‘Behind the Red Velvet Curtain: An American Ballerina in Russia’
—Cathy Ritchie
Behind the Red Velvet Curtain: An American Ballerina in Russia
by Joy Womack, as told to Elizabeth Shockman (Rowman & Littlefield, 2025)
I’ll cut to the chase: Behind the Red Velvet Curtain is simply extraordinary, one of the best performing arts books I’m likely to read in the near future.
Womack and her collaborator/friend Shockman triumph in several ways. This book
is an immersive coming-of-age memoir from a woman who lived for her art, while navigating an incredible mélange of personal, artistic and bureaucratic challenges as a mere teenager in a foreign country. And it also triumphs in offering one of the deepest dives into the good, bad, and at times very ugly inner workings of a revered artistic institution. Joy Womack so enmeshed me in her story that I mourned its conclusion as the final page appeared.
She was born in 1994 and raised in California, one of nine children; the family later settled permanently in Austin, Texas. Despite understandable financial pressure within the clan, her parents devoted themselves to helping all their offspring realize their personal dreams. For Joy, that dream was becoming a prima ballerina; she shows early talent and soon develops an all-consuming passion for the art.
Quickly, her master goal becomes attending the Bolshoi Ballet Academy in Moscow, the best school of its kind for fledgling classical dancers. She auditions and is accepted, and would become the first American Bolshoi graduate.
But as a personal side note, my reader’s credulity became slightly strained early on. At age 15, with no knowledge of Russian, no pre-arranged place to live or people to contact once in Moscow, Joy voyaged alone over the seas, arriving justin time for her first class. The lack of parental guidance in this scenario astounds me, but our author clearly taps into survival skills she would absolutely need in years to come.
As the lone American Bolshoi student, Joy witnesses and experiences much, and shares it all in engrossing detail. In no particular order, some examples…
The pressures placed upon the students by their tyrannical Russian teachers/taskmasters lead Joy to bulimia, which she does eventually overcome, at least to an extent. And while it’s become a threadbare cliché that all ballet dancers live with grievous orthopedic injuries to their feet and legs, Joy takes this reality to the next level by describing her own afflictions in harrowing detail: wounds, open sores, deformed or even missing toenails and much more. (We should be thankful she omitted photographs.)
The apparent lack of roles for her in the Russian ballet world also leads to uncertainty and unimaginable stress for Joy. At one point in her narrative, she is jobless with no money and no guarantee of a roof over her head. Her parents, with whom she is still in contact, evidently do nothing to help her at that juncture. To my amazement, Joy somehow survives yet again, as devoted to her art as ever. Brava.
Later during her training, she is forced to confront her legal status as an American in Moscow, and is strongly advised to marry a Russian citizen in order to guarantee her visa’s safety. And so she does. Her husband Nikita is an aspiring choreographer. The marriage is originally conceived to be in name only, but Joy and Nikita form a marital bond that lasts until career circumstances force them apart.
Russian politics also interfere in Joy’s life, but undergirding all of her experiences is the enormity of the Bolshoi infrastructure. She faces autocratic teachers, relentless competition among students, fixation on physical appearance (while hiding the broken bones and the missing toenails), and perhaps, above all, the quest for challenging stage roles.
When Joy discovers in 2013 that the best parts are only available at a price—to be literally paid by the aspiring performer (i.e., “pay to perform”)—she breaks with the institution she loves and reveals the Bolshoi’s corruption to the world. She understandably faces harsh backlash, but finds work with other ballet companies, albeit with a newly-darkened reputation.
In 2014, at age 19, Joy becomes the principal dancer of the Kremlin Ballet Theatre of Moscow. Thanks to the huge number of Russian ballet companies, Joy is able to cobble together a successful living, one laced with constant travel and never-ending uncertainty. Throughout it all, she is always grateful that her nation of choice holds the performing arts as a constant high priority, both financially and administratively.
Today, Joy Womack is married to a non-ballet-connected gentleman and lives mainly in Paris, free-lance performing and teaching. In 2021, her life and times became the subject of the documentary film Joy Womack: The White Swan, available on DVD and via YouTube.
As Joy comments in conclusion; “I am neither fully Russian nor fully American. I am thankful to be where I am now----humbled into compassion, open to the world, learning from everyone I meet, creating art shot through, like streaks of gold, with everything I have been given out of difficulty, Ballet has become my bridge and my passport. I have found my home in the world in the dance studio and in my friendships. I have found my home in myself. I still can’t believe I get to dance.”
Joy Womack and her collaborator Elizabeth Shockman have crafted a narrative of great honesty, with frank revelations of ballet’s deeper, unpleasant truths. To invoke another cliché, clearly, only the strong survive in ballet, and we can be thankful our author has been one of them. This book teems with content and begs to be experienced and remembered, thanks to its dedicated, arts-loving creator. Thank you, Joy Womack.
