Leanne as Manon, with Steven McRae as des Grieux in Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon at the Royal Ballet. Photo Johan Persson
Due to be released in October, this autobiography by Leanne Benjamin with Sarah Crompton reveals the extraordinary life and career of one of the world’s most important ballet dancers of the past 50 years.
The book will take you behind the scenes to find a real understanding of the pleasure and the pain, the demands and the intense commitment it requires to become a ballet dancer.
‘She’s astonishing, very, very talented. She has a lovely line and all that, but she
brings out the dramatic qualities in the music too.’
— Kenneth MacMillan
‘It’s the uniqueness of the Royal Ballet ballerina Leanne Benjamin that tomorrow
night at Covent Garden, aged nearly 49, she will be playing a sex-mad teenager, and
no one will have the slightest difficulty believing it. Then she’ll retire. Not for her a
soft swoop into long dresses and matronly gestures, easing decorously into the sunset,
but an all-out assault on physical and emotional extremes that is typical of the
career of this tiny stick of dynamite from the Australian outback.’
— Ismene Brown theartsdesk.com, 2013
Grab your copy from Melbourne Books
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