncertain, often precarious paths, and their many challenges, both demanding and rewarding. Qualitative sociology at its best."