Joy Womack’s New Book, Behind the Red Velvet Curtain, Examines Life at the Bolshoi and Beyond

The ballet world first learned about Joy Womack in 2009, when she moved from Texas to Moscow to study at the Bolshoi Ballet Academy. She was 15, unaccompanied by a parent or an interpreter, and equipped only with leotards and steely determination. She had one goal: to join the Bolshoi Ballet.

Three years later, Womack became the first-ever American woman to do just that. But her new book, Behind the Red Velvet Curtain (Rowman & Littlefield Press), written in collaboration with journalist Elizabeth Shockman, recounts a journey marked by suffering. Studying at the Bolshoi brought intense pressure, resulting in life-threatening bulimia. Womack danced on broken bones and married a friend who was a Russian citizen to earn her spot in the company. Once inside, she encountered severe corruption, which reached its pinnacle in the aftermath of the 2013 acid attack against then artistic director Sergei Filin.

Womack eventually left the Bolshoi for the State Kremlin Palace Theater in Moscow, and, after a brief stint in Boston, she returned to Russia and earned her citizenship. She was traveling in Poland on the day Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and has, due to her disagreement with the war, not returned since. (She is now a freelance guest artist based in Paris and artistic and executive director of the Joy Womack Ballet Company, Foundation, and Academy.)

But Womack maintains a love for Russian art despite the pain and politics. “Ballet in Russia was like ballet nowhere else in the world I have ever found,” her book reads. Below, she discusses the new book, her Russian training, and her new life in France.

Congratulations on the book, Joy! Let’s talk about your experience working with the writer, Elizabeth Shockman.

Thank you, it means a lot. I met Elizabeth when I was 15 years old and had just arrived in Moscow. I was looking for a community, and I met her at a church I attended. She did so many interviews—with me and so many people from my life—for this book because she comes from a reporting background, and I’ve learned that you can find time for things like that even if you’re managing schedules that feel impossible to manage. Hats off to Elizabeth—she’s not a ballet dancer, but she does very much have this attitude of “I need to put something excellent out.” It’s like being in the studio and working on your Black Swan. You go over the details over and over again.

You live in Paris now. The book covers your 2019 move to Boston Ballet, and you write that you were horrified to learn how undervalued dancers are in America compared to Russia. How does Europe fit into this contrast?

I had a short-term contract with the Paris Opéra Ballet when I first moved here, and it was the best company I’ve ever worked for in my life. You feel valued. It was a beautiful experience

There is an appreciation for the arts in Europe that is similar to Russia. People come; they love ballet. They want to be there. In the U.S., especially now, we do not have an appreciation for the arts and what arts give our daily life. That is a shame, it really is. There’s complete dedication to artists in Russia, total financial support. It’s not on the same level of lifestyle that you have in Europe, but as a dancer in Russia, you will have a job, you will have three years of paid maternity leave. We could never imagine that as dancers in America.

You have a great respect for Russian technique, but the book doesn’t shy away from its negative pressure, too. As a teacher now yourself, what are you bringing with you and what are you leaving behind?

As Americans we tend to have this idea of Russian teachers being very strict—I think of Madame Olga, on Instagram; I love him, he’s so funny!—but there’s also this other side of, “You’re my child, you’re my person and I care about you. I desperately want you to do well onstage, I want you to feel good.”

Once, I came to rehearsal for White Swan, and I was so exhausted. My teacher was like, “We really need to run it because you perform tomorrow, but let me tell you of a time that I was performing the same solo and I was so exhausted and my coach told me, Go to the first part [kneeling on the ground with your head resting on your legs] and you can pretend like you’re waking up from a nap.” It was just so funny to me. There’s such a humanity in passing that story down to me. I want to see the humanity in everyone.

You write about struggling to find a sense of home, feeling torn between your American and Russian citizenships. In the end, you say “Home is myself.” Could you tell me a bit more about that?

I think, as a dancer, we often have to move away quite young, and you don’t have as much of a connection to where you’re from. Sometimes your home depends on where you have a contract that year. For me, home now is a place where you can build community and do what you love. Home is where there is a ballet studio. 

Your book covers a huge journey of self-worth, overcoming eating disorders multiple times. What would you tell 15-year-old Joy first stepping foot in Russia?

I wish she would be kind to herself. I was so eager for validation, so eager for somebody to tell her that she was good enough. But she was so brave. I’m very grateful to her courage.

I used to be consumed with “I look fat in this tutu, I should have done more cardio.” I deeply believed that my dancing was as good as I was skinny. I wasted so much time by not enjoying the present because I was so worried about what people thought about the size of my legs or factors about my body that I could never change. But by letting go, I have so much more freedom and brain space to enjoy and focus on other things.

You write that after moving away from Russia, you learned that “openness and freedom, diversity and movement are sparks to creativity that are given too little space in authoritarian countries.” How does this affect your career now?

I love to take from many different techniques now. There’s this community of people who are like, “This is the only way to do it.” I get that there’s a pedagogical purpose to that, and that is valid, but I disagree. Working in France and working around the world, you get to see all of the beautiful things that other teachers have developed. Being open to somebody’s suggestion, someone’s taste, even if it’s not for you, is going to just enrich your dancing.

Would you ever go back to Russia, if the politics changed?

Yes. I don’t know if I would live full-time there, because I like being in different places, but I miss my friends, my teachers, my community. I can’t even start to speak about the politics. In a weird way, I do believe that dance and art are outside of politics, that we should really be focused on building organic cultural bridges between countries. There’s such a wealth of knowledge about classical dance in Russia, about dancing in general and about music. I’d love to continue researching, and I feel like when we close the door to that wealth of knowledge, we are doing a disservice to dancers everywhere.