When Nicole Cuffy won the first-ever Chautauqua Janus Prize in 2018 for her work Atlas of the Body, it helped put some “wind in her sails” after a time of self-doubt.
“It kind of came at the perfect moment, that it really helped me to see that my voice did matter in this space,” she said. “It motivated me to seek to understand my own perspective more thoroughly so that I could continue to produce work that continued to matter.”
Six years later, Cuffy returns to the grounds as a Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle author for the Week Nine book, Dances: A Novel.
“Her coming back as a CLSC author for her first novel is a full-circle experience at Chautauqua for Nicole,” said Manager of Literary Arts, Stephine Hunt. “We’re very excited to have her back and to be taking part in the CLSC.”
For Hunt, Dances is a sort of continuation of the story in Atlas of the Body, since it explores similar themes such as anatomy and dancing, as well as medical conversations tied to ballet.
Dances — which Cuffy will discuss and read from at 3:30 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy — is a novel that follows the story of 22-year-old Cece Cordell, the first Black principal ballerina at the New York City Ballet. As Cece achieves her lifelong goal, she battles with her past, an absent father, dismissive mother, and an older brother who she hasn’t seen in years — and is faced with a decision that could have stark ramifications for her career.
With Dances, Cuffy — who stopped dancing as a child and later returned to ballet during high school and college — wanted to accurately represent what it is like being a ballerina of color, and how it feels being the “only Black body” in a room.
Cuffy is a Washington D.C.-based writer and lecturer at the University of Maryland and American University. Her chapbook, Atlas of the Body, was also a finalist in the Black River Chapbook Competition.
When Cuffy was writing Dances — which was longlisted for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Hemingway Award — she wanted to reflect on the connection between ballet and the female body, as well as all the experiences that body goes through.
“Oftentimes when we think about women and development, or her life milestones over time, they have to do with the body — like when you start to develop into a woman’s body,” she said. “When you get your first period, if you ever lose your virginity, when you have sex for the first time, if you get pregnant, if you don’t get pregnant … all these things are so related to our bodies in a way that I don’t think that manhood is defined in the same way.”
Cuffy wanted to explore femininity in ballet, the perception of female dancers being ultra-feminine, and how we define femininity versus masculinity.
“That creates really interesting intersections with various art forms,” she said. “When those traditional markers of femininity, which are related to the body, happen to female dancers, they actually are a disruption to the very career that paints them in this ultra-feminine light,” she said.
With Dances, Cuffy hopes to address the different stereotypes that surround the world of ballet in a way that hasn’t been done before.
“It’s the same story over and over again. … You have a group of women with eating disorders who are constantly trying to sabotage each other, and it really upholds this misogynistic idea that women are incapable of getting along with each other and supporting each other,” said Cuffy. “I just don’t think that that’s true of how the ballet world actually functions. I hope that when people read Dances, they get a better understanding of what this world is actually like and how women do function in a world that is associated largely with women, but it is not exclusively full of women, and still is quite subject to issues of patriarchy and misogyny.”
