Full Tilt #2: Dancing Away from Home
A tale of Megan's high school years living away from her parents while training to be a professional dancer at a special school. A tremendous insight into the world of ballet and boarding school. It's well written, gripping, and a fascinating view of a world I will never see first hand. I would never guess ballet students would be obsessed with grade point averages, not go to college to persue dance, or what would cause them to drop out. The story is written as if this happened a long time ago, both in reflection and clarity of perspective.
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Comments & Reviews
I've read all of Megan's zines, and this is one of my favs. She has a way of drawing you in to her stories so much so that you feel as though the stories are YOUR experiences & memories.
Full Tilt #2 is 39 pages of writing about Megan's life and experiences as a young dancer at Virginia School of the Arts (VSA), a residential high school. If you have ever been fascinated by boarding school stories or the world of dance (as I have), or even if you just know about nostalgia and its strange effect on memory, I would highly recommend this zine. Her musings on the personal, social, and academic particulars of the school are very interesting. The mix of anecdotes and illustrations with facts, recollections, and present-day analysis of hard-to-categorize memories and feelings make for a very readable, enjoyable slice of memoir narrative.
The zine was created as part of a 48-hour zine challenge, but it has the look and feel of a much more robust, edited, & well-considered zine than you would think the time constraint allows for.
Megan addresses both the triumphs and hardships faced by a dancer in an intense pre-professional enviornment with grace, honesty, and passion. This zine is enjoyable to everyone, from the average person who knows nothing about ballet to a fellow alumni of the very same school. An absolutely spectacular read.
Fascinating, inspiring, and incredible. This reads like the best of autobiographical writing.